After seven days of drama and celebrations that rocked this island paradise, Qian Zhi Qiang emerged victorious in the Main Event of the sixth staging of the World Poker Tour (WPT) Sanya with thousands of participants, including a slew of entrants from the international circuit, making this another successful poker endeavour.
Qian, the 36-year-old poker pro from Shanghai, bested the field of over eight hundred players to collect his biggest tournament win ever as well as his biggest haul in $242,555 and now joins the ranks of titlists who have etched their names in poker immortality by copping a WPT championship.
Qian controlled the proceedings since grabbing the chip lead to end hostilities in Day 3 and never looked back, despite the tough field that included 2015 Red Dragon and Macau Poker Cup High-Roller king Li Yu Guang (in the Final Table), erstwhile champion Chen Hao, WPT Beijing winner Pete Chen and American WPT titlists Daniel Weinman and Sam Panzica.
Final 9 Payouts (in US Dollars)
1st – Qian Zhi Qiang – $242,555
2nd – Hu Ling Fei – $166,700
3rd – Li Cheng Bei – $106,000
4th – Huang Deng Dong – $78,800
5th – Tang Ying – $60,600
6th – Chen Ke – $46,900
7th – Li Yu Guang – $39,400
8th – Chen Sui Yu – $30,100
9th – Fu Peng – $22,700
More: Final Table Live Updates
International players
The international presence made this festival more vibrant as entries from the United States, Russia, France and neighbouring Asian countries such as Japan, Korea and Singapore had representatives trudging their way through the tough Chinese field with only one foreigner coming away with a triumph as Japanese accountant Gen Nose bested his competition by taking down the NLHE Turbo event.
Hublot Elite High-Roller event and side events
Vanessa Zhang was another news maker who was out to avenge her loss to compatriot Sun Yung Sheng in last year’s High-Roller event.
This year named the Hublot Elite High-Roller event—presented by Hublot watches, one of the global sponsors for the WPT—Zhang once again found herself in the head-up duel for the title, but this time against Zhang Yu Tong. However, Vanessa met the same fate as she once again had to settle for second place, but this time she was so distraught for coming up short that her friends and supporters had to comfort her after the loss.
Here are the other Side Event winners here:
| # | Event | Champion |
| 1 | WPT China Team League The Fall Final | Grayback Team |
| 2 | NLH Warm-Up Turbo | Xiong Huang |
| 3 | WPT Sanya Online Championship | Guancheng Wu |
| 4 | WPT Sanya Main Event | Zhiqiang Qian |
| 5 | PL Omaha（8 Max） | Liming Zhang |
| 6 | NLH Win The Button Turbo | Hongliang Zhai |
| 7 | NLH Satellite to Beautiful Sanya-Lianzhong Cup | Jianxin Xiao |
| 8 | NLH Beautiful Sanya-Lianzhong Cup | Haitao Guo |
| 9 | NHL Satellite to Hublot High Roller | Guochang Xu |
| 10 | Hublot High Roller | Yutong Zhang |
| 11 | Open Face Chinese Poker Pineapple | Zhenlai Duan |
| 12 | NLH “Beauty and Beast” | Hao He |
| 13 | NLH HyperTurbo | Nanxiang Zhang |
| 14 | NLH Super Bounty | Haoyu Li |
| 15 | NLH Turbo | Gen Nose |
| 16 | NLH HyperTurbo | Guoliang Wei |
Next stop Japan
The WPT is slowly making serious inroads in China and the nation that this prestigious poker organization has always tried to cultivate is now emerging as one of the hotbeds for the game in this continent. With its inaugural festival in Beijing being a resounding success, the WPT now hopes to create more stops in this country.
For now this beautiful island province off the southwest coast of the mainland has served as the perfect host venue for this year’s festivities and many participants are already looking forward to the 2018 edition of this undertaking.
Next up for the WPT is its initial festival in Japan to be held in a couple of days (November 23-26) before heading back to the United States for the WPT Deep Stacks (DS) Championships in California followed by the televised 5-Diamond World Poker Classic at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, Nevada to cap off a thrilling 2017.
WPT President and CEO Adam Pliska was onhand to witness the proceedings and was impressed with the turnout and the all-out support the Chinese poker community gave to this event—especially through online qualifiers on Ourgame’s PokerWorld.
With the 2017 WPT Sanya now in the books, somuchpoker.com bids you farewell from Hainan, China and keep it locked here for more live coverage and updates from the Asian poker scene.
Article by Noel Zarate
Louis Hartwell
Graduated in Media Communication at the University of Lausanne, Louis Hartman is a co-founder of somuchpoker.com. He began his career in Cambodia as freelance journalist. In same time he was making his living by playing poker every night at that time. Intense learner, he read dozens of poker strategy books to improve his skills during many years. With a strong interest about poker "behind the scene" in Asia and his communication skills, Louis launched Somuchpoker in 2014.
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