I had a great trip to the Asia Pacific Poker Tour (APPT) in Cebu, The Philippines. This is the place where my mum was born and we still have family there. I have been previously to Cebu but this time it was in the luxury of the 5 star Shangri-La resort. I was lucky enough to win a 5k package courtesy of Pokerstars.
When I arrived at the airport transfers were smooth and at the reception fresh mango juice was presented to me as I checked in. My room was great and had an amazing view of the ocean. There were a myriad of pools in the resort each with a bar and one even had a basketball hoop. There were a wide variety of eating options and plenty of vouchers given to us for discounts. The Pokerstars pack for this event was better than any I have received before with headphones, universal power convertors and the best branded clothing, hoody, hats and t-shirts.
The first event I played was the main and things were going smoothly until Andy Hin was moved to my table. There was a lot of action between players and then Danny Silk (SilkysNuts) on Pokerstars was moved to Andy's left, so a bit of a dynamic developed and we managed to get it in 3 way All-In-Pre-Flop with Andy having the best of it with the King-King in the small blind Vs my Ten-Ten on the button and Danny Silks' Ace and the Queen in the big blind. Needless to say he held and won a decent pot and went reasonably deep (finished 24th I believe).
So I moved on and got reasonably plastered at the welcome party on the white sand beach. Manila Light beer (the sponsors provided free beer all week) and red wine was provided as well as copious amounts of food including my favourite 'Lechon'. This fine food is otherwise known as spit roasted pig and it was delicious. We chilled on the beach and met some people from the Metro Card Club who were running the cash games. Fireworks went off as the pro's welcomed us to the event, Lyn Gilmartin from PokerNews brought upon me the unwelcome comparison to Van Marcus, sigh, or at least to me being his little brother. I drank some more and got snapped in some special snaps on the beach. Watto even made a surprise appearance courtesy of Rennie putting up the fundage to go, mbn. Was super happy and surprised to see him there!
The next day around midday I online registered for a live side event called the bounty event, we started with 5k stacks and I managed to go deep and felt super comfortable. It was a 469usd buy in with 51 runners, we got to the final table and top 7 were getting paid I managed to pick up some hands and ko some people. We got to four handed and another guy busted out and the big stack was drunk German (Mrs-Nurse) on Pokerstars and another tight but aggressive guy who I had played in cash games earlier. I had 15bbs and Mrs-Nurse had 25bbs and TAG guy had 20bigs, so we did an even chop and won about 4k usd which was credited direct into my account!
I then played some cash games and won a little. Then Ran my 20k pesos (469AUD approx.) into close to 80k over 2 days
then we are playing 100-200-400 (2-5-10) NL and I have 60k stack and agro local guy who is a prop player for the Metro card club in Manila opens the button with Q 3 offsuit to like 1800, I make it 5400 with black KK and he flats, I C-bet the Qc Jc 2d flop like 8800, he flats, and turn is an off-suit 7 and I continue with 21500 and he gets the rest in and binks an offsuit 3 on the river, gg pesos.
The night before this hand we went for dinner to Cowrie Cove, which was part of the resort and had seafood and amazing views. It was with all the reg's, we had a meeting about how to neg each other out more then flipped for the 1200usd bill, no jokes we are all nits, dinner included Mishella, Tollgate, Benton, Steel, Weygang, Jack-O-Vich, et.al. really was an all star line up! All the WAG's got us to stop talking about poker for about 5 mins then we proceeded to congratulate Rennie on his 5th birthday and Toll on his $100 win on some site called Party.
After dinner I went to my room and looked up fbook pics of Jackovich, then inspired dodged, ducked and weaved my way through a 250 strong $109 turbo line up to fail for 2nd and 3.7k after running teh 10 and the 10, into the Ace and the Ace, 30 bb's deep after pwning 3-4-5 handed.
Undeterred, I woke up in the morning and thought what a life, looked up pics of intimad8r32 (under favourites) and thought I am going to nit up real hard and ship something today, registered for another side event called the 'deepstack' in Cebu's Pokerstars circus tent side eventaments (right by the crystal clear ocean) and proceeded to crush through that field too. I made a couple of bad plays Vs John Malkouf (Lugisjente) on Pokerstars but was fortunate enough to survive and got moved tables and doubled when I reshipped QJcc vs 1010 and won, then 3 bet a lot and got heaps of folds as we were down to 18 entrants, then I lost a couple of flips where I opened speculators to steal and made odds based calls and blanked, then jammed 67dd got a call from Connie Lau in the bb and out flopped her AK off. The final table bubble lasted forever as each player took 10 minutes to decide what to do with 910 suited with 13bbs and the deepstack turned into a hyper turbo with all FT members having less than 15 bigs.
I decided 7 get paid and I am gong to aggress on the bubble. I got a few folds then jammed 7 9 and got call by Greame 'Kiwi' Putt's QQ, which I managed to crack on a 9 8 5 flop, rivered the 6 and had like 30 bb's, every1 else had 15 or less so next hand I look at KQcc and jam it run into AK and loss to a Japanese girl. I still have chips and look at 44 and jam get called and win. We get 3 handed and I am surviving with 11-15bbs, I jam a2 spades on the button and get a call from kj off, flop is blank one spade, then turn is a spade giving her only 4 outs and an off suit K drops on the river, good game me, 3rd for 3.7k.
All in all it was a pretty amazing trip, not much more to say other than I will be back.
