Banner field expected in Poker Tour

MANILA, Philippines - Another banner registry is expected when the P10 million Philippine Poker Tour resumes with its second leg starting tomorrow at the Resorts World Manila. Starting time is at 2 p.m.

Buoyed up by the rousing turnout in the inaugural tournament which drew 341 entries at the Metro Card Club last month, PPT founder lawyer Jojo Allado has announced that each of the remaining nine legs will be fought over six days to include a three-day qualifying stage, a two-day semifinals and the championship table on the final day.

 The tour will also introduce a leader board system which Allado said will determine the Player of the Year or the one with the best aggregate points for the season. A cash award awaits the winner.

Spicing up the second leg are side events such as the ladies tournament, head hunter and half-pot limit Badugi from June 24-26. Buy-in for these events, which start at 4 p.m., is P2,500.

The tour’s  opening leg was won by 34-year-old Makati businessman Dexter Bryan Luna who came back from the brink of elimination to pocket the P612,000 top prize from a pool of P1.7 million.

The win also gave Luna a seat in the Final Table of Champions to be held in March next year where nine other leg winners from the monthly tournaments get a chance to vie for a seat to the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas and compete alongside international poker greats.

The P700,000 package for the grand champion consists of a round trip plane ticket to Las Vegas, hotel accommodation, pocket money and the US$10,000 buy-in money for the WSOP main event.

The monthly legs have an affordable buy-in of PHP 5,500 for each of the three qualifying days.  Day 1B will allow re-entries of players eliminated in Day 1A, while Day 1C will allow re-entries of those busted out in either Day 1A or Day 1B. Players will have a starting stack of 20,000 with blind levels running up every 60 minutes.

The tour returns to Metro for the third leg on July 19-24 and back to Resorts World Aug. 9-14. Monthly stops are also set in Davao and Cebu as well as satellite tournaments in Angeles, Cavite, Binan and Marikina. For a complete schedule of the tour, log on to the PPT website www.thephilippinepokertour.com <http://www.thephilippinepokertour.com/> and the PPT Facebook Fan page.