The weekend saw some hectic weekend action in Macau as the 2014 Pokerstars.net Asia-Pacific Poker Tour main event and high roller competitions came to a conclusion, distributing millions of Hong Kong dollars in prize money.
In the five-day main event Jiajun Liu bested a field of 282 to clinch the title and claim the first prize of HK$2,776,000 after a long, up-and-down heads-up battle with Cyril Andre.
Earlier, the duo had survived a hard fought and long final table which delivered the heads up pair when the charismatic and amusing Billy “The Croc” Argyros busted out in third place.
Andre’s runner up prize was a useful HK$ 1,693,000, whilst other final table pay checks looked like this:
Billy “The Croc” Argyros HK$ 940,000
Thomas Mcgarrity HK$ 737,000
Yen Han Chen HK$ 575,000
Carlos Kuo Chang HK$ 464,000
Jean-Marie Peyron HK$ 355,000
Yat Wai Cheng HK$ 273,000
Sailesh Verma HK$ 198,140
Also concluding over the weekend in Macau was the Pokerstars.net APPT High Roller event, where JJ Liu bested a very talented field to claim the main prize of HK 1,420,000 (around $183,000) following a three-way chop in the closing stages of the game.
By the three handed stage the survivors were Liu, Quan Zhou and Chen Wang, who went into a huddle to negotiate the chop. The deal that emerged after some argument was that HK$373,00 would be left on the table for the winner, whilst Liu would get HK$1,047,000 (about $135,038).
HK$1,275,000 (about$164,445) was reserved for Quan Zhou, and Chen Wang agreed to take HK$1,078,000 ($139,037).
Play resumed, only to see Liu double up on Wang, destroying his chip stack and shortly after triggering his elimination with the agreed third place pay day.
That left Liu and Quan Zhou in the heads up, which was short at just under an hour but action-packed and intense, with the lead changing hands a number of times.
However, with another deciding double up, Liu gained the upper hand, exploiting the advantage with great skill until she eliminated her final opponent to claim the honours and the winner’s bonus.