PokerStars Macau Poker Cup Attracts Record 247 Entrants

Poker is alive and well in Asia as the attendance figures from this year’s Macau Poker Cup Red Dragon Main Event demonstrate. The HKD $10,000 buy-in tournament took place at the Grand Lisboa in Macau, China at China’s first-ever live poker room and guaranteed a prize pool of HKD $1,000,000.
This year the event managed to attract a field of 247 players creating a prize pool of HKD $2.3 million, breaking the previous Chinese record by 79 players and HKD $0.7 million.
The Red Dragon Main Event has continued to grow year on year since it relocated to the  Grand Lisboa hotel. Whereas just 57 players attended the tournament in late 2008 by March 2009 the event attracted 112 players, and by June that figure was up to 158 players. The latest attendance number of 247 players would seem to be in line with recent trends for the event which continues to grow.
PokerStars pros were well represented at the tournament, which included PokerStars Team Pro Asia members Celina Lin, Raymond Wu, Jonathan Lin,  Nam Le and two-time World Champion Johnny Chan. As the tournament neared its conclusion, all that remained were two Pokerstars represented pros battling it out for the prestigious Red Dragon title. Eventually Kitty Kuo from Taipei triumphed over PokerStars Team Pro Asia’s Tae Joon Noh to take the title and HKD $550,000 first-place prize.
The Macau Poker Cup series concludes mid-December with the HKD $20,000 Macau Poker Cup Championship which guarantees a HKD $2 Million prize pool and regular qualifying satellites are held on PokerStars.