The largest ever poker tournament in Asia finished yesterday, at the Intercontinental Hotel at the Grand Resort, Goa, India. The tournament, India’s first, was set up by the Maharajah Club with a $5000 entry and a guaranteed $1 million prize pool. With the tournament in Singapore having gone so successfully late last year, the veritable poker trickle in Asia is steadying itself into a tributary stream that will, at this current pace, surely become a river. Fuelled, most likely by the said achievements in Singapore, the Asian Poker Classic was equally star-studded including, Ram Vaswani, Arshad Hussain, Surinder Sunar, Mel Judah and Lee Nelson amongst the 150 runners or so, the latter of those ‘name’ players having qualified via the live satellite.
Two British participants, Blondeites Julian Thew and Ben Mayhew, both remarked on the juxtaposition of the gorgeous resort placing with a wonderful hotel and bar located right next to large areas of shanty towns and dilapidated buildings. The sight of cows wandering aimlessly across roads, I’m guessing, only added to the mix. Everything is so much cheaper there, it must be odd for some of these players who have spent so much time in expensive luxury locations such as Vegas and Monte Carlo - the ninety minute taxi ride from the airport to the hotel, for example, cost the UK equivalent of £6! No doubt if everything is so cheap out there, it’ll be the players asking for more tournaments in Asia – or Dubai demanding more champagne from the bar!
Meanwhile, the Brits seemed to fair about as well as the tractor driver they had earlier spotted, who was going down the motorway – the wrong way. Bracelet winner Willie Tann was unluckily first out of the tournament when his set of Queens were beaten by a turned straight. Julian ran A-J into A-K, whilst Ben found his set beaten by runner-runner straight. Elsewhere, newly crowned European Player of the Year, Ash Hussain, lost with 9-9 into Q-Q whilst Nick Slade also exited, his nines no match for his opponent’s American Airlines.
The final day saw Danish pro Carl Hostrup-Pedersen lap up top honours of $320,000 whilst Johnathan Farrer, a 24 year-old part-time actor from Longridge in Lancashire, honourably flew the final table flag for Great Britain, his 5th placing for $58,000 being a highly commendable achievement to say the least. In fact, the final table is one of the first I’ve witnessed to involve players from different countries, including local hero Pranav Bathija, who came in 4th for an incredible $97,000.
Johnathan Farrer later said: "Won $55k-ish.. I dropped a $3k tip on the TK crew due to Steve's amazing tolerance to my tantrums and expletive outbursts throughout the tournament, I'm sure you'll all be disgusted with my behaviour when you get to see it, but oh well."
Sure sounds like a character, but either way, let's hope that the continent of Asia brings us more of these well-received events, because as Singapore and Goa have shown, they sure can put on 'a bit of a do'.
1st Carl Hostrup-Pedersen (Denmark) -- $320,000
2nd Samuel Lehtonen (Sweden) -- $165,000
3rd Pranav Bathija (India) -- $97,000
4th Richard En (Australia) -- $72,000
5th Jonathan Farrer (England) -- $58,000
6th Søren Kongsgaard (Denmark) -- $48,500
7th Victor Gomila (Spain) -- $39,000
8th Marcin Horecki (Poland) -- $29,000
9th Lieu Van Nguyen (America) -- $19,400
10th Nicolas Levi (France) -- $15,500
11th Liukku Seppo (Finland) -- $15,500
12th Hiroshi Shinamura (Japan) -- $15,500
13th Gurpreet Bakashi (India) -- $13,600
14th Shahzad Ahrestani (India) -- $13,600
15th Michael Ismael (Australia) -- $13,600
16th Joep Durkstra (Holland) -- $11,600
17th Sebastian Penser (Germany) -- $11,600
18th Francisco Lopez (Spain) -- $11,600
[Ed Note: Please click here, or visit www.jpkpoker.blogspot.com to view Jonathan Farrer's blog.