Yesterday's tournament was arguably the biggest and the best tournament ever to be held on our shores today. 115 players, P575,000 prize pot, a pool of world-class (and not so world class players) players, both from here and abroad, and of course the fact that it was held at the biggest and most prestigious casino in the country.

Players like WSOP bracelet winner Isaac "The General" Galazan and his friends like Robert Karian, Avi, Ira, Benny, and other world class poker players came to play, along with our local poker groups and clubs like Poker Club of the Philippines, JGPT, Camp Hold'em, A55 pokuh, the BBC crew (the last three representing team Fututrebet) and many more poker players from all over.

You could feel the excitement and energy in the atmosphere. All the Casino bosses were very very excited and even stood around for the duration of the entire 8-9 hour tournament, enjoying the action. Food and drinks were free-flowing after dinner too!

Congrats to all those who made it ITM, and the last Futurebet shirt-wearing player in the field, Checkpoint Louie, who hung on and outlasted 103 other players. The winner Benny (sorry i dunno the last name) , a very very good poker player and a friend of our poker buddy Mishca Peters, won the whopping P172,500 first prize and the beautiful silver commemorative chip.

As for me, this was no question my worst tournament ever hehe! i played a total of three hands, never won one, and got taken out on the second level! 4-5 suited, A-Q offsuit, and the ill-fated Q-J offsuit that hit the nut straight on the flop, and my opponent pushed my small stack all-in, so i naturally happily called thinking i'd double up, but it turned out he was holding suited trash and hit his flush on the turn. damn. good thing i was on freeroll! and after that, i won a grand in the slot machines hehe!

Of course, congratulations to the man who made all this happen, our very own "gambling lord", the man who logged in the countless hours training dealers and enlightening casino bosses about the beauty of the game we love, and also of course gave us our freeroll (and future freerolls?) , and gave up a lot of things to make our poker dreams a reality. Boss Nick, hats off to you. Awesome job!