APT, APPT, NAPT and FTOPS – Oh My

With this year’s tournament season quickly nearing its end, tour events have been hogging all the poker headlines this week, and with good reason. News of big tourney wins has been coming in from all corners of the world and the Internet. APT Macau wrapped yesterday, FTOPS XVIII awarded the tournament’s largest prize thus far last night, APPT Cebu finished only hours ago, and tomorrow marks the last day of the NAPT LA.

Both the APPT Cebu and APT Macau’s Main Events had surprising winners. In Cebu, female pro Young-shin Im came to the final table in the middle of the pack. But Young-shin proved she could play with the big boys when she quickly clawed her way up the ranks. Ultimately, when Young-shin Im claimed the championship and a cash prize worth more than $130,000 earlier today, she also made history as the first female APPT champion ever. Needless to say, it was a nice return on the $22 PokerStars satellite through which Young-shin originally earned her Main Event seat.

Just north of Cebu, the APT Macau Main Event also crowned an unlikely winner in the form of 18 year old Zhang Dan Peng. A field of 700 highly competitive players had turned out for the first three days of the Main Event, but where were the pros on Monday? Elbows deep in the high roller Hold’em games at the neighboring StarWorld Hotel’s poker room. The web has been abuzz, not over the prestigious tournament’s young champion, but over the record-setting pots being won and lost in Macau poker rooms by pros like Tom Dwan, Chau Giang, Phil Ivey and John Juanda, all of whom were in town for APT Macau.

In online news, the FTOPS XVIII has been drawing crowds to compete with any of the large live tournament series. The online series is less than halfway through its 34 events, but last night saw Sebastian “sebbau” Bauer beat out a dense field of 1341 competitors to take the gold jersey and $274,234.50 check due to the winner of Event 16: $1000 + $60 Six-Handed No Limit Hold’em. The two largest tournaments are still to come with the $2000 + $100 Two-Day Event starting Saturday and the Main Event kicking off on Sunday.

Finally, Day 3 of the NAPT LA’s Main Event saw the field further narrowed from 81 to 19 yesterday, and today the remaining three tables are hard at work determining who will be sitting in the final nine seats tomorrow. Thus far, Christopher Demaci’s more than one million chip lead has served him well. Among those remaining is Jason Mercier who’s been Tweeting his heart out for the fans at home.

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