Pokerstars Beijing Millions A Record Setter

By Brian Cullingworth, Last updated Aug 1, 2014

Inaugural event attracts 2,732 entries, making it the largest live poker tourney ever held outside the USA

Forget WSOP Europe and the Grosvenor United Kingdom Poker Tour Goliath… the record for the biggest entry field for a live poker tournament held outside the United States now belongs to The Pokerstars Beijing Millions, which last week registered 2,732 entrants in its first outing.
That compares favourably with the 2,570 contestants who played in the 2013 Grosvenor United Kingdom Poker Tour Goliath, and with the 2,446 competitors who registered for the 2013 Brazilian Series of Poker Millions Sao Paolo.
The Beijing event sponsored by Pokerstars concluded last weekend with China's Chen Qin taking the honours and the main prize of $109,000 in the first-ever venture into mainland China of Pokerstars' Asia Pacific Poker Tour.
Entrants for the event paid a buy-in of around $480, creating a prize pool of $1,195,000.
"We always believed that this would be a successful event but this result greatly exceeded our wildest expectations." said APPT President Danny McDonagh this week.
The 10-day poker festival was organised by the Beijing Sports Competitions Administration Centre, a division of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Sports.
"It's a great honour for PokerStars and the APPT team to be selected to support this tournament." added McDonagh. "It's been a historical week. Not just the record itself but how it may change the future landscape for poker in China."
When the final table of the main event formed, it was an all-Chinese affair, featuring Chen Qin and Yang Zhang, Tong Shen, Feng Bai, Jing Liu, Chen Hao, Qiang Liu, Hui Xu and Yuanye Chen.
Heads up, Qin had an almost 2 to 1 chip advantage on Yang Zhang, which proved to be too high to beat; with the blinds at 200k-400k, 50,000 ante, the final hand arrived which enabled Qin to claim victory with a full house.

Online Casino News Courtesy of Infopowa

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