Liu Jiajun Wins Asia Pacific Poker Tour Macau Season 8

Liu Jiajun has won the Asia Pacific Poker Tour (APPT) Macau Season 8 and walked away with an impressive HK$2,776,000 (US$358,000) in prize money. Jiajun is the second Chinese winner in a row following in the footsteps of last year’s top player Alexandre Chieng.

This year saw a dramatic increase in the size of the prize pools available with an incredible 2,445 players participating in the 12 official Asia Player of the Year Events that took place. Thanks to this huge player pool the overall prize pool was a massive HK$25,067,744, a 41% increase from Season 7.

Poker competitions are continuing to attract more players in Macau and the Texas Hold’em Poker scene at large is getting stronger than ever with gross gaming revenues of around MOP270 (US$26 million) in 2013, an increase from MOP54 million (US$6.76 million) in 2008. Fortunately, the popularity of the game has not been curbed by recent government regulations which prohibit numerous poker tables in a single area being counted as one.

The next APPT event will be held on 2-7 July in the Philippines at Manila’s Metro Card Club, it is expected that the overall prize pool will be comparable to the Macau event.