From online to offline

If you love PokerStars and love traveling, then you’re going to love their newly opened live poker room in Macau. With heaps of tourneys on offer, get all the details here.

One of the internet’s most renowned and popular poker rooms, PokerStars, has decided to go live and launch its very own poker room in Macau at Cotai’s Grand Waldo Hotel and Casino. The poker room was officially opened on the 23rd of May 2008, and is designed to host up to 250 poker players at a given time for cash games and weekly tournaments. To kick off the company’s venture, they held a No Limit Texas Hold’em tournament for charity, which raised funds for the earthquake victims of China’s West. The minimum donation required to enterwas $2,000 HKD, and the grand prize for the winner to take home was $150,000 HKD worth of prizes, including entry into the Asian Pacific Poker Tour in Macau, valued at $25,000 HKD.

According to Joe Hachem, a Team PokerStars professional and a former WSOP bracelet winner, the company is dedicated to developing the game of poker in Asia. He explained that despite that Macau has already become a “gaming powerhouse”, it was only the recent success of the last Asia Pacific Poker Tour that managed to kick off a poker industry there. As he told reporters, “PokerStars planted the seeds and now this beautiful poker room is going to be the garden where future champions learn to play.”

This charity event was the first of a series of poker tournaments to be held in the newly established poker room. Called the “Macau Poker Cup”, the opening weekend of the poker room saw a busy schedule of $1,000 HKD Deep Stack and $10,000 HKD Red Dragon events take place. In addition, it is one of the few places in which players can win themselves satellite entry into the Pacific Poker Tour’s second season show-off, which will be held from September 1st to 6th and feature a guaranteed prize pool of $10 million HKD.

Jeffrey Haas, President of the Asia Pacific Poker Tour, believes that the PokerStars Macau poker room will be equally as significant as the effect that Chris Money achieved when he won the WSOP in the USA in 2003. Similarly, he is positive that offering entry into the tournament via the room will help drive the growth of poker in Macau, which is a common interest among both companies. The General Manager of the Grand Waldo Casino, Gary Wollard, is just as enthusiastic to be hosting such a reputable poker company.