MACAU, CHINA, August 9 2010 – PokerStars Macau at Casino Grand Lisboa hosted the Macau Millions from August 4-8 where the Asia poker tournament record for player field size was smashed.


Entering the first week of August, the record was held by the PokerStars.net Filipino Poker Tour at the Metro Card Club and stood at 679 players. On August 7 the record would officially belong to PokerStars Macau at Casino Grand Lisboa. Asia’s biggest poker room proudly announced the Macau Millions had a total of 741 entries.

Hong Kong’s Justin Chan was crowned champion along with HKD $275,000 in prize money. The tournament’s one million dollar guarantee was easily surpassed as HKD $1,467,180 was awarded to the 54 players that made it to the Sunday Day 2 Final.


Chan played an aggressive game worthy of the historic event and outlasted a landmine of pros, top ranked players, and title holders. However, the 30-year old MBA student would admit that the turning point came when he got all his chips in with Team PokerStars PRO Raymond Wu. Wu’s pocket aces severely dominated Chan’s AK but two kings on the board saved his tournament life. Chan never looked back as he relentlessly raised and re-raised numerous pots on his way to the final table. By the time heads up play began, Chan had built a 4-to-1 chip lead over his lone remaining opponent, American Tom Chou.

On the final hand, Chan moved allin and Chou made the call with K7. Chou had a slight edge as Chan only held 89. However, the flop paired Chan’s eight and sealed his victory as the remaining cards didn’t help Chou.

For the Macau Millions Winners List please click here.

Despite a definite preference for tournaments instead of cash games this was only the Hong Kong winner’s second visit to Asia’s gaming capital.

“This is my first major poker win,” said a humble Chan. “I was looking online at PokerStars in the Macau tab and joined because I wanted to play a big tournament!”

Chan’s online search paid off as he now moves into into 6th place on the Asia Player of the Year (APOY) Leaderboard. Raymond Wu maintains his number one ranking on the APOY list but now finds 8 other players within 1,000 points for Asia’s most prestigious poker award. PokerStars sponsored Victor Chen from Taipei is one of those players as his third final table in 2010 moved him up to 7th place and fellow Team PokerStars PRO Bryan Huang is a close 2nd.


PokerStars Macau now prepares itself for the Macau Poker Cup which takes place from September 1-5 and features the Red Dragon event with HKD $2,000,000 guarantee.

Photos copyright PokerStars.com