Whilst one big name returned to the poker scene at the Asia Pacific Poker Tour (APPT) Macau main event this week, another had a breakthrough result taking home the title. That man is online prodigy Randy Lew, better known by his online handle “Nanonoko.”
Phil Ivey finally made his return to the poker world after an absence of over seven months, but his return was not to be a fairytale one after he busted out on Day 2. On the flip side, Randy Lew has shown that he is not merely an online grinder at this event, which marked his first ever major tournament win.
From Online Hero to Live Tournament Champion
Lew was signed up by PokerStars Team Online after becoming a Supernova Elite last year. He is one of a small group of players who have achieved that status, which is done by earning a massive 1,000,000 FPP’s in a year. In fact, this year, he was the first player in the world to achieve it by mass multi-tabling around 24 tables at a time almost non-stop at high stakes for the first few months of the year.
While the much slower live play may have been a bug for him, he held it together well enough to beat out a tough final table that included David Steicke and Jeff Rossiter. In fact, coming into the final table he was the short stack and looked a highly unlikely champion. However, just as he has in his online career, Lew overcame all the obstacles in his way to becoming APPT Macau Champion.
The final table payouts (in Hong Kong dollars) were:
1st Randy Lew $3,772,000
2nd Jimmy Pan $2,367,000
3rd Jeff Rossiter $1,306,000
4th Fabian Spielmann $1,019,000
5th Zuo Wang $809,000
6th Kai Yat Fam $653,000
7th Daniel Nordstrom $498,000
8th Tan Tai Zheng $373,000
9th David Steicke $263,300
John
- hailing from Watford, UK John became hooked on the game of poker ever since his uncle taught him the rules of 7-card stud during a home game at the young age of 15. He caught the online bug three short years later after turning 18 and began regularly playing Texas Hold'em SNGs.
