PokerStars is known as one of the best Euro poker sites, but you should also know that they are rapidly becoming one of the best Asian poker sites, as well. They created the Asia Pacific Poker Tour (APPT) not too long ago, and they recently held a tournament in Macau.

One of the biggest stories to come out of Macau was the fact that Phil Ivey played the event. This was huge news for some since he hadn’t been seen at a live tournament since April of this year. Despite the press and the attention, Ivey wasn’t able to go deep and actually busted quite early. Oh well – all the more time for online casino gambling since we hear he really likes Craps

In total there were 575 people registered for the tournament, each paying 30,000 Hong Kong Dollars (HKD). This meant a prize pool of 15,552,600 HKD and 3,772,000 HKD for 1st place, which is a little under half a million dollars at the time of writing.

Randy Lew, a member of Team PokerStars Online, was the short stack of the tournament when the final table formed. It looked like he was going to be the first elimination of the final table, as he got it all-in with QQ versus the AA of David Steicke.

Lew decided to run good at the perfect time, however. He hit a queen on the flop, and Steicke found no ace for a re-suck. The unfortunate new owner of a crippled stack, Steicke was unable to double up and was busted in 9th place.

No longer a short stack, the situation was perfect for Lew. He was already well adapted to huge-money situations, so he used his experience to whittle his opponents down and add to his own stack. He ended up knocking Kai Yat Fam in 6th place with TT versus A4.

When heads-up play started, it was between Lew and Jimmy Pan. Lew had the chip lead, but the two players traded the lead back and forth a couple times during the battle. The final hand saw Lew cooler Pan by flopping two pair versus Pan’s top pair.

Most online players know Lew as someone that grinds absurd amounts of PokerStars rakeback, but he is proving to the world that he can also hold his own in the live arena. We look forward to seeing many more wins from Lew in the future!