Welcome to Day 1a of the Manila Megastack 5 Main Event at PokerStars Live Manila held on the Grand Ballroom of City of Dreams Manila, Philippines. The Manila Megastack has seen four victors since its introduction last year, namely Korea's Joo-Han Lee, Korea's Mike Kim, Filipino Euryd Rivera, and Japan's Tetsuya Tsuchikawa. With the massive success and turnout of the former Manila Megastacks, this installment of the series have been upgraded and boasts of being much bigger and higher than its predecessors.

For starters, the Manila Megastack 5 offers a larger prize pool guarantee of P6,000,000. The eventual winner would definitely be banking it big, and the highest five players will receive a major Event entry seat to the Asia Pacific Poker Tour 10 Manila (APPT) 2016. Entry fee for the Manila Megastack 5 Main Event is P25,000. Late registration / re-entry is open for four hours, that's eight rounds of play. Starting stack is 30,000 with 30 minute blinds.

The Manila Megastack 5 is scheduled to run from Tuesday May 3, 2015 to Sunday May 8, 2016. The past few days of the development has seen some big numbers and a few big prizes awarded to the winners. On the Kickoff P2M Guaranteed event, there have been 333 total entries with first place going to Japan's Daiki Iijima. He earned P522,224 and a prime Event seat to the APPT 10 Manila. On the NLH Freezeout entry fee, there have been 161 entries with Filipino Madison Dela Cruz claiming the trophy and P165,674 in cash. The P10,000 Knockout event also posted a large turnout of 163 entries. Taking home the title and trophy was Filipino player Alexis Lim after defeating Malaysia's Ming Ken Thoo on the heads up round. Lim scooped up P277,000 for keeping his scalp intact.

There was yet one more event that finished up yesterday, the P5,000 Pot Limit Omaha event. This event saw 78 entries for a prize pool that grew to P332,904. The title and primary place purse of P126,600 went to Korea's In Sin.

Earlier today saw the beginning of the P3,000 NLH Freezeout event. TheP50,000 NLH Freezeout event P2M Guaranteed was also back at the felt from yesterday, resuming its final day.

For all you die hard tournament poker players, there'll be one side event on deck today, the Midnight Turbo, and yes, it begins in the dark. Entry fee for this event is P5,000. We can be posting some updates of the primary Event in our next post so be in search of that.

Read More... [Source: PokerStarsBlog.com :: Asia Pacific Poker Tour]