Brian Yip from Hong Kong won the 2016 Boyaa Poker Tour (BPT), a live tournament held in Macau from October 22-24 and organized by online game developer and operator Boyaa Interactive. Yip bested an international field of 300 entries to scoop a first-place prize of HK$560,000. Apart from receiving the largest chunk of the prize pool, the player was also crowned the BPT Global Champion.
The exciting tournament was held in Macau and this has been its second edition. Organizers pointed out that the event had attracted participants from different parts of the world, including Germany, Poland, Italy, Russia, Thailand, Vietnam, and many more. Around 70% of all entries came from overseas. Some of them were first-time participants, others returned for a second consecutive year in hopes to improve their performance from BPT’s previous edition.
Interested players were able to enter the event by taking part in any of the online trials launched by Boyaa Interactive in September. The top 300 performers in the online qualifying events were admitted to the tournament’s offline finals held in Macau.
This year, the event joined the Global Poker Index, which will certainly help it gain wider popularity in the poker community. To show that its initiative has grown from last year, Boyaa Interactive increased the guaranteed prize pool BPT featured to HK$4 million. What is more, former WSOP Main Event referee Tom M. Chou was invited to oversee action at the poker tables and share pieces of advice based on his experience.
Apart from the actual Boyaa Poker Tour tournament, the poker festival also included a Turbo Deep Stack event and a global invitational one, the Worldwide Squad Tournament. Hong Kong’s Steven Siu emerged victorious from the former and Mainland China’s team won the latter.
The BPT debuted on the poker scene last September. More than 2 million players tried their luck to win an invitation to the tournament last year. It was eventually Chinese player Mai Jie who won the event to collect HK$880,000.
Based in Hong Kong, Boyaa Interactive is an online gambling operator and developer of online games. Its product portfolio includes more than 50 titles, with those being available in 17 languages. The company’s global presence currently spreads over more than 100 countries and regions. Reportedly, it has more than 600 million registered users from all over the world.
