Asian PokerThe presence of poker through Asian regions has been increasing steadily, and many industry experts expect it will be the next market to explode. We’re now seeing large Guaranteed Prize Pool high stakes tournaments popping up and this also has helped have a charitable effect as well. Two separate stories here but we decided to group them together in this ‘Asian Poker News’ post.

Asian Poker Tour Guarantees Big Payday

Spurned by the success of last weeks Manila event, the Asian Poker Tour upped the ante today by announcing they were guaranteeing a 1.5 million dollar prize pool for their next scheduled event in Macau. The event will be a $5000 +$300 buy in and is taking place at the StarWorld Hotel and Casino August 26-31.

The event will be the biggest poker prize pool for an Asian tournament, with the winner pocketing a sweet 500k. Whether there will be any overlay is yet to be seen, but the APT certainly made the decision expecting the event to be as popular as the Manila stop where over 300 players took part in the action.

The Asian Poker Tour is new on the scene and not to be confused with the Asian Pacific Poker Tour put on by Poker Stars. The success of both tours so far has shown the market available for poker expansion in Asia, especially through the medium of Asian based tours and productions as opposed to North American hosted tours.

The APT has four total events on the schedule for 2008, with the final two being in Singapore and Seoul, South Korea. The dates and venues are not listed.

Poker Stars and its Players Donate $2 million to China Earthquake Relief

A couple weeks ago Poker Stars set up a method for its players to donate money which would be matched dollar for dollar by the site itself and given to the Red Cross to aid in relief of the devastating earthquake in western China last month. Well it was a huge success, with players donating over $300,000 since the announcement.

PokerStars recently launched Macau’s first dedicated poker room, PokerStars Macau, with a charity tournament to raise money for the victims of the recent earthquake in Western China.

In addition to the charity tournament, existing PokerStars players were given the opportunity to donate to the relief fund through their online accounts, with PokerStars then matching the donation dollar for dollar.

This is not the first time PokerStars or other online poker rooms have used their influence to collect funds for a charity. PokerStars has played rolls in raising money for Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, Ante Up For Africa, LifeBall and other charities over the years. Online poker rooms had first become active playing a major roll in relief charities back in 2005 when the industry rallied together to donate millions to Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, at this time near all online poker rooms had a method to donate.