Things are heating up within the Philippines with the impending Manila Megastack.

The Asia Pacific Poker Tour (APPT) and PokerStars Live Manila may be hosting the fifth installment of the Manila Megastack series May 3-8 on the Grand Ballroom of City of Dreams Manila. The Manila Megastack is the third poker festival under the APPT banner.

The Manila Megastack is a six-day poker festival featuring a complete of eleven events, broken down into the primary Event and ten side events. The principle Event has a ₱6,000,000 guaranteed prize pool. The entry fee is ₱25,000 and can offer a starting stack of 30,000. The highest five finishers will receive a ₱50,000 APPT 10 Manila Main Event seat (taken from the prize pool) running from July 28 to August 8. Previous Manila Megastack Main Event champions are Korea's Joo-Han Lee, Korea's Mike Kim, Filipino Euryd Rivera, and Japan's Tetsuya Tsuchikawa.

Before the principle Event fires up, the festival gets cookin' with the ₱10,000 buy-in Kick-off event at the opening day. The guarantee is a whopping ₱2,000,000. This can be a two-day event with four qualifying heats into the general day. On day one, flight 1 begins at 1pm and flight 2 at 6pm; at 10pm is the turbo structured heat; and at 11pm the one-handed flipout completes the qualifying heats. Day one will play all the way down to the overall 10% of the sphere. The highest two finishers will receive a APPT 10 Manila Main Event entry, to be able to be deducted from the prize pool.

The next day will see two events bring more heat to the felt with the ₱5,000 NLH Freezeout at 2:15pm and the ₱10,000 Knockout at 7pm. On Thursday, more side event action occurs with the ₱5,000 Pot Limit Omaha at 2:15pm and the ₱2,000,000 guaranteed NLH Freezeout with ₱50,000 buy-in at 7pm. The eventual winner of both events will receive a seat to the Manila Megastack 5 Main Event, to be deducted from the prize pool.

May 6 is when things really get smokin'. At noon, the cards start burning with ₱3,000 NLH Freezeout, after which at 6pm, the action fires up with the much anticipated Day 1a of the Manila Megastack 5 Main Event. Additionally, there's a ₱5,000 Midnight Turbo event for all those late night poker aficionados.

Poker action continues on May 7 with Day 1b pumping up the tables at 2pm. As that is the general flight, there'll be a final Chance Satellite at 12pm for those still short of a prime Event seat. This present day may also host the primary day of the ₱15,000 Saturday Superstack event.

The final day of the festival, May 8, will see two side events on deck, the ₱5,000 6-Max at 12:30pm and the ₱100,000 NLH event at 1pm.

There can be satellites to the principle Event running within the earlier a part of the week and an APPT 10 Manila Main Event satellite on closing day at 7pm.

All of those events (not including satellites) are point-generating events towards the Official Asia Player of the Year rankings. As of April 24, 2016, the present APOY leaders are Quan Zhou with 4,050 points, followed by Wayne Wei Yi Zhang with 3,638 points, and rounding out the highest three, Alvan Yifang Zheng with 3,420 points.

For additional information at the festival including tournament structures, head to the PokerStars Live Manila Tournaments page.

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