The biggest event of the year at the Walker Hill Poker Room took place on the weekend. As the 20 Million Guarantee needed only 40 players, 97 came in to the card room to raise the Prize Pool to 45,590,000! The tournament welcomed 42 players from the Japan Poker Club for the friendship tournament, as well as players from all over Asia, and North America.

With Japanese players representing half of the field, the final table showed the same picture, with five JPK players, and five locals on the final table. The final table was set around 11 PM, and took almost five hours to determine a winner. The chip lead would be relinquished several times, as tight play seemed to be the course of outcome. Drew McKenna was in the big blind with AK, and as it was folded around to Masakazu Okamoto in the small blind but McKenna all in with J9. THe flop was great for McKenna as it came out A78, the 6 came on the turn for the open ender, and the river brought the 10 for the straight. 

Josh Pedretti was destined for a deep finish making great laydowns when needed. In a three handed pot with Ivan Milin and Ko Yuki, the board was K 10 7 with two spades, Milin shoved his chips in, with Yuki following suit. Pedretti looked down at bottom two pair, and mucked his hand. Milin had a flush draw, Yuki held top set. The turn brought a 7, which boated up Yuki, and ended the hand.

When it was 6 handed it was Pedretti as the lone local player, looking at five JPK players. Big pocket pairs would hold as they would knock out the players one at a time. Eventually leaving Josh Pedretti and Ryusaku Asano heads up, with the chip lead in favor of Asano. Heads up play would not last long as the final hand saw a flop of 995. A bet on the flop built the pot, and an Ace landed on the turn. Asano over shoved the pot, leaving Pedretti with the decision to call off his stack looking down on Ace Queen. Pedretti made the call only to see Asano holding Queen 9, with a five coming on the river ending the tournament.

Congratulations to the players in the money.

1. Ryusaku Asana 17,300,000

2. Josh Pedretti 10,500,000

3. Masakazu Okamoto 5,700,000

4. Tetsuya Onishi 3,400,000

5. Ko Yuki 2,500,000

6. Ivan Milin 1,800,000

7. Joji Mikubo 1,350,000

8. Shin Woo-Hyun 1,140,000

9. Dan Penn 950,000

10.  Drew McKenna 950,000