This year has been a rough one, to say the least, for online poker players in the United States. It’s about time we had a feel good story, isn’t it? Over the Thanksgiving weekend, American expatriate Randy “nanonoko” Lew won the Asia Pacific Poker Tour (APPT) Macau Main Event, an early Christmas present in a year that had to be the most frustrating in the online star’s life in quite some time.
Lew is, to put it simply, a legend in the online poker community. A member of Team PokerStars: Online, Lew discovered poker in college, as many young people do nowadays. He dabbled in it a bit, losing money, but as he played more, he became driven to succeed. Using a sort of trial and error style, he started to figure out what worked and what didn’t and became a winning player. Then he found out about PokerStars’ Supernova Elite status, which rewards the highest raking players (and we mean HIGHEST) with all sorts of goodies, including live tournament packages and cash. Very few players ever achieve Supernova elite each year, but Lew, who goes by the screen name “nanonoko” decided that he wanted to reach those heights.
To do so, he realized that he needed to multi-table. And not just a few tables at once. He started with a handful to get himself going, but eventually he made it up to 24 tables simultaneously. Because he plays so many tables at once, he also doesn’t need to play ultra-high stakes in order to reach Supernova Elite or make large sums of money. Over the last few years, Lew has played most of his hands at the $5/$10 No-Limit Hold’em tables or lower. His skill, concentration, and dedication, allowed him to hit Supernova Elite every year from 2007 through 2010, cementing his almost mythical status in the online poker community. According to PokerTableRatings.com, since the end of August 2008, Lew has played over 5 million hands online and won over $2.3 million. And that’s not counting his Supernova Elite rewards.
Lew was likely going to hit Supernova Elite again this year, but Black Friday stopped him in his tracks. He was in the process of building a house in the United States and grinding as usual when Black Friday crushed the U.S. online poker market. He could no longer play at the site on which he was a pro. Lew made the decision to move to Vancouver and began playing again in September, kicking things off with a $1.50 hyper turbo Sit-and-Go on PokerStars at the request of a Facebook fan. He recorded the entire thing, with commentary, and almost doubled his buy-in by coming in second. That’s an example of part of what has made him so popular. He is one of the nicest guys around, he doesn’t take himself too seriously, and is open and honest about his play.
As for APPT Macau, Lew went into the final table as the short stack and almost didn’t make it past 9th place. He found himself all-in with pocket Queens, up against David Steicke’s pocket Aces, but Lew found another Queen in the deck and doubled-up. Going into heads-up play, Lew had a small chip lead, but eventually found himself all-in and covered with 6-6 against Jimmy Pan’s A-9. A set of Sixes kept Lew alive and with the lead. In the final hand, both had hands that they couldn’t get away from on a flop of Q-T-8: Lew’s Q-T versus Pan’s K-Q. The 5 and Jack on the turn and river were no help to Pan, allowing Randy “nanonoko” Lew to win his first ever live tournament and almost half a million dollars.
Asia Pacific Poker Tour Macau – Final Table Results
1. Randy Lew – $484,617
2. Jimmy Pan – $304,106
3. Jeff Rossiter – $167,791
4. Fabian Spielmann – $130,918
5. Zuo Wang – $103,938
6. Kai Yat Fam – $83,896
7. Daniel Nordstrom – $63,982
8. Tan Tai Zheng – $47,922
9. David Steicke – $33,828
