APT Manila Classic to Include Daily Women’s Events

The Asian Poker Tour (APT) begins their 2025 schedule in Manila, Philippines with the APT Manila Classic. The series will run from February 7-16 at the Crown Plaza Manila Galleria. There are a wide range of buy-ins, from affordable lower buy-in events to high rollers, which will suit every type of player.

As a whole, the APT caters to the huge poker market in Asia and aims to attract players from all over the region, including poker in Malaysia and Singapore. The tour bring tournament poker to multiple countries and has proved to be a massive success.

There are many unique variations of games featured in the APT Manila Classic’s full schedule of events, which is one of the APT’s main marketing tools.

Some of those unique events include a double board Pot-Limit Omaha tournament, Super Hold’em, and a variety of Mystery Bounty events. But that is not the true takeaway from this series.

Daily Women’s Events in Manila

The headline news of the Manila series is the presence of daily women’s events, featuring a wide range of buy-ins.

Every single day of the series, for 10 days, there will be women’s events. This unprecedented move is highlighted by the APT Women’s Championship, which has a buy-in equivalent of roughly $500. These are new developments on the APT and something they wish to highlight even further moving forward.

Matthew Ooi of the APT shared some words on the groundbreaking move.

“Make no mistake; the women’s game is growing in Asia. As the biggest poker tour in Asia, the APT is seeing more and more women taking to the felt at every tour stop. In 2024, a total of 560 of APT’s tournament players were female, representing 8.6% of the tour’s players in 2024 – double the industry average of around 4%.

“Feedback on the tour’s Women’s Event has been extremely positive, with participants praising the friendly environment and fun atmosphere as reasons for participating.”

Women’s Events in Poker

The proliferation of women’s or “ladies” events in poker has been a popular topic in recent years. Most poker series will have one ladies event, maybe two at most.

There was a groundbreaking Winter Women’s Festival in London in 2024, but the APT offering daily women’s tournaments is definitely something to note and shows an intent to increase the focus on the women’s game.

The quote from Ooi is remarkable, as he revealed how many more women play on the APT (double) than everywhere else in the poker world.

Other poker tournament series around the world could take a look at what the APT is doing to unlock some secrets surrounding the amount of women in their poker tournaments. Whatever it may be, the APT seems to have unlocked the door to inclusion.

Only time will tell as the poker world continues to attempt to attract more women to the game and tap into a potentially huge market of new players.