With the Main Event of the Asian Poker Tour Championship taking place right now, we take a look at some of the many routes people have taken to make it out to Taiwan.
Alfie Adam is a retired trader from the UK, now based in Dubai, with a love of poker that has taken him across Asia in recent months.
And while he is a self-confessed amateur, Adam has over $300K in lifetime tournament earnings and made the final table of a WSOP event in 2021. He also has a doctorate in game theory. Adam finished in 29/671 in the 2025 APT Championship event.
I'm from London, England, but have lived in Dubai for a number of years and have been in Asia for about six months. My wife is Asian, and we've been staying with her family in the Philippines, so during that time I've traveled to a few Asian tournaments.
I've been to Vietnam, Cambodia twice, and Taiwan twice, and now I'm here again.
I've been playing poker since about 2010. I like to travel. I don't call myself a pro, but I like to play. I retired quite early in my life, sold my company, and now I travel and play poker and enjoy myself.
I like to go to the US; I’ve played the WSOP basically every year since 2012. I've just discovered this Asian circuit, and it's great: good atmosphere, nice people, the food’s great, and it's not too hot like Vegas in the summer.
I've played a lot, but I wouldn’t consider myself a pro. But what does pro really mean? Do I earn my living from it? No, I do other stuff, but I play a fair bit. I was a trader. I set up my own fund in 1998, sold it in 2003, and basically never worked again.
I invest in stuff: stocks, property, different funds, and different businesses. I'm an angel investor in a number of different businesses, and apart from that, I give most of my money away to the poker community!
‘I play scenarios, I play people, I'm a human’
This year I've incorporated some new things in my game, which I think have really helped.
I'm not a professional, but of course, you try and improve. I've won three tournaments in the last three months on the APT, the WPT and the Taiwan Zodiac Series. I was on a bit of a quest, because I'd never won a poker trophy before, and then in Cambodia I won a bomb pot tourney, which came with a trophy.
I think in Asia, people like to gamble more. I wouldn’t say they're worse players, because there are some very good players everywhere you go, but they certainly do like to gamble more. So quite often you will be multiway in a lot of pots, whereas at the WSOP, for example, probably a lot more hands are heads-up situations, and of course it just plays differently.
Although I'm not a professional, I am a mathematician. I don't really study poker; I learn from experience and watching scenarios, but my background is mathematics.
I'm a specialist in game theory, so when all these young kids talk about it, I smile because I've got a PhD in math, and my paper was on game theory. But game theory is such a wide-ranging topic, and its application to poker is very specific.
I'm not studied like some of these super pros and young kids. They have nutrition coaches and exercise regimes and study methods and bankroll management. I don't do any of that. I enjoy the game. I play scenarios, I play people, I'm a human. I like to have fun at the table.
Everyone knows me. I laugh a lot at the table. I smile if I win, and I smile if I lose. It's not a big deal.
But of course, I want to win.
