Florencio Campomanes enjoyed the kind of poker festival at Red Dragon Manila in January that most players can only dream of — and he picked up a PSPC Platinum Pass along the way.
The 33-year-old realtor from Paranaque in the Philippines won the ₱100,000 Red Dragon Main Event only a matter of days after he finished second in the ₱500,000 Super High Roller tournament. He beat a field of 669 entries in the first and won ₱13.8 million ($270,400) and took ₱3.6 million ($70,400) in the latter. But in between all that, he also somehow won the random crazy pineapple flipout for a Platinum Pass.
Florencio Campomanes wins the Crazy Pineapple flipout
While hard work and superior skill contributed to his tournament triumphs, the flipout success suggested that lady luck was also glancing favourably in his direction. It was the first Platinum Pass to be awarded in the live arena in 2020.
“I’m a luckbox! Luckbox!” an ecstatic Campomanes declared immediately after winning. “”I’m shaking…I’ve never won a raffle in my life!”
Campomanes’ remarkable run of results was especially ironic given the fact that he had only recently retired from playing poker full time. In late 2018, after spending 13 years as a pro, Campomanes decided to set up a real estate business and play poker only recreationally. But the Red Dragon festival was his most successful poker trip yet — even better than in August 2019 when he won the APPT Manila Main Event for $218,166.
In whatever spare time he has left, Campomanes says he likes eating and watching movies, but now admits that he’ll need to focus again on poker and make the most of the opportunity he never thought he would have.
“I was going to go to the last PSPC but things happened and I didn’t go,” he said. “I tried to win a pass here in 2018, in one of the $200 events, I fired 12 bullets. I lost my mind trying to win one and now I have one!”
Watch the moment Florencio Campomanes won his Platinum Pass
