Day 2 of the $1,700 APT Taipei Main Event was a double-barreled affair on Wednesday.
All remaining Day 1 survivors returned to Red Space, but in two separate groups.
Day 2A kicked off at 11am and comprised those who had made it through Days 1A, 1C and 1D. Day 2B got started at 3pm, and featured the survivors of Day 1B.
Late registration stayed open for at least an hour in both of the Day 2s, meaning the final numbers would not be known until after the first break of the second flight.
But now those numbers are in, and the result is one of the largest APT Series Main Events ever.
2,354 players have combined to create a prizepool of TWD 111M — around $3.5M — leaving the TWD 70M/USD $2.2M tournament guarantee in the dust.
This makes it the second largest APT Main Event — outside of the APT Championship — just 193 entries behind last year’s edition.
The top prize will be $526K, and 340 players will finish in the money.
Double bubble
An extra hour of late registration in each flight gave a few players a last chance to hop in — including Tuesday’s Superstar Challenge winner Phachara Wongwichit — before the door closed on the opportunity to pick up the award-winning Gold Lion APT Main Event trophy, and the big money up top.
40K chips was the stack the latecomers received, and with blinds at 700/1.4K with a 1.4K big blind ante, they had a little less than 30bb with which to start making moves.
In contrast, the bigger stacks in the room at the time were around the 400K-500K mark.
But, to mangle an old saying, sometimes all you need is 40,000 chips and a chair.
As with so many events at APT Taipei this week, it was an international affair with a wide range of nations represented.
The likes of Thailand’s Punnat Punsri, China’s Ren Lin (above), Sweden’s Sofia Lovgren, Rob Hollink of the Netherlands, Canada’s Ari Engel, Konstantin Held of Germany, and the USA’s Frankie Cucchiara and Christian Harder all made Day 2 alongside hundreds of homegrown Taiwanese tourney pros and grinders from across the region.
The poker was fast and furious, and both Day 2s played down to 14.5% of their respective fields: 199 for Day 2A, and 69 for Day 2B.
Everyone making Day 3 is in the money, creating a rare double-bubble for a Main Event.
Also joining the Day 3 fun on the other side of the money bubble will be 72 ‘onlive’ players who have earned their seats online at Natural 8.
All systems ‘go’ for yet another record
Setting new high watermarks is what we’re coming to expect from the APT, but another record was set on Wednesday that was less anticipated.
The Mind Sports Week we reported on a few days ago culminated on Wednesday afternoon with the fusion of the board game go and Texas hold’em, and the result was a new record for combined mind sports/poker events.
31 entrants is the new mark to beat, eclipsing the 22 who turned out for a chess/poker tournament at EPT Prague in 2016 (also, coincidentally, organized by APT President Neil Johnson during his time working with PokerStars).
At the time of writing, the poker portion of the event has reached the heads-up phase, with Taiwan’s Wei Chun Lin battling Chen Hao Wu of Canada for the $1,400 winner’s prize.
Poker purists, don’t despair: traditional poker has also been rewriting the record books in Taipei this week.
As well as the National Cup setting the new standard for the biggest field in APT history, the tour also put on its largest ever mystery bounty tournament in terms of prizepool, with a huge $817K awarded in the Mystery Bounty Hunter.
Hometown hero Yu Lin Ting walked away with the $91K up top, plus plenty of bounties, for another record-setting mystery bounty payout.
The richest ever APT Super High Roller also took place, with over $1.3M in the pot, won by Mike Takayama in a thrilling all-Filipino showdown.
The High Roller — Ultra Stack also drew the biggest crowd an event of this type has seen so far on the APT, with 399 entries. Japan's Tetsuya Tsujisaka banked $156K for outlasting the record field.
A new challenger has appeared
We may be past the midway point in this week’s series, but the APT has unveiled another surprise event to cater to those not running deep in the Main Event, as well as anyone else in town to enjoy some tournament poker.
The Labor Day Monster Stack is a late addition to the APT Taipei schedule, and kicks off on Thursday with the first of six starting flights.
With a buy-in of just $110 and a guaranteed prizepool of $190K, it could be a nice series-saver.
Two starting flights will run daily at the Asia Poker Arena from Thursday to Saturday, with the finale taking place Sunday at Red Space.
Note that all dollar amounts mentioned in this article have been converted from Taiwanese New Dollars, are approximate and correct at time of writing.
Images courtesy of APT.
