Major poker achievements and awards have been dominated by the West for as long as poker tournaments have existed. Perhaps gone unnoticed in the Far East is the fact that the Asian Poker Tour has become the fastest growing poker tour in the world.
You can trace the rapid growth back to before the APT ‘New Era’ relaunch in May of 2023. Prior to that time, the now 19-year-old tour had never held a tournament with 1,000 entries. They have since then accomplished that feat dozens of times, growing prize pools and fields every year. November’s APT Championship is the culmination of that effort, one that CEO Fred Leung said has been in the works for a while.
“The APT Championship is something that’s been in the pipeline since 2022 as part of the multi-year plan,” Leung told us earlier this year. “We had to first build a strong foundation of our standard offering before launching something of this magnitude.”
New Era, instant results
The rebrand in 2023 saw immediate results. APT Taipei kicked off that spring in a brand new, custom-built poker arena and drew a Main Event field that beat its guarantee by 100%. Later that summer, the Incheon stop offered APT’s biggest schedule yet, with over $6.5 million prizes and 69 brand new trophies. The tour wrapped up 2023 in Hanoi, where the Main Event drew 2,350 players — an APT record that would not last long.
The following year brought even more super-charged growth, growing prize pools by over 20% year-over-year. The tour ran 513 tournaments across five stops, breaking records at every place along the way. APT’s Taipei Poker Classic, held in October, became the largest and richest series in Taiwanese history, beating the records set at the March stop earlier in the year. The 11-day festival drew 2,776 players to over 98 events, with three separate four-figure fields, including the record-breaking Main Event.
APT returned to Taipei in 2025 for the first of five stops on a schedule that will culminate with the APT Championship in November. The Main Event, which had drawn 1,182 players in 2024, took in 2,547 entrants to set another APT record. The tour would move on to South Korea, where it would set and break its own national records there, as well. The Incheon stop set a new South Korean standard with 1,281 entries in August, only to be eclipsed weeks later by 1,693 at the APT Jeju Main Event.
Next stop, APT Championship
All roads now lead to the APT Championship, where the tour has taken its most ambitious step yet. There are 203 events on a schedule that runs from November 14–30, including 20 prestigious Championship Events. The APT Championship Main Event will run from November 24–28 with a freezeout format, a buy-in of ~$10,000, and a guarantee of ~$5M. The supersized tour stop also included 33 high rollers, 62 mixed game tournaments, and 19 events for women, including a $1,200 Women’s Championship and the first Women’s Bounty and Women’s Limit events.
Check out the full schedule on the APT website and keep an eye on PokerOrg for ongoing coverage of the Asian Poker Tour’s massive season finale.
