April 27-28
Hands played on the final day.
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1ST
Phachara Wongwichit
$229,757
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2ND
Wai Kiat Lee
$152,666
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3RD
Chin Wei Lim
$99,729
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4TH
Daniel Neilson
$71,027
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5TH
Chih Wei Fan
$51,401
As its name and price tag suggest, the $25K APT Superstar Challenge is not an event aimed squarely at amateurs.
Take a look across its tables and you’ll see folks like star vlogger Ethan ‘Rampage’ Yau, GPI Player of the Year Punnat Punsri, the GPI’s current #1 ranked player Ren Lin, and four-time WSOP bracelet winner Dominik Nitsche.
But even some poker superstars have day jobs.
Take Phachara Wongwichit, for example. He may be #3 on Thailand’s all-time money list, but that’s not the only way he pays the bills.
He’s also the co-founder of DeepRun, the multilingual poker education site that recently signed on as training partner for the Asian Poker Tour. And he’s one of their coaches.
Does he know his stuff? It sure looked that way to me: I just watched him win the APT Taipei Superstar Challenge and almost $230K.
All in all, a good day’s work.
Costly kings
Tuesday’s final day was more sprint than marathon. Of the 26 entries, just five made the money and all returned to play it out on the featured table of the Red Space center in central Taipei.
A healthy prizepool of $624K was on the block to be chopped up.
Coming back to blinds of 15K/30K with a 30K big blind ante, Wongwichit started the day with the biggest stack of 2.2M, followed by Taiwan’s Chih Wei Fan (1.5M), the Malaysian duo of Chin Wei Lim (1.2M) and Wai Kiat Lee (860K), and Australia’s Daniel Neilson (645K) as the shortstack with fewer than 22bb to play with.
It was Lim who got off to the best start, cracking pocket kings twice in the first hour of play.
First to suffer was Lee, who raised to 65K from the button with 
, getting a call from Lim in the big blind.
Lee C-bet 35K on the 
flop, only for Lim to check-raise to 80K. Lee called, then fired another 110K on the 
turn. Lim called to see the on the river, which was checked through.
Lim had 
for flopped trips, and Lee dropped down to under 20bb.
Next up to see their cowboys cracked was Chih Wei Fan.
Lim raised from the small blind, this time with 
, Fan 3-bet to 410K with 
, and Lim shoved for 1.4M.
Fan snap-called and turned over his pocket kings. Lim was a card away from busting as the board ran out 
, only for the to arrive on the river and save his skin.
Lim was now armed, while Fan had been coolered.
He was out the very next hand, taking his up against the of Wongwichit.
Again, the unlucky Fan was ahead preflop, flop and turn, only to lose on the river: 
delivered the king-high straight for Wongwichit and blew Fan away, off in 5th for $51K.
Down to two
Daniel Neilson, having come in as the short stack and laddered up a spot, picked up 
on the very next hand and jammed his last 520K.
Wai Kiat Lee, also running on fumes, called for most of his stack with .
Lee hit the 
flop hard, and the turn even harder. The 
on the river sealed the deal.
Out in 4th, Neilson took his $70K, popped to the 7-11 next door for a quick snack then immediately registered the Main Event. The jovial Australian found a bag at the end of Day 1C and will be back for Day 2.
Lee’s momentum stalled, though. By the next break he was down to under 10bb, and eyeing the trapdoor.
But the Malaysian #2 has over $24M in recorded tournament earnings for a reason.
Slowly but surely Lee negotiated his way back into contention. A series of decent hands and well-timed bluffs saw him pull clear of the danger zone, at the expense of Lim.
Then, along came one of those hands.
Wongwichit min-raised to 120K from the button with , Lim shoved for 550K with , Lee cold-called with .
Chip leader Wongwichit 4-bet to 1M, which got rid of Lee.
A good fold, but a call there would have seen him flop a set as the board ran out 
. The Thai’s aces were good, and Lim was gone in 3rd for $99K.
Staff meeting?
Heads-up began with Wongwichit holding a near 3-1 lead over Lee, and it was ground the Malaysian was unable to make up.
The two finalists are both coaches for DeepRun, but Lee’s run was soon over.
When Wongwichit set him all-in preflop holding , and Lee called with , the writing was on the wall. The dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s.
“I ran really well throughout,” the winner shared with PokerOrg. “Obviously you lose some pots, but all the major pots went my way, so it's very fortunate.”
As for runner-up Lee, who banked $152K, he promised to answer questions about the Superstar Challenge once he wins it.
“The high-roller fields are small, so you pretty much know everyone,” added Wongwichit. “It feels very relaxed because at least half the table are friends. I can be competitive at a high level, but honestly, many of these guys who play the Triton series are a bit better than me.
“That’s fine, though, as I don’t study the game as much as I used to.”
If he’s looking for a training site, there’s one in particular that springs to mind.
Not only did Wongwichit take down the $229K top prize today, but his DeepRun co-founder Kannapong ‘Tent’ Thanarattrakul won the $16K Single-Day Super High Roller a few days ago for $233K.
In terms of poker, not to mention marketing, it was a masterclass.
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.
