There’s a prize of more than $43K to be won, and no one wants it.
That’s the payout for 9th place in the APT Taipei Main Event, but with the final table of 9 now all set and ready to go on Saturday, all eyes will be on the $525K top prize awaiting the winner.
The $1,700 no-limit hold’em tournament has completed four days of intense competition, with a field of 2,354 drawn from across the globe now distilled to one last table.
The winner will not only bank over half a million dollars, but will also take home the award-winning Gold Lion trophy. The final six will also each collect a seat in the APT Championship $10K Main Event this November.
Let’s see who’s still got their eyes on the prize.
Shing dominates with over 35% of chips in play
Seat 1: Ching En Chen - 7,450,000 (29bb)
With lifetime tournament earnings of $140K, Chen is a homegrown hero from Taiwan looking to set a new high bar; a 4th place finish would exceed his total combined earnings, while a single ladder-up to 8th would guarantee a new best cash of $57K.
With blinds at the final table starting at 125K/250K with a 250K big blind ante, Chen has fewer than 30bb to work with. But such is the overwhelming chip lead of Lau Chun Shing, Chen actually sits 4th of 9 in chips.
Seat 2: Miki Shiraishi - 7,250,000 (29bb)
There's only one thing we can say with absolute certainty about Japan’s Shiraishi: he's a man of mystery.
Check his entry on The Hendon Mob and yes, you’ll find tournament results, but only two of them.
Of course, it’s worth remembering that not every tournament in the wide world shares its results with the internet’s repository of poker history, and it seems unlikely he's come from nowhere.
With combined earnings of $3,630, is Shiraishi a rec on the heater of a lifetime, or a dark horse with an unknown past, looking to strike then fade away once again into the night?
Throughout the tournament he’s kept his shades on, hood up, poker face rock solid.
Will the edifice crack under pressure? Or joy?
Seat 3: Kristof Segers - 6,525,000 (26bb)
Belgium-born but based in Taichung, a city several hours’ drive from Taipei, Segers has over $700K in lifetime earnings with the bulk picked up here in Taiwan.
He also has a number of WSOP cashes from over the years, chiefly in Omaha, but over the past four days has shown he is also a force to be reckoned with in hold’em.
Winner of a side event here just a week ago — a hyper-turbo high roller — Segers will be looking to get his short stack in action on Saturday for a repeat performance.
Seat 4: Kazuma Ishihara - 11,450,000 (45bb)
Look up this man from Japan and you’ll find more questions than answers.
A result from 2024 in Tokyo. One from 2025, in Osaka.
But no recorded cashes, no lifetime earnings, no best results. A phantom at the card table. One thing's for sure, though, he's earned his way to this final table through some wily play and excellent decision-making.
We’d publish his picture here, but we're still not 100% sure he shows up in photographs. Moving on…
Seat 5: Pakinai Lisawad - 6,825,000 (27bb)
Lisawad enters the final day 6th of 9, and also currently sits 6th on Thailand’s all-time money list with $1.5M in tournament winnings.
With good results from across the world — the EPT, Triton One, the WSOP and the APT — Lisawad has a long history of winning. A runner-up place in the $25K PLO event at the 2015 WSOP provided his best tournament cash to date of $693K.
He won’t be exceeding that on Saturday, but a win would round off an excellent series for Thailand, and a second best-ever score for Lisawad.
Seat 6: Tony 'Ren' Lin - 5,950,000 (23bb)
The shortest stack at the final table is also surely one of the most deadly.
Lin has amassed tournament earnings of close to $20M since arriving on the tournament scene just over a decade ago, but it’s in the last five years that he has really built his reputation.
His first six-figure score, courtesy of a final table run in the $5K NLH event at the 2021 WSOP, opened the floodgates. By the end of the year, he had won over a million dollars.
Lin already has two APT tournament wins in 2026, collected at the Jeju Classic in January, including one of the three ‘Mega Lions’ for winning the Super High Roller. A win on Saturday would see him add a second lion to his pride.
With the shortest stack, he has a lot of work to do to get there. But if anyone can, it’s surely the affable, chatty and ever-entertaining Lin.
Seat 7: Josh Mccully - 8,125,000 (32bb)
Australia’s Mccully ran into a sticky situation at the final three tables of this event, when he got all his chips in holding 
on a board of 
, only for his opponent to turn over 
.
The 
on the turn left him praying for one of the two remaining kings to come along on the river to save his tournament life. You can probably guess how that turned out: he's still here.
A renowned online crusher, Mccully also has over $2.6M in live tournament earnings and hits the final table third in chips and hoping to improve on his best cash to date: $277K for a runner-up finish at the WPT Cambodia Main Event in 2024.
Alongside this week’s Superstar Challenge winner Phachara Wongwichit, he is also a coach for the DeepRun poker training site.
Seat 8: Huang Chia Lin - 6,525,000 (26bb)
Another local talent, Lin has never cashed a tournament outside his native Taiwan, and with a previous highest score of just over $34K is guaranteed a new personal best tournament payout.
Lin has collected three cashes at APT Taipei already this week, but none for over $5K. That’s going to change whatever happens on Saturday, while taking down the final table would triple his $258K tournament earnings to date.
Seat 9: Lau Chun Shing - 33,175,000 (132bb)
The man from Hong Kong spent the final levels of Day 4 building an impressive lead through the constant application of pressure, combined with a run of good cards.
The final hand of the day saw him bust two players at once, his 
seeing off Haeil Jung’s 
and Jaejoong Kim’s 
in a spectacular conclusion to the day’s play, and catapulting Shing even further into the lead.
With a stack of almost 3x that of his closest rival, Shing will take some stopping. And with a run of previous results here in Taipei — including multiple APT final tables — he’s on familiar ground.
The final day of the APT Taipei Main Event begins at 11:15am local time at Red Space on Saturday, and will play to a winner.
Head to the APT YouTube channel to follow the action, and be sure to check back with PokerOrg for the full story.
Note that some dollar amounts mentioned in this article have been converted from Taiwanese New Dollars, are approximate and correct at time of writing.
Historic tournament results courtesy of The Hendon Mob. Images courtesy of the APT.
