The $5 million guaranteed prizepool for the Asian Poker Tour Championship Main Event was always going to be a record-breaker, but by the time registration closed on Tuesday the final pot of gold at the end of the rainbow had climbed over the $6M mark.
A huge TWD 37M awaits the winner — that’s around $1.18M in US greenbacks — but 9th place will pay less than $100K. That’s a big difference, and means there’s a whole lot to play for when the final nine return on Friday to see out the finale of this five-day event.
Play is due to resume at 11:15am local time, and here are the nine people who’ll be vying for the big bucks and that beautiful Golden Lion trophy.
Nine players, one champion, but who will it be?
Seat 1 — Dominik Nitsche, 7,125,000 (118bb)
The 1 seat will be filled by the most successful tournament player at the table, probably the most recognisable, and with one of the biggest stacks.
With more than $21 million in recorded live tournament earnings, Dominik Nitsche has been a major player at the top of the game for over 15 years, since announcing himself to the poker world with a $300K+ win on the Latin American Poker Tour in 2009. He has since collected four WSOP bracelets, including a $4M win in the High Roller for One Drop at the 2017 series.
Nitsche is also an accomplished online player, having won $1.8M for victory in ACR Poker’s Venom tournament in 2024. He also made headlines as one of the players alleged to have been helping Jonathan Tamayo with a laptop on the rail of the 2024 WSOP Main Event.
Seat 2 — Hao Shan Huang, 1,395,000 (23bb)
Hao Shan Huang, from Yuanlin City in Taiwan, is a former Magic: The Gathering professional who qualified for the APT Championship Main Event thanks to a $350 live satellite.
His final table finish here in his homeland ensures a new career-best score, outstripping the $40K he earned for a deep run in the WSOP Millionaire Maker in the summer — the same tournament that ended in controversy and saw no winner declared.
Huang’s deep run here caps an already impressive year, during which he not only cashed in 9 WSOP events, both live and online, but also picked up a WSOP Circuit ring in Los Angeles in May. He has $382K to date in recorded tournament earnings.
Seat 3 — Neng Zhao, 4,195,000 (70bb)
Zhao, from Sydney, Australia, will also set a new career high wherever he finishes in Friday’s final table, his previous best payday coming from a win in the WPT Prime Gold Coast series in March.
That added $53K to career earnings of $448K, and was followed by a summer in which he made his first cashes at the WSOP, finishing in the money four times.
He has form in the APT also, having won a turbo event in Vietnam in 2023.
Seat 4 — John Costiniano, 3,700,000 (61bb)
Costiniano is an APT regular who has recorded tournament results in Vietnam, Taiwan and his home country of The Philippines. It was there, in October 2024, that he had his best result, coming 3rd in the APT Manila Main Event for $131K.
That score forms a significant chunk of his $407K in career earnings — a figure he will more than double should he finish in 3rd place or higher.
Seat 5 — Martin Finger, 635,000 (10bb)
Vienna-based Finger is another German high roller to have made the final nine here in Taipei, and like his compatriot Nitsche has tasted success across Europe and the world.
Finger’s $8.7M in live career earnings include a top score of over $1 million, picked up with victory in the Super High Roller at EPT London in 2013. A stellar record in EPT events during the 2010s also includes the EPT Prague Main Event in 2011 and the EPT Barcelona High Roller in 2015, while he also has a WSOP bracelet to his name, won in 2013.
Finger will need to use all his experience to work his short stack back into contention, as he enters the final day with barely 10 big blinds.
Seat 6 — Nishant Sharma, 9,125,000 (152bb)
To Finger’s direct left is India’s Sharma, based in Mumbai, who comes into the final table with the biggest stack, having maneuvered cannily on the final table bubble to build up an impressive chip lead over most of the pack.
With over $1.6M in live career earnings, Sharma has a top 8 spot in the India all-time money list, with his best score to date coming during the Main Event of the 2018 WSOP, where he ran to 34th for $230K.
Sharma has already cashed in the TWD 25K Ultra Stack and the TWD 15K National Cup Championship here at the APT Championship this month, and will be looking to finish the series on a high, having won his way into the Main Event in a live satellite.
Seat 7 — Matas Cimbolas, 2,370,000 (39bb)
Cimbolas is based in London, UK but hails from Lithuania, where his $7.6M+ in recorded live tournament cashes puts him second on the country’s all-time money list (behind a certain Tony G).
A heads-up defeat to David Baker in the 2019 LA Poker Classic gave Cimbolas his best tourney score to date — $646K — while he has also come close at the WSOP, making a final table in 2016, and the WPT, where he finished runner-up in the 2018 Tournament of Champions.
Multiple wins at the EPT prove Cimbolas has the nous and experience to close the deal, and he’ll be looking to be the last man standing come Friday night in Taipei.
Seat 8 — Alexandru Papazian, 1,530,000 (25bb)
This talent-stacked final table also features Romania’s all-time number one in Papazian, a WSOP live bracelet winner in 2017 and online winner in 2021.
Papazian’s $4M+ in career earnings include tournament wins everywhere from Cyprus to Italy, France, Romania and Monaco, where he recorded his biggest payday to date with victory in the EPT Monte Carlo Grand Final in 2016, picking up almost $1.2M.
As one of the shorter stacks, Papazian will be looking to make some moves in order to register his first major tournament score of 2025.
Seat 9 — Hao Chuang, 3,345,000 (55bb)
A local from Taipei, Hao Chuang is looking to make a name for himself on home soil, having previously experienced five tournament wins — four of them in Korea, and two of them in the short deck variant.
Chuang has $421K in career earnings, the biggest chunk of which came from a deep run in the inaugural WSOP Paradise Main Event in 2023, in which he finished 29th for $72K. He also picked up another $51K just last wek when he final-tabled the Ultra Stack Championship here at the Red Space.
Play in the first ever APT Championship Main Event resumes at Red Space in Taipei, Taiwan, at 11:15am local time on Friday, November 28.
Images courtesy of the APT. Historical tournament data courtesy of The Hendon Mob.
