Tuesday afternoon in the LES A Casino in Jeju Shinhwa World, and everywhere you look there’s poker being played.
Behind me, the APT Main Event’s Day 1c is in full swing. Registration will stay open for a level into Wednesday’s Day 2, and there’s a whole other starting flight scheduled to run a little later this evening, but the $1.6 million guarantee has already been surpassed. Just how huge that prizepool will end up, we’ll find out tomorrow.
Around the corner there’s the High Roller Ultra Stack, in the money and playing down to a $160K winner. Next to them, registration for the single day high roller has just closed, with another $52K up top. There’s a 9-Game Mix happening, a bounty tourney and a PLO game, all co-existing in perfect harmony.
And in front of me, the final table of the richest $27K Superstar Challenge the Asian Poker Tour has ever run.
Though you wouldn’t necessarily have known it at first glance.
Like all the other tables in this luxurious poker room, it looks for all the world like some guys simply having fun and playing cards on a Tuesday afternoon.
But in this case there happens to be $337K up top.
$1.25M up for grabs
The decision to leave this tournament off the streaming schedule meant the final table was played out amid the hustle and bustle of 16 different tournaments running today.
No stage lights, no video cameras, no commentary team. And, as a result, no players sneaking off to watch the stream on a break, on a quest to discover whether that questionable fold half an hour ago was a straight up blunder, or a thing of wonder.
That also meant no ban on electronics, with players free to scroll on their phones between hands, order food and chat to friends just a few steps away.
The relaxed atmosphere belied the fact that, with some $1.25 million in prize money to be won, it was the richest edition of the Superstar Challenge yet seen on the APT.
The 51 entries also sets a new high watermark, at least since the buy-in was bumped up to its current lofty level of $27K at the start of the 2024 season.
The bubble in this one burst with 11 players remaining, and the 9 who made the final table represented 8 different countries. Poker here really is a global village.
Two Taiwanese players made it all the way, Nevan Chang and Chih Wei Fan, while the other spots were taken by Nang Quang Nguyen (Vietnam), Fabian Gumz (Germany), Rob Hollink (The Netherlands), Yoko Sasaki (Japan), Rudy Edenata (Indonesia), Renji Mao (China) and Johan Pedersen (Denmark).
Everything goes Chang’s way
Gumz (9th, $45K) and Fan (8th, $50K) were first to fall before Sasaki, the lone woman at the final table, followed them out in 7th ($58K).
Sasaki had been reduced to fumes before making a stand for her final few blinds with 
. Unfortunately for her, the size of her raise had little fold equity and so it proved when Nguyen called with 
. The board put him ahead straight away and kept him there, running out 
.
Next out was Johan Pedersen (6th, $74K), who made a move preflop with 
and got it in good against Chang’s 
. The runout was nice and clean, right until it wasn’t; a deuce on the river sent the Dane to the payout desk.
Renji Mao’s 
lost to Rudy Edenata’s 
to send him out in 5th ($99K) and prevent yet another Chinese victory in Jeju (it’s been a good series for Chinese players so far).
That left the experienced Dutch player Rob Hollink as the sole European still in the mix, but it wouldn’t last. He’s still in The Netherlands’ all-time top 10, but he couldn’t crack the top 3 here and went out in 4th ($140K).
Down to three, it was if someone hit the fast-forward button. What had been a relaxed, yet delicately balanced, final table suddenly all swung in one direction: towards Chang.
With blinds at 60K/120K with a 120K big blind ante, Chang opened to 250K from the button and Nguyen shoved for his last 1.3M. Chang called to see it was a race: his 
against Nguyen’s 
.
If the 
flop looked safe for Nguyen, the 
on the turn left him drawing thin. The 
was not the river he needed, and we were down to two as Nguyen left in 3rd ($181K).
A quick finish
The heads-up phase of a tournament can last for hours, as the levels upon levels of mind games accumulated over an entire tournament can lead to fascinating meta-games.
On this occasion, however, it lasted all of three hands.
Chang started the duel with around two thirds of the chips in play. Within a couple of minutes he had them all.
The first time the action reached a flop, 
, Chang check-raised Edenata’s bet before quickly checking on the 
turn. Why was he suddenly pumping the brakes? Edenata shoved to find out.
He didn’t get the answer he wanted as Chang snap-called. Edenata had 
for two pair, but Chang had flopped the flush with 
. The on the river sealed the deal, and Edenata was out as runner-up for a healthy $254K.
Chang adds $337K to lifetime career earnings of over $4.4M, mostly won in his native Taiwan but with scores across Asia and beyond. He made the final table of WSOP bracelet events in 2024 and 2025, and understands the different dynamics at play when playing at a streamed table.
“Everybody likes playing on a stream because it’s more exciting,” Chang told PokerOrg after his win, “but it also means people are very careful, and can watch hands back on the break. This was a bit different. I just had to see who was a nit and who was loose, and play my best.”
The $337K first-place prize money is a new career best for Chang. His previous biggest score was $282K for a 4th place finish in the Triton Poker $25K, also in Jeju, also this month.
His win comes with a ticket into the $10K APT Championship Main Event in November, where he’ll be hoping to push his career-best score even further.
APT Jeju Superstar Challenge - final results
- Yu Chung 'Nevan' Chang: KRW 451,777,500 (~$337K)
- Rudy Edenata: KRW 341,060,000 (~$254K)
- Nang Quang Nguyen: KRW 243,610,000 (~$181K)
- Rob Hollink: KRW 187,800,000 (~$140K)
- Renji Mao: KRW 132,880,000 (~$99K)
- Johan Pedersen: KRW 99,220,000 (~$74K)
- Yoko Sasaki: KRW 77,960,000 (~$58K)
- Chih Wei Fan: KRW 67,330,000 (~$50K)
- Fabian Gumz: KRW 60,240,000 (~$45K)
- Christian Harder: KRW 56,700,000 (~$42K)
- Lester Edoc: KRW 53,150,000 (~$39K)
Note that dollar amounts have been converted to Korean won, are approximate and correct at time of writing.
Images courtesy of the APT.
