The APT Championship returns next week with the wildest schedule of the year

Now let’s take a closer look at the #1 reason this whole thing exists in the first place: the poker you can play.

Hold’em

The world’s favorite poker game is of course well represented at the APT Championship, and those who might bemoan the seemingly endless rebuy and re-entry formats that tend to favor rich and professional players have another reason to celebrate: the Main Event is a freezeout.

Just like the famous main event on the other side of the Pacific Ocean — the WSOP — the APT Championship Main Event will offer no re-dos. One bullet is all you get, and that goes for every single player in the field.

2025 champion Nishant Sharma topped a field of 671 to win more than $1 million.

It’s $10K to enter and has a $5M guaranteed prizepool. Day 1 runs November 23, and there’s just the one starting flight. Play will continue daily until the final table wraps up with a winner on November 27.

So if you don’t want to commit to spending 10+ days playing a single tournament, but still want to play a major championship with huge money up top — last year’s winner locked up over a million dollars — this one’s for you.

Of course there are plenty of other opportunities to play two-card poker across the festival, including mystery bounty events, women’s tourneys, turbos, super stacks, high rollers and more.

Most days will feature at least a dozen different hold’em tournaments at a wide range of buy-ins.

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Omaha

Poker’s second-most popular game will also run daily, and in more variations than you can shake a stick at.

There’s regular PLO, NLO, Big O, Big O8 and NLO5. If you’re familiar with all those games you’ll know they’re not all available just anywhere these days.

But even the most experienced Omaholics are likely to find a twist they didn’t see coming. We’re talking the likes of:

• Oceans (Omaha with a 6th board card)
• Red Rivers (keep dealing rivers until a black card comes)
• Courchevel (NLO5 or hi-lo with the first board card revealed preflop)
• Cry Me a River (3x boards, lowest river card kills its whole board)
• Stairway to Seven (NLO8, players get extra hole cards on the flop, turn and river)
• Double Board Bomb Pots
• Win The Button
• Big Bounty

Then there’s Drawmaha, that fascinating mix of draw poker and Omaha, which itself is played in various forms including 2-7, high, dugi and Sviten.

And don’t worry if this all sounds a little too much like someone messing with your favorite game. Serious Omaha players can head for the $2K PLO Championship, November 17-18, the $5K PLO High Roller Championship, November 18-19, and plenty of other regular PLO tourneys taking place throughout the series.

Women’s events

Plenty of live series will have a women’s event, and even a women’s championship. The APT has these, of course, but that’s just the start.

Women-only events will be running every day of the festival, with buy-ins from $100 to $1,000.

Women's events will be running every single day of the festival.

These include the $1K APT Women’s Championship — Sponsored by LIPS, November 19-20, a heads-up tournament on November 22, as well as turbos, bounty tourneys, freezeouts and more.

Some series might add women’s events as an afterthought or to tick a box. Here they’re an integral and significant part of the schedule.

High rollers

If you’re travelling to Taipei from the USA or Europe, you may be looking for more than just a trip to an exotic locale; you might want to focus on the higher buy-ins for the chance to see your edge rewarded accordingly.

And you’ll have a lot to choose from. Tourneys with the ‘High Roller’ tag at the APT Championship have buy-ins right up to $45K.

A few worth keeping your eye on:

• Single-day high rollers are running regularly, usually around the $2.5K-$5K mark
• The $5K PLO High Roller Championship runs November 18-19
• The $9K Single Day High Roller Championship runs November 19
• The $23K Super High Roller is scheduled for November 21-22
• The $45K Superstar Championship takes place November 22-23
• The $14K High Roller Championship will play November 26-28

Roman Hrabec won $427K in last year's APT Championship $25K Super High Roller.

ENZO ARCEO

Mixed games

The APT is rightly famous for its mixed games, and the APT Championship will be running plenty of them.

Draw poker fans can get their fill with triple draw lowball mix, NL single draw lowball mix, 7-game draw mix, 9-game badugi mix and a dealer’s choice event.

Those who enjoy stud can play a super stud mix, a regular stud mix, a NL bomb pot stud mix, octo-razz and a stud dealer’s choice event.

But then there’s always the option to mix it up even more.

Both fixed limit and no-limit TREOS (e.g. TORSE in a different order), mixed big bet, 9-game mix, 8-game mix and ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ (effectively dealer’s choice, but you pick after seeing your first three cards) are all in play.

The centerpiece of the mixed game schedule will be the $2K Mixed Game Championship, a 9-game mix which runs November 20-21.

The action starts next Friday

But here’s the real twist: the above is only a selection. With 209 events on the schedule we couldn’t possibly list them all here, just as you couldn’t realistically hope to play every single one.

But you can be sure that, whatever form of poker floats your boat, you’ll find it at the APT Championship. Details of every event are available at the APT, including buy-ins, dates, times, late reg and rules.

PokerOrg will be reporting from the tournament floor. See you there.

Note that dollar amounts have been converted from New Taiwan Dollars (TWD), are approximate and correct at time of writing.

^{Images courtesy of the APT.}