Why the APT Championship is different

A journey that began in Singapore in 2006 has seen the tour grow and grow – especially since the ‘New Era’ began in 2023. Changes in ownership and management have seen tournament attendance and prize money rise to meet the levels of increased ambition, with new records set regularly across multiple countries in Asia.

And when the new management team laid out the roadmap for the APT’s future back in 2023, the APT Championship was already a key goal. The idea was to create ‘Asia’s Main Event’ – a single tournament that could withstand comparison to US poker’s most prestigious title: the $10K WSOP Main Event.

The Championship series is returning to Red Space in Taiwan.

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It’s not only players who gamble

To that end, APT organizers elected to make two risky choices: to guarantee a huge $5 million prizepool, and to make the contest a freezeout.

Freezeout tournaments – where no rebuys or re-entries are permitted – create a level playing field where every entrant has just one tournament life.

Professionals with staking deals or large bankrolls, recreationals with deep pockets, satellite winners, online qualifiers and ‘bucket-list’ once-in-a-lifetime shot-takers are all in the same boat. When you’re out, you’re out.

That’s great for the average player but, make no mistake, it’s a gamble on the part of the organizers. A freezeout obviously means every entry is a single player – unlike the WSOP Paradise Super Main, for example, you can’t rely on wealthy pros firing bullet after bullet to fill up the prizepool.

You need a lot of people through the door to ensure a large field, and that’s where a big guarantee helps. But that brings about its own risk. Guarantee $5M in prize money and, even if you don’t take in $5M in entries, you still need to pay it out.

In recent years both the WSOP and WPT have found this out to their cost. The APT Championship, however, pulled it off. The $5M guarantee was surpassed, eventually reaching over $6.1M with over a million dollars going to its winner, Nishant Sharma of India. The 671 entries in that first 2025 edition created a huge prizepool, but notably while keeping the field at a reasonable – some would say more beatable – size.

Winning the WSOP Main Event may pay more, but in Taipei you don’t need to beat 10,000 people over two weeks to win the crown.

Nishant Sharma beat a field of 671 to win over a million dollars last year.

The 2025 APT Championship in numbers

208 other events

The APT Championship Main Event will understandably get most attention in the upcoming two week poker festival, but anyone attending will have more options than that.

A lot more.

There are 209 different events on the schedule from November 13-29, and they truly encompass every buy-in, variant and format you could choose to play. If, as the aphorism goes, it’s impossible to please all the people all the time, the APT are trying their hardest to prove that old saying wrong.

Let’s take a look at the variants on offer, each to be played in official, dealer-dealt tournaments, with results visible on The Hendon Mob and with awesome trophies to be won:

• Hold’em
• Omaha
• Triple draw
• Single draw
• Big O
• Courchevel
• 7-card stud
• Super stud
• Badugi
• Razz
• Double board bomb pot

Then there are the mixed game tournaments including Octo-Razz, Triple Draw Mix, Dealer’s Choice, Big Met Mix, ROSET, 9-Game and more.

Moving on to formats, these include:

• Freezeouts
• Re-entries
• Turbos, super-turbos and hyper-turbos
• Heads-up events
• Single-day tourneys
• Phased tourneys
• Women’s events
• Ultra and Deepstacks
• 7-Max
• Satellites

And then there’s the question of price. The biggest ticket event on the schedule will be the Superstar Challenge at TWD 1.5M (around USD $46K) but you’ll also find plenty of options every day closer to the $100 mark.

Check the complete APT Championship schedule here.

A global game, an international crowd

What does this huge range of games and buy-ins mean?

It means that, as well as being sure to find a tournament to your taste, you’re very likely to be rubbing shoulders with some of poker’s most celebrated players.

Last year’s APT Championship attracted players from all over the world, including Hall of Famers such as Erik Seidel, high rollers like Dominik Nitsche and Steve O’Dwyer, and a raft of vloggers, ambassadors and sponsored pros from across the globe.

The 2025 series attracted a number of international high rollers, including Hall-of-Famer Erik Seidel.

But it’s not just the A-listers that give this event its unique character. As someone who has attended major live poker events across the world, from Las Vegas to Monte Carlo to Jeju, I can honestly say there is little that can compare to the vibes of the APT Championship.

The venue — Red Space in central Taipei — is 100% dedicated to poker: no slots, table games or other distractions. And the same can be said of the clientele. It’s simply where players come to play. Enthusiasm and passion are everywhere you look — as are new opportunities to register, play, and win.

It’s a place where the poker world truly comes together in celebration of everything we love about the game, and as such we wouldn’t miss it.

PokerOrg will be reporting on all the action from the tournament floor throughout the festival; come and say hi.

The Asian Poker Tour Championship takes place November 13-29 in Taipei, Taiwan, with the $10K Main Event running November 20-27 with a $5M guarantee.

Click here for the full schedule of events.

^{Images courtesy of the APT.}