Wednesday’s Day 2 of the ~$2K APT Jeju Main Event ended with China’s Kaihong Ma firmly in the driver’s seat, the only player in the field to have broken the million-chip barrier and with a chip lead of some 140K over his nearest rival.
24 hours later, a lot of poker has been played but the key fact remains: Kaihong Ma has more chips than anyone else. And the gap has grown.
With 3.185M he has a lead of more than 450K over his compatriot Yi Heng Luo in second, and almost a million chips more than Weimin Chen in third.
When play resumes on Friday’s Day 4 the blinds will be 15K/30K with a 30K big blind ante. Kaihong Ma alone will have over 100 big blinds.
If he can continue to exert pressure on the smaller stacks — and everyone else is in that category right now — he has an excellent chance of making Saturday’s final table.
47 players have advanced to Friday; only 9 of them will be pulling up a chair on Saturday and playing for the ~$415K up top.
Another Chinese victory incoming?
That 47 includes any number of players capable of releasing Ma’s stranglehold. 9 of the top 10 chip stacks are in the hands of Chinese players, and players from China make up the majority of the survivors at this stage. They incude Jiangfen Sun, fresh off a runner-up finish in the Mystery Bounty Hunter earlier this week.
The USA still has four players in contention: Christian Harder, Coleton Kriegel, Anthony Kastelic and Jae Kyung Sim. Vietnam also has four flags still flying, with Tran Anh Tuan Le, Chi Dung Tran, Dieu Tu Dinh (below) and Xuan Huy Dinh moving on to Day 4.
Singapore also has four players still in — Kim Wah Chiu, Kwang Chung Tan, Steve Pei Yao Ng and Zhi Jian Sean Ooi — while Japan has three in Rei Yamaguchi, Nishikido Nobuhiro and Hiroyuki Noda.
With 26 of the final 47 playing under the five-star red flag, could this Main Event end in yet another Chinese victory? The nation’s players have performed to a high standard during the series so far.
But while anything could happen between now and Saturday night, first things’ first: someone’s going to have to stop Kaihong Ma.
The benefits of turning up on time
In case you hadn’t already heard, the APT is planning an even bigger bash in November with the second annual APT Championship series in Taipei.
It will feature a $10K freezeout Main Event with $5M guaranteed, and the tour is giving away a dozen seats to that tourney during APT Jeju.
Few will have come as easily as this one did today.
At the start of the day a special prize draw was made to determine which lucky table would get the chance to play for the $10K seat.
Table 17 was the fortunate one, and it was decided that the players there would play a single hand of crazy pineapple, with the seat awarded to the winner.
Everyone was present except Kou Vang in seat 2. Luckily for him, he reached the table just in time to be dealt in.
In the game of crazy pineapple, every player receives three hole cards and discards one of them after the flop. With the cards dealt, the flop of 
was revealed. Players chose their discard and revealed their hands.
Cue a chorus of groans as one player turned over pocket aces.
It wasn’t Kou Vang, who had 
for a flopped full house. He faded the outs, cracked the aces, and bagged himself one very large ticket indeed.
Congratulations, Kou Vang, we’ll see you in Taipei.
Play resumes on Day 4 of the APT Jeju Main Event, Friday at 11:15am local time. The series runs through to October 7.
Images courtesy of the APT.
