It’s finally here, the next leg of the APT has officially begun in Incheon with the KRW 175 million guaranteed Kickoff event. This KRW 600,000 buy-in event has been split into two opening flights, with Flight A starting at 12 p.m. local time, and Flight B starting six hours later at 6 p.m. The remaining players from each flight will converge on Day 2 and will fight it out for the first APT trophy of the series.
Flight A
The first flight of the first event at the APT received a total of 151 entries, including some big names from past APT events, including the winner of the Single Day High Roller – 8 Max event in Vietnam, Daniel Brugman, the 3rd place finisher in the No Limit Hold'em - Deep Stack Turbo event in Da Nang, and the winner of the ₱ 46,000 + 4,000 No Limit Hold'em - Turbo event in Manila, Haruna Fujita.
Fujita had a wild start to the day and was the first player of the day to be eliminated during Level 1, after being knocked down to just 100 chips. Even after re-entering, she wasn’t able to make it through to Day 2 in this flight.
In fact, only 22 players progressed to Day 2 out of the 151 entries. The chip leader from Flight A was Takahisa Watanabe, the player who eliminated Fujita the first time around, who bagged a whopping 720,000 chips - nearly double that of second place! Taiwan’s Kun-Han Lee and Thailand’s Kiwanont Sukhaum rounded out the top three with 393,000 and 375,000 chips respectively.
Flight B
The second flight of the day saw another 137 entries from 123 unique entrants, bringing the total for the day to 288 entries. While the tournament did not reach the guarantee, there’s still plenty to play for, with the first-place prize sitting at KRW 35,060,000 (~26,450).
We saw a number of notable players hop into the second flight, including Hong Kong’s Hon Cheong Lee, Japan’s Naoki Yashiro, and a third bullet of the day for Haruna Fujita. The twenty-minute levels were guaranteed to provide plenty of action, and chips were flying from the off; we saw plenty of eliminations in the early stages of the tournament, but surprisingly few re-entires before registration closed for the day.
Only 20 players made it through to Day 2, as they played down to 14% of the field. China’s Hong Ru Zhang topped the Flight B leaderboard with 480,000 chips, closely followed by 16-time APT champion Lester Edoc with 444,000. Taiwan’s Chao Chiuan Lin rounded out the top three, bringing forward 391,000 chips.
Each player who made it through has guaranteed themselves KRW 1,030,000 (~$777), but they’ll be looking up at the KRW 35,060,000 first-place prize and the coveted APT trophy.
Who do you think will go on to win the first event of APT Incheon? Who are you rooting for in this series? Let us know on social media and stay tuned for all the latest poker news and events.
