We’ve officially reached the money in the APT Incheon Main Event after home player Gary Moon was eliminated on the bubble by our tournament chip leader Aaron Lim. This means that each of the 134 remaining players is guaranteed a min-cash of KRW 3,700,000 and is still in the run for the KRW 346,647,000 (~$262,090) first-place prize.
This year’s APT Incheon Main Event is the largest in South Korea’s history, both in terms of prize pool and the number of entrants. After tallying the online entries, each Day 1 entry, and all the entries made before the start of Day 2, this tournament received a total of 930 players, smashing the previous record of 540 set at APT Korea back in 2021.
This means that the prize pool for this tournament is an eye-watering KRW 1,867,347,000 (~USD $1,411,975), smashing the guarantee of KRW 1.2 billion and setting the record for the largest prize pool for a Main Event in South Korea.
Day 2 Action
A total of 331 players took their seats for Day 2 of the APT Incheon Main Event, where they would play down until they reached the money. With a number of short stacks making their way into Day 2, we saw plenty of action in the early stages, including a three-way all-in between the winner of the APT Summer Series Da Nang High Roller Daniel Brugman, APT Taipei Turbo 8-Max winner Napat Chokejindachai, and Jung Ho Im.
Im was the shortest stack of the three players and held QJ, Brugman was the middle stack with AK, and Chokejindachai was looking to score a double knockout with A6. The K22 flop cemented Brugman’s lead, but the T on the turn gave Im some outs to triple up. However, the J on the turn was no help, giving Brugman a huge boost to his chip stack after coming in with just over starting stack.
High Profile Eliminations
The early stages of Day 2 also saw a number of high-profile eliminations, as some of the biggest names left in the tournament were sent to the rail. One of those casualties was Bertrand “Elky” Grospellier, who got it in with two black queens on a 973 flop, only to run into the aces of Shinya Maeda. Neither the 5 nor the 8 could help Elky, and he was out of the Main Event, with a 300,000 chip pot heading its way to Maeda.
We also saw the winner of the APT Incheon Kickoff event Hong Ru Zhang bust early on, as he shoved his last 10bb into the middle with K5, only to be called by the 55 of Seung Jennens. Serbia’s Bojan Berberovic and Japan’s Masato Shimizu soon followed Zhang out the door, as we got ever closer to the money bubble.
Natural8 Team Hot
While players were busting all around them, most of the Natural8 Team Hot members managed to navigate themselves into Day 2, but they’ll have a lot of work to do on Day 3. Kannapong Thanarattrakul took forward the biggest stack of our group of pros, bagging an impressive 569,000. After ending Day 1d with a second-place chip stack, Punnat Punsri failed to make much progress on Day 2 and ended up bagging 216,000 for Day 3.
Phachara is still in the hunt for his first APT title of this series after bagging 149,000, as is Yu Chung Chang who bagged 129,000. Danny Tang just about managed to hang on at the end of the day with 82,000 in chips and he’ll be plotting ways to find a quick double-up at the start of Day 3.
Unfortunately, we lost Wei Wei before the bubble burst; perhaps still fatigued after winning the Women’s Event earlier in the Series. We also lost Adrian Attenborough who bought in at the start of Day 2 but couldn’t get anything going in the early stages of the tournament.
We still have a number of dangerous players representing Natural8 in this year’s Main Event, so don’t be surprised to see one of them make the final table!
Notable Stacks
There were a number of notable players who managed to build a big stack to take through into Day 3. Two-time Main Event champion Lester Edoc bagged 658,000 for Day 3, eliminating the previous APT Incheon Main Event Farhad Aghayev with aces against jacks.
We also saw a familiar face from this year’s APT High Roller series; the APT Super High Roller champ Milos Petakovic took through 609,000 and has put himself in a great position to make a deep run tomorrow. After eliminating Elky early in the day, the second-place finisher in the APT Summer Series Da Nang Main Event is still in the hunt to go one better here in Incheon, as he bagged exactly half a million chips.
Image Source: The Asian Poker Tour
