HomeBig day at the races today with APT Kickoff 2019 Vietnam – MAIN EVENT Day 2 – filling up every seat at partner and host venue Pro Poker Club. 250 players returned out of the 558 combined starting day entries with another 18 players signing up before registration closed. Here are the numbers once again:
Day 1A: 105 entries – 42 advanced
Day 1B: 152 entries – 63 advanced
Day 1C: 301 entries – 145 advanced
Day 2: 18 entries
Total: 576 entries
With each buy-in at VND 22,000,000, the advertised guarantee was demolished and replaced with a very rich VND 11,174,400,000 (~USD 481,500). The money will start to flow in Day 3 starting at 58th place.
Here’s a brief recap of today’s results. 77 players survived the Main Event Day 2 onslaught. We caught plenty of the action out there which you can check out via the link below.
Main Event Day 3 chip count and seat draw
Two players were fairly close in chips at bagging time and were the only ones to secure over 500k at the end of the scheduled 8 rounds.
Van Ngoc Binh – 540,000
Huu Tuan Nguyen – 523,000
While we weren’t able to catch much action from Tuan, rest assured we shall be keeping a very tight watch on him in Day 3. As for Van Ngoc Binh, he had our attention on many occasions. In addition to railing several players, he tanked Chul Ho Bae late in the day to seize a sizable pot that sent him to the leader’s bracket.
Other players vying for the lead were Zheng Xiaosheng, Huu Dung Nguyen, Phan Dinh Nam, and the day’s entering chip leader Mai Te. For the latter Te, he held on to a big stack all day and was the first player to cross into 600k when a player tried but failed to push him out of a pot. How could you push out aces preflop? Te settled at 430,500.
Decorated APT champion Huu Dung had a steady rise all day and bagged up the fourth largest of 445,000. He is one of three APT major champions remaining, the other two are Lim Yo Hwan with 170,500 and SJ Kim with 165,000.
On the flip side, among the fallen was Quang Nguyen, runner-up of the previous APT Vietnam Main Event. Quang had a strong start in Day 3 but plummeted when his stack took a beating against Jeonggyu Cho. Quang’s aces were cracked by pocket fours turned set. He busted shortly after with pocket kings overtaken by an ace that paired.
Some of the players also missing the mark were defending champion Tetsuya Tsuchikawa, Cao Ngoc Anh, Norbert Koh, Hanh Tran, Minh Le, Dang Van Hien, Kunal Patni, Steffen Endres, and APT Player of the Series leader Michael Kim Falcon.
All of the Day 2 survivors return on Monday, January 14 at 1pm. They will race to the money and a Final 8 seat. Live updates will continue with more action posted as we get closer to crowning the first APT champion of 2019.