HomeIt was a thunderous day at APT Korea Seoul 2018 with players charging into Paradise Casino at Grand Walkerhill for Day 2 of the featured event, the APT Main Event KRW 1,100,000 buy-in. By the end of the scheduled eight rounds, USA’s Jinwoo Kim topped the 21 survivors with 767,000 in chips.
Jinwoo Kim, Day 2 chip leader
Chip leaders at the end of Day 2
Kicking off Day 2, Jinwoo Kim entered as the second to the last in stack size. With blinds still low, he managed to hang on and chip up but after he doubled up short-stacked Jae Kyung Ro, he tumbled back down again to an even lower 5 bbs. But as seen at the NLH Welcome Event, Kim has a knack for rising out of these tough situations. He bounced back and soon had a threatening stack. From there, he railed numerous players including Bosnia’s Ognjen Jakara (29th) to bag up the largest stack of the day.
Teruhisa Aoyama
Trailing Kim by a half a blind was Japan’s Teruhisa Aoyama with 764,000 in chips. Aoyama was one of the top five chip leaders throughout Day 2 and was never in danger of elimination. During the last two levels of play, Aoyama earned a sizable pot against Alexander Ugay then later won a raise war against Jinwoo Kim to secure the second spot in the count.
Paul Hong
In third rank was New Zealand’s Paul Hong with 743,000 in chips. Hong was one of the early bust outs of Day 2 but with registration still open for the first hour, he re-entered and made it count. He did have some swings though, falling to a short stack during the money round, however a very lucky two-outer saved him from elimination. His 7-7 shove turned into a full house against Ken Okada’s 8-8. That was all the spark he needed to zoom to the top of the count.
Kam Ip Yuk
Bagging up the fourth largest stack was USA’s Kam Ip Yuk with 739,000. Yuk was one of the most aggressive players of Day 2. He held court at the top for a large part of the day, winning pot after pot and booting out numerous players including Han Tae Hoon. Yuk cracked Han’s aces with 6-4 full house.
You can read up on the day’s action via our Live Updates.
Day 2 recap and payouts
Day 2 got underway with 85 players out of the 148 starting day entrants back on the felt. With late registration open for the first hour of the day, another 22 signed up to bring the total entries to 170. This created an official prize pool of KRW 164,900,000 with 29 places paid.
Once the freezeout stage began, it was knockout after knockout. Among them were decorated APT Main Event champions Hung Sheng Lin and Hisashi Ogi. Another casualty was the day’s entering chip leader, Stephen Nathan. Nathan wasn’t able to drive his stack north and was eliminated well before the money.
Just before the bubble burst, Hyun Kyu Bae eliminated the last APT champion in the field, Albert Paik. Unlike the big stacks controlling the felt, Paik was seen with a short stack for most of the day. After his fall, the bubble soon burst with Hyun railing Luke Romyn with A-K losing to K-K. Luckily for Romyn, he qualified for bubble protection and received his buy-in back in APT tournament credits.
The day closed with 21 players remaining. Below were the initial payouts:
Payouts (22nd-29th)
22nd Chung Iwakura – Japan – KRW 2,119,000
23rd Carlo Calingasan – Philippines – KRW 1,819,000
24th Jae Kyung Ro – USA – KRW 1,819,000
25th Takuya Suzuki – Japan – KRW 1,819,000
26th Ken Okada – Japan – KRW 1,819,000
27th Benedict Koh – Singapore – KRW 1,819,000
28th Otsubo Yosuke – Japan – KRW 1,819,000
29th Ognjen Jakara – Bosnia – KRW 1,819,000
Day 3 gets underway at 1pm on Friday, June 22. See below for the seating chart and chip counts:
DAY 3 Chip counts and seat chart
| Name | Country | Chips | Table | Seat |
| Kosei Inchinose | Japan | 127,000 | 1 | 2 |
| Wang Wei Ping | China | 78,000 | 1 | 3 |
| Masaki Fujitani | Japan | 596,000 | 1 | 4 |
| Shcherbakov Roman (DB) | Russia | 228,000 | 1 | 5 |
| Pak Vyacheslav | Kazakhstan | 134,000 | 1 | 7 |
| Fokin Valeriy | Russia | 184,000 | 1 | 8 |
| Alexander Ugay | Russia | 606,000 | 1 | 9 |
| Shin Martin | United States | 219,000 | 2 | 1 |
| Jason Sun | China | 560,000 | 2 | 2 |
| Hyun Hyu Bae | Canada | 468,000 | 2 | 3 |
| Yuk, Kam Ip | United States | 739,000 | 2 | 4 |
| Sachiko Harima | Japan | 323,000 | 2 | 5 |
| Paul Hong | New Zealand | 743,000 | 2 | 6 |
| Okabe Shoei (DB) | Japan | 195,000 | 2 | 9 |
| Jinwoo Kim | United States | 767,000 | 3 | 1 |
| Sang Gu, Kim | United States | 450,000 | 3 | 2 |
| Shota Masuda | Japan | 166,000 | 3 | 5 |
| Teruhisa Aoyama | Japan | 764,000 | 3 | 6 |
| Kelvin Beattie | Japan | 350,000 | 3 | 7 |
| Lei Chen (DB) | China | 530,000 | 3 | 8 |
| Shota Hirao | Japan | 280,000 | 3 | 9 |
Eric Ahn wins the Deep Stack Turbo 1
There were two side events running alongside the main with the Deep Stack Turbo 1 wrapping up first. By the roars and cheers, it was a thrilling game. USA’s Eric Ahn overcame the 55 entry field to claim his first-ever APT event trophy and the KRW 2,376,000 first prize.
Eric Ahn, Deep Stack Turbo winner
Ahn defeated Japan’s Hideaki Ohashi at heads up, initially crippling him down to one bb with 5♠ 5♥ full house over K♠ J♥ with both all in preflop. The board landed 5♦ A♠ 4♣ 9♣ 9♥. Ohashi was eliminated on the next hand.
One of the big stories of the event was Hanmin Cho who went from just a 200 stack (blinds at 150-300) all the way up to 3rd place. That just goes to show… all you need is a chip and a chair!
Payouts
Prize pool: KRW 8,002,000 – Buyin: KRW 165,000
1st Eric Ahn – USA – KRW 2,376,000
2nd Hideaki Ohashi – Japan – KRW 1,584,000
3rd Hanmin Cho – KRW 1,095,000
4th Hung Sheng Lin – Taiwan – KRW 785,000
5th Hyeonwoo An – Paraguay – KRW 449,000
6th Yoonjin Chung – USA – KRW 359,000
7th Shintaro Komine – Japan – KRW 297,000
8th Sota Kawabata – Japan – KRW 255,000
9th David Scott Shepherd – USA – KRW 219,000
Ryan Park wins the No Limit Hold’em 2
44 players made their way to the No Limit Hold’em 2 event and after a grueling 11 hours of play, Ryan Park was able to close it, defeating Hajime Iwakura at heads up. Like all the winners of the festival so far, Park captured his first-ever APT title along with KRW 6,736,000 in cash.
Ryan Park, NLH 2 winner
Just before Park’s victory, he landed a big double up with K♦ 10♣ over Iwakura’s A♥ 10♥ with the board running 2♣ K♥ 2♦ 3♠ 8♠. Not long after, Iwakura was all in with 8♥ 4♥ on a flop of 9♥ 6♣ 5♦ and needed a four-outer to overtake Park’s J♠ J♥. However, it didn’t materialize with the turn 10♣ and river 5♠, to crown Park the latest side event champion.
Payouts
Prize pool: KRW 21,340,000 – Buyin: KRW 550,000
1st Ryan Park – USA – KRW 6,736,000
2nd Hajime Iwakura – Japan – KRW 4,491,000
3rd Luen Hei Kwok – Hong Kong – KRW 3,104,000
4th Tsun Ming Chan – Hong Kong – KRW 2,224,000
5th Shinichiro Fujioka – Japan – KRW 1,653,000
6th Otsuka Shota – Japan – KRW 1,273,000
7th Kenji Hata – Japan – KRW 1,017,000
8th Sang Soo Park – USA – KRW 842,000