HomePoker players continued to flood the APT Kickoff Vietnam 2018 with another big day of chip shufflers hustling in to the Pro Poker Club. The day’s highlights were the NLH Two Day event, the second Main Event Mega Satellite, and the final table of the Head Hunter Bounty tournament. We’ve got those recaps for you below.
Jimmy Diep rules above all Bounty Hunters
The hunt for heads and the ultimate bounty title resumed earlier today with the final 10 players out of the 130 initial gunners back at the felt. Five hours later, the champion emerged with Vietnam’s Jimmy Diep overcoming a huge deficit at heads up to claim the title. He scooped up the VND 85,400,000 first prize and the event trophy.
Head Hunter Champion, Jimmy Diep
Action picked up from an overnight break with the three shortest stacks quickly guttered. Next one railed was USA’s Nick Gorman leaving an all Vietnamese-descent final table. Drawing first blood was Diep, booting out Minh Trung Tran in 6th place. This was followed by Le Hoai Nam going on a killing spree, scalping the next three players – Thuy Pham Duong (5th), Tony Khoang (4th), and Pham Hong Quan (3rd).
Heads up: Diep versus Nam
With Nam running red hot, he entered the heads up round packed with 85 percent of the chips in play. Initial action was light with barely a flop seen on the first ten hands. However on Hand #11, Diep scored his first double up to slowly climb out of the hole. During the hand, Nam check-raised all in on 5♦ 5♣ 8♣ and Diep snap-called. Nam had Q♣ 9♦ and Diep with 5♠ 10♥ trips. The turn A♥ and river Q♥ completed the board.
After another series of hands and pots going back and forth, Diep shipped in his next big double up and this time he took over the chip lead. Diep min-raised, Nam shoved, and Diep with the lightning call. Diep had A♠ A♥ and easily won over Nam’s A♦ 4♣.
Despite the big drop in chips, Nam was able to claw his way back, doubling up and winning multiple small pots to retake the lead by a very small margin. However it was still not his trophy to shelf. On Hand #37, he was crippled down to one small blind. On a spread of J♠ A♦ 6♥ A♣ 2♠, Nam check-called Diep the entire run including the shove on the river. Nam held J♥ 5♠ for two pair but with Diep turning over J♦ 7♣, the higher kicker played. Diep eliminated Nam on the next hand to seize his first-ever APT title. In addition to the cash prize, Diep earned VND 10M in bounties.
Final 10 Payouts: Prize pool VND 374,400,000
130 Entrants / Buy-in: VND 4,400,000
1st Jimmy Diep – Vietnam – VND 85,400,000
2nd Le Hoai Nam – Vietnam – VND 56,950,000
3rd Pham Hong Quan – Vietnam – 39,500,000
4th Tony Khoang – Netherlands – VND 28,490,000
5th Thuy Pham Duong – Vietnam – VND 21,420,000
6th Minh Trung Tran – USA – VND 16,740,000
7th Nicholas Gorman – USA – VND 13,630,000
8th Tran Anh Dung – Vietnam – VND 11,530,000
9th John Pham – Vietnam – VND 10,150,000
10th Nguyen Thi Xoa – Vietnam – VND 8,870,000
38 players remain at the NLH Two Day event
The flavor of the day was the NLH Two Day event and alike the previous days, this too had a long line of players eager for a spot. By the end of registration, there were 168 entries in total, and with each entry ponying up VND 11,000,000, the prize pool grew to an enormous VND 1,629,600,000. Out of that juicy pot, VND 344,823,000 will go to the eventual champion.
Today’s game had a slight change with regulation play extended an extra three rounds. Bagging time arrived just before the midnight hour. Vietnam’s Bui Dinh Nam earned the chip leader status with his gynormous stack of 488,000. To give you an idea of how big that is, that’s nearly 300K above average stack.
The event closed with 38 players which was still ten spots away from the money round. While there were well-known pros and regulars that attended, only several survived the long stretch. Among them were Huy Pham, Kosei Ichinose, Harry Duong, Huu Dung Nguyen, Katsuhiro Muto, and Alecz Chan.
The NLH Two Day event will resume tomorrow, Tuesday, January 23 at 130pm.
Events on Tuesday, January 23
Kickoff action continues with more events on deck so make sure to read on for all the details. On Tuesday, January 23rd, we’ve got our biggest event, the Main Event VND 3,000,000,000 Guaranteed on center stage. The first starting day – Day 1A – has already taken place with 70 players out of 138 entrants making it through to Day 2. Day 1B is up next with action promptly at 1pm. Buy-in is VND 16,500,000. See here for all the details.
For those looking to get in at a lower cost, there will be a Main Event Mega Satellite at 5pm. There are only four of these offered with the first two already completed. So far, a combined total of 15 seats have been awarded.
And at 3pm, we’ve got one side event for you, the Super Deep Stack Turbo 1. This is the first of seven turbo events offered. Buy-in to this event is VND 4,400,000.
Full APT Kickoff Vietnam 2018 schedule