HomeFrom 75 players down to the final 20!
Day 2 of the APT Main Event wrapped up with Malaysia’s Choong Kian Weng simply in a league of his own. Weng bagged up an enormous stack of 852,000 with no one even coming close to his thundering arsenal.
Main Event Day 2 Chip Leader, Choong Kian Weng
At the start of Day 2, the three players on top of the charts were Weng, Yang Song, and Peng Fei Liu. Out of the three, it was Song who first distanced himself from the pack, winning multiple pots very early with his aggressive style. But his domination wasn’t meant to be. He ran into a cooler against Saul Oliver with A♦ A♣ over K♦ K♠ to send his stack plummeting. Despite his efforts, he was unable to recover and bowed out in the middle of the day.
Unlike Song, Weng was never at risk of losing it all. From the get-go, he consistently built up his stack and maintained it throughout the day. While there were many pots that contributed to his rise, it wasn’t until later where he began to pull away from being one of the big stacks to amassing a serious monster stack. One of the largest pots he won was in the seventh hour against Jaydeep Dawer with his top two pair. Read here for the Hand history.
On the last level of the night, Weng claimed another fat pot, this time taking around 165k of Zurvan Tumboli’s chips. The hand began with Tumboli raising to 16k, Weng three-betting to 46k, then Tumboli making the call. At the flop of 4♣ 2♥ 4♦, Weng continued with a 35k bet and Tumboli called. On the 7♦ turn, Weng fired out 83k, and Tumboli continued to match it up. Then on the J♥ river, both players checked and Weng was awarded the pot for his Q♣ Q♠. This alone drove his stack to 900k.
Finishing second in command was Liu, and as mentioned earlier, he was also one of Day 2’s entering chip leaders. Liu’s stack may not be nearly as massive as Weng’s but 535,000 is almost double the average stack. Alike Weng, Liu also took charge of his table and held the chip lead at various times midday. At about the same time that Song took a big hit, Liu was seen gobbling up chips like they were going out of style and was the demise of several in his path.
One player also hitting players at his table was Oliver. For those who may not know, Oliver ran deep in APT Macau 2016, eventually finishing in 7th place. With that said, this young Spaniard was highly active in both giving and receiving chips. At the start of the day he seemed to have Michael Soyza’s number, and even picked up a sizable pot for his quad aces. Although his stack seesawed a bit, he was always above average stack. He bagged up 452,000 in chips. Soyza made it through as well with 278,000.
In addition to the leaders, two time APT Main Event champion Henrik Tollefsen also survived the day bagging up 341,00 in chips. On the flip side, past champions Vietnam’s Linh Tran and Huu Dung Nguyen were among those not so fortunate in Day 2.
With 20 players remaining, that means two players will head home empty-handed in Day 3 as payouts start at 18 players.
You can read up on some of the exciting action in the Live Reporting page. Chip counts and eventual payouts can also be viewed there.
The APT Main Event saw a total of 118 players, each one ponying up the HKD 19,800 entry fee. With a prize pool amounting to HKD 2,039,000, the eventual winner is looking at shipping in the HKD 521,000 first place purse.