Stephen Pang Wins Record APT Incheon Main Event
Fred Leung said the stop set a high bar in a crowded Asian market as the tour turns toward Jeju and Taipei.
The Asian Poker Tour wrapped up its Incheon stop on Sunday after 10 days and 106 events, with Lion trophies handed out across the schedule and the Main Event finishing at a record 1,393 entries from 807 unique players.
As covered in our Aug. 8 report on the Korea National Cup, the festival had already started strong with record numbers. According to poker.org, APT CEO Fred Leung said the series set a very high bar and that this was largely what the tour had planned, even as he described the Asian poker scene as the most competitive it has been in his 18 years in the game.
Leung said the pressure now comes not just from other poker tours, but from more aggressive schedules and from other activities competing for people’s attention. He also said APT has to keep improving and pushing new ideas rather than repeating the same old formula.
He pointed to the way different stops draw different player pools. Korean nationals cannot play in Korea, which he said can account for 30% to 40% of a field, while Incheon has a high share of Japanese players and has benefited from the growth of APT’s partnership with JOPT. Leung also said Jeju tends to work better for bigger buy-ins because it has a stronger concentration of Chinese players and is visa-free, while Taipei tends to post bigger numbers because locals can play there.
The official APT update showed the Main Event already had momentum well before the finish. By Aug. 11, after Flights C and D, the field had reached 1,177 entries with 419 players advancing to Day 2, the KRW 1.5 billion guarantee had already been cleared midway through Flight C, and the prize pool stood at KRW 2.54 billion, or about $1.8 million.
CardPlayer reported that Stephen Pang finished the job at Paradise City Casino resort, winning the APT Incheon Main Event title, the lion trophy and $293,700. The final field settled at 1,393 total entries and 807 unique players, the biggest APT main event ever held in Incheon, and the prize pool was shared by 207 in-the-money finishers.
Pang’s win was not a clean runaway. Shoumin Zhang was briefly left with just over one big blind after a count-down, then doubled four times to stay alive before Pang shut the door, and Pang, Zhang and Yifu He also earned $10,000 seats to the APT Championship main event in Taipei in November.
The tour now heads to Jeju from 25 September to 4 October, before the APT Championship runs in Taipei from 13 to 29 November.
