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The flagship live tournament offering by PokerStars in Asia, the Asia Pacific Poker Tour (APPT) has come visiting South Korea for the second time since its first stop in Incheon in April this year. This is the inaugural run for the APPT in Jeju with the Shinhwa World’s Landing Casino playing host to the proceedings. The series kicked off on June 22 and has come to a close today after crowning the champion at the second and final ₩6,000,000 buy-in (~₹3.57 Lakhs) High Roller on the schedule. The event was initially conceptualized as a three-day affair, but the low turnout saw the tournament organizers changing this into a two-day event. Besting the field of 39 runners was China’s Liuheng Dai who took home a career-best ₩70,999,000 (~$61,400 – ₹42.33 Lakhs) in prize money.
As reported earlier, two players from India are in attendance at the series, and they have been keeping busy. The more active of the duo, Sahil Chuttani, entered this event fresh off a 36th place finish in the Main Event a few days ago and he took fifth place in the High Roller for ₩18,794,000 (₹11.20 Lakhs). Shortly after his Main Event run, Chuttani was seen selling action for the High Roller on Social Media. He sold 25% to Ujjwal Narwal (20%) and Vivek Rughani (5%), earning them almost 250%+ profit on their investment.
Chuttani bagged the 11th largest stack of 111,000 (36 BB’s) on Day 1 among 13 survivors and even took over the chip lead once the play got down to seven-handed. He eventually busted fifth collecting ₩18,794,000 (₹11.20 Lakhs) for his blistering run.
Like in the Main Event, here too, Amanpreet Singh was the only other Indian in the field, and he once hit the rail empty-handed.
The event drew a modest 39 entries (27 unique players and 12 re-entries) that helped collect ₩208,822,000 (-₹1.24 Crores) in the prize pool. The top six places were paid with a min-cash good for ₩14,618,000 (~$12,600 – ₹8.71 Lakhs).
Final Table Chip Counts
Final Table Recap
The short-stacked Christopher Park was the first to leave after losing his tournament life in a flip holding pocket sevens to Yang Zhang`s .
India`s Sahil Chuttani took out the next player, and it was the short-stacked Yuan Yilu who got the boot. The hand in question saw Yilu moving all-in with his seven big blind stack holding , and Chuttani called tabling . The board blanked out, and Yilu was eliminated in eighth place. Chuttani took over the chip lead after this hand while play tightened up as the money bubble was looming.
The next report worthy hand was a crucial one for Chuttani, who lost a massive pot to Ye Wan to become one of the shorter stacks.
Chuttani, however, sailed past the money bubble as Yang Zhang eventually bubbled the event in seventh place.
Xingbiao Zhu became the first player to bust in the money when in a preflop all-in confrontation, his aces got cracked by Ye Wang’s . The board ran and Zhu hit the rail in sixth place.
Chuttani was the next one out, and he got it in with against Hao Tian’s . Hao rivered a full house on the board eliminating Chuttani in fifth place, good for ₩18.79 Million (~₹11.20 Lakhs) in prize money.
Hao Tian busted in fourth place in what turned out to be the biggest hand of the tournament so far. It was a three-way showdown where Ye Wang moved all-in with , and both Hao Tian () and Liuheng Dai () made the call. Dai scooped the pot after hitting a king on the river. Tian was eliminated while Wang was literally on life support.
In the very next hand, Wang moved all-in holding pocket treys, and he found two caller – Dai and Zhu . The duo checked all streets on the rundown . Dai took down the pot with his pair of eights eliminating Wang in third place.
Heads-up action began with Dai commanding a considerable chip lead over Zhu, but the latter quickly turned things around. The chip lead kept exchanging hands till finally, Dai held all the chips in play. In the end, it came down to classic cooler with Dai’s pocket kings up against Zhu’s pocket queens and with no element of surprise on the board, Dai was declared the champion and awarded ₩70,999,000 in prize money.
Final Results (KRW)