APT Taipei opens in style with biggest field in tour’s history

"This is my first trophy in my tournament career," Park said following his victory, via the aid of a translator. "I still can't believe that I won in this kind of a big tournament!"

His win comes with the additional prize of a seat in November's APT Championship Main Event, and Park was clear he will be taking the challenge seriously.

"I will be enjoying the win for today but I will try to prepare as much as I can right away; I've got a ticket for such a huge tournament.

"I'm not sure if I'm capable of playing in this kind of a tournament, but for sure I will do my best studying and preparing for the Championship."

Park's win also comes with a seat in the APT Championship Main Event this November.

It wasn’t just the player from Korea who raised the bar in this opening event of APT Taipei 2026.

The tour has been setting new records on a regular basis in the past few years, but with each enormous prizepool, massive field or huge first-place prize, those records get harder to break. Part of raising the bar is realizing that it can’t rise forever.

That moment will come, but signs suggest it won’t be this week.

Good omens

The 2,940 entries in the National Cup make it the largest field ever seen at the APT.

The $919K prizepool also makes it the richest opening event in the tour’s history.

Anyone searching for omens, for signs pointing to the health of poker in Taipei and the region beyond, will be encouraged.

While the National Cup broke records, it’s not exactly one of the biggest buy-in tourneys on the schedule. The Super High Roller, on the other hand, is.

Day 1 for that $10K event just played out over at the Asia Poker Arena, and easily blew past its $476K guarantee to the tune of $1.3 million.

Ethan 'Rampage' Yau is one of the chip leaders in the $10K Super High Roller.

With the first starting flight of the $1,700 Main Event taking place on Sunday, April 26 — and a $2.2M guarantee in place — tournament organizers will be keen to see whether these early encouraging signs will translate to another bumper field there too.

1,474 entrants is the magic number needed to meet the Main Event’s guarantee; we’ll learn how successfully that trick’s been pulled off when registration closes on Wednesday.

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A masked man and a misclick

The National Cup — sponsored by the APT’s new training partner, DeepRun — opened the festival with two of six starting flights on Wednesday, April 22. They drew combined crowds of 545 to the Red Space events center, followed by two Day 1s on April 23 which contributed 834 more.

But the end of the week would see the floodgates truly open.

Friday’s final two starting flights together brought a further 1,561, more than half the field, cementing the tournament’s place in APT history. Though, if current trends continue, that place may be precarious.

Each Day 1 played down to just 5% of the field, ensuring action could be wrapped and a winner crowned on Saturday’s Day 2. 30-minute levels also played their part, and by the first break of the day the 148 survivors were down to just 75.

Li Chiang Lu of Taiwan.

By the second break that number would be 30, and by the third, 14. Soon afterward, the final table was set, with Taiwan’s Li Chiang Lu holding a commanding chip lead, with a stack bigger than 2nd and 3rd places combined.

The oldest player at the table, with both children and grandchildren on the rail, Lu would hold the lead for some time before losing a big pot to Yongwon Jo. The Korean — bedecked in hoodie, sunglasses and mask — would use the lead to take control of the table as players continued to fall.

Picking up pot after pot, uncontested, it was as if no one at the table could get a reliable read on him.

Korea's Yongwon Jo (you'll have to take our word for it).

Lu finally went out in 6th to something of a sickener.

With blinds at 800K/1.6M with a 1.6M big blind ante, Lu raised to 6M from under-the-gun with . It folded to Yoong Shen Ding in the cutoff, who announced ‘raise’ and put out a min-raise to 3.2M. When Ding noticed that Lu had already raised, he protested and tried to fold, but the floor ruled it a raise to 10.4M.

An angle? Not likely. Ding had only , and was forced to put in half his remaining chips against an UTG raise.

Lu called, the flop was kind, but the on the turn was a dagger he wouldn’t recover from. The on the river was not the 7 he needed to escape.

The luck goes both ways

That lucky break put Ding in the driver’s seat, and when his held against Hsi Yung Du’s soon afterwards to take the tourney down to four, his grip on the tournament tightened.

Chu Yang Chiang of Taiwan was next to go, before a big confrontation between Daeyoung Park and Yongwon Jo would decide who would face Ding heads-up.

With even stacks, Jo raised preflop with , led on the flop and shoved on the turn. Park called along — after some careful thought and a couple of timebanks — eventually turning over and leaving Jo needing an ace or ten to stay alive.

The river was a brick if ever there was one, and the tourney was down to two.

Yoong Shen Ding of Malaysia.

Heads-up play began with stacks close to level, Ding holding the slight lead. Park would more than pull back, though, and was ahead by 50M to 40M when the clock was paused to discuss a deal.

An ICM deal was struck, giving Park $107K and Ding $98K, with a further $5K plus the trophy, the title and the seat in the APT Championship Main Event stll to be contested.

$5K is just a fraction of what each had locked up, so one may have expected a quick resolution. But that would be overlooking three important things: that APT Championship seat is worth $10K, those Golden Lion trophies are just awesome, and chances to win an APT title don’t come along every day.

They wanted it, and it showed. Neither player went quietly, and by the time the last hand was dealt there were fewer than 40 big blinds in play.

They ended up going to Park, after a huge gamble paid off.

Park called for his tournament life with a dominated hand.

With stacks so close to even that the chip leader was unknown, Ding shoved preflop with and Park called with .

It looked like Ding was poised to claim the title until Park paired his six on the flop. Hopes of salvation for Ding were dashed when, instead of the ten he needed, the runout brought only the and to deliver Park the nut flush and the win.

The stacks were so close in size that it was only once both had been counted that Park’s win was confirmed.

After more than 12 hours of play on the final day, and close to 3,000 players eliminated, Daeyoung Park has written his name in the history books of the APT as the last man standing from the tour's biggest ever field.

Just how long he holds onto that title, we’ll have to see.

APT National Cup, Sponsored by DeepRun - final table results

*Denotes heads-up ICM deal. First place also receives entry to the APT Championship Main Event.

Note that all dollar amounts mentioned in this article have been converted from Taiwanese New Dollars, are approximate and correct at time of writing.

^{Images courtesy of APT.}