Main Event action of Asia Pacific Poker Tour (APPT) Season 9 Seoul kicked off today at the Paradise Walkerhill Casino. After 8 levels of play, the field of 116 runners was slashed down to 42 survivors led by Alex Ward of the United Kingdom. Alex racked up 133,800 chips, the biggest stack of the day by the end of day’s play.
China’s Yunye Lu who sits in the 2nd place on APPT Asia Player of the Year leaderboard finished the day’s play with 101,100 chips. The Canadian player Tyler Jennens is the 3rd player to reach six-figure stack on Day 1A.
Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospellier, Naoya Kihara, Bryan Huang, and Aditya Argawal were the notable Team PokerStars Pro in the field on Day 1A. Huang (79,900) advanced with a Top Ten chip stack and Argawal (34,500) also made it to Day 2.
Other notable survivors include 2013 champion Aaron Lim (62,200) , 2013 Asia Player of the Year Jian Yang (37,900), and last year’s champion Chane Kampanatsanyakorn (17,100).
Top 10 Day 1a chip counts are:
| Position | Player | Chips |
| 1 | Alex Ward (UK) | 133,800 |
| 2 | Tyler Jennens (Canada) | 101,900 |
| 3 | Yunye Lu (China) | 101,100 |
| 4 | Toan Ngoc Nguyen (Australia) | 91,200 |
| 5 | Jason Park (USA) | 90,100 |
| 6 | Quan Bin Zhong (China) | 88,900 |
| 7 | Boris Li (Russia) | 86,799 |
| 8 | Lkhagvaa Dugarbaatar (Mongolia) | 80,600 |
| 9 | Bryan Huang (Singapore) | 79,900 |
| 10 | Justin Chan (Hong Kong) | 79,200 |
₩3,000,000 Main Event has one more opening flight left on Friday followed by 2 more days of action. Stay tuned for further updates on APPT 9 Seoul.