The 2019 APT Vietnam Kickoff is underway at the Pro Poker Club in Ho Chi Minh. Among plenty of tournaments scheduled between 9-20 January, the highlight events at the series are the Main Event and the Championships Event. Team India continues to be on a roll with Abhinav Iyer shipping the Main Event a couple of days ago and 7 Indians making Day 2 of the Championship event yesterday.
After Iyer’s Main Event win, several Indian players decided to enter the Championships Event, which features a hefty VND 6 Billion guarantee (INR 1.84 Crores). The Day 1A of the Championships Event, took place yesterday and registered 123 entries in total. After the day end, only 60 players survived out of 123 entries. They all will return for Day 2 play and will be joined by survivors from Day 1B.
Among these 60 players making Day 2 from the first starting flight, 7 are our Indian challengers and they are led by Vinod Megalmani (123,400). Megalmani is followed by Adda52 Team Pro Kunal Patni (102,900). Other Indians include Madhav Gupta (100,400 chips), Eka Vedantham (86,800), Shravan Chhabria (79,600), Aditya Sushant (79,400), and Dhaval Mudgal (61,100 chips).
The chip leader to emerge from Day 1A of the event was the local pro Dinh Xuan Dinh who bagged a stack of 245,900, a little ahead of Korea’s Soo Jo Kim (229,200) who is a former APT Main Event champion. The other big stacks included Duy Thanh Dang ( 213,800), Lim Yo Hwan (205,900), Nguyen Tuan Anh (194,800), Erik Billgren (194,500) and Kyung Kun Lee (183,800) to name a few.
While the Main Event of the ongoing series has been the key attraction, the VND 6 Billion guarantee Championships Event is equally popular with the prize pool already having crossed VND 4.3 billion after the very first starting flight. We are now expecting the VND 6 Billion guarantee to be easily crossed later today. Keep following Online Poker News (OPN) for updates from the event.
Top 10 Chip Counts At Day 1A End
- Dinh Xuan Dinh – 245,900
- Soo Jo Kim – 229,200
- Duy Thanh Dang – 213,800
- Lim Yo Hwan – 205,900
- Nguyen Tuan Anh – 194,800
- Erik Billgren – 194,500
- Kyung Kun Lee – 183,800
- Slaven Popov – 172,500
- Duy Ho – 162,200
- Tuan Monaco – 153,500
