Welcome back to the Paradise Walkerhill Casino to PokerNews' Day 1b coverage of the 2015 PokerStars.net APPT Seoul.
Yesterday's Day 1a action saw 116 players take to the felt, but only 44 will return tomorrow for Day 2 action. United Kingdom’s Alex Ward bagged up the biggest stack at 133,800, followed by Tyler Jennens (101,900) and Yunye Lu (101,100) as the only three players to end the day with six-figure stacks.
We expect a similar sized field to take part in today's action which would surpass last years total of 222 entrants. Team PokerStars Pro Celina Lin should take her seat, as will 2014 Asia Championship of Poker Main Event champion Gabriel Le Jossec and Taiwanese rap artist MC HotDog.
Be sure to stay tuned here throughout the day for updates on all of the exciting action as it takes place! See you in just over an hour!
It's an understatement to say that not speaking a Chinese language, whether that's Mandarin or Cantonese, makes you miss out on lots of stuff. Movies, books and music are largely wasted on us English speakers, but traveling to international poker tournaments gives us at least a little insight into what happens on this side of the world.
While we are mostly familiar with Jay-Z, Kanye West and Snoop Dogg, the Chinese youth knows all about MC HotDog's latest hits. Today we're getting a chance to cover this Taiwanese superstar in the APPT Seoul Main Event, and Taiwan's country manager Calvin Shueh told us how the man known as the 'Godfather of Chinese Hip-Hop' loves the game of poker.
"Back in Taipei he plays poker probably once a week," Shueh said about his love for the game.
"He can't just take the subway in Taipei and also, when he's in Macau he's constantly taking pictures and signing autographs for fans."
In 2007 Chung-Jen Yao, MC HotDog's real name, won the prestigious Golden Melody Award Album of the Year Award and his latest album titled Ghetto Superstar took down the Album of the Year award at the Golden Indie Music Awards in 2013. A new album is currently under construction, and perhaps the following song will even make an appearance.
In order to celebrate his ties with PokerStars MCHotDog released a song called Pokerstar, which currently has close to 250,000 views on YouTube. While that might sound like a lot, for someone like MC HotDog it's not much at all. His 10 most famous videos on YouTube all have over a million views, and the highest ranked one comes in at 4.5 million.
With references to poker being a sport and not a gamble, NBA super stars LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony, and raising under the gun it's clear that MC HotDog knows what he's talking about.
While a busy touring schedule keeps him away from the big tournaments tables it's understandable that a big score might be lacking from his poker resume, but a man talented as he is will clearly have his moment in the poker spotlights at some point.
Team PokerStars Pro Kosei Ichinose joined the team back in January of this year, just like Aditya Agarawal who played yesterday, and today the Japanese star makes his patched up debut in Seoul. Ichinose however is absolutely no rookie to the game, as his list of results is quite impressive.
Ichinose became Japan's first Supernova Elite under the handle 'Shinhunshi' and a has been a fierce competitor both live and online for many years. With over $1.7 million in online cashes on PokerStars Ichinose has made quite a name for himself, and live his biggest result to date came last year at this very event when he won the High Roller event for $46,918.
This year Ichinose has played the Aussie Millions and Macau Poker Cup and he looks to really make his mark on the live tournament circuit this year.
Last November it was Canadian pro Gabriel Le Jossec who took down the Asia Championship of Poker Main Event in Macau for a total of $812,361, but he won't add another title to his resume here in Seoul just yet.
"You can't win'em all," Le Jossec sighed, as he got up from his seat to exit the tournament room.
We caught the end of his final hand, which was a big one, that went as following. After a series of raises Le Jossec ended up all in before the flop for right around 22,000 chips against Daniel Kneafsey.
Kneafsey:
Le Jossec:
The board ran out and the ace on the river sent Le Jossec to the rail. Kneafsey's up to more than twice the starting stack and he's looking good early on.
It's not just about the Main Event here in Seoul, as there are plenty of side events going on as well. Grigory Tsoy was lucky enough to take one of the side events down as he managed to win the KRW 350,000 Deepstack event. Tsoy beat a field that including Russian high roller Artem Lobus, Terry Fan and Warm Up winner KC Cheong.
In the end Lobus chopped heads up with Tsoy, and here are the final payout of the event that drew a crowd of 122 players.
Not too long after announcing that we had spotted Dong Kim in the tournament he chipped up, and just now after the break he won the biggest pot of the day.
The action started on Kim during this hand who raised under the gun to 2,000 and the action folded around to Junichi Nakagiri who called from the big blind.
The flop came down and Nakagiri checked to Kim who flicked out 2,500. Nakagiri made the call and on the turn the hit.
Nakagiri opted to check again and this time Kim fired out 5,600. Nakagiri gave it some thought before check-raising to 14,000 and this is when Kim paused. After about 20 seconds Kim called and the river brought the with already 38,000 chips in the middle.
Nakagiri checked almost immediately by tapping the top of his stack, and Kim moved all in for 32,900 after about half a minute. Kim's Japanese opponent went into the tank for several minutes, but ultimately he tossed in the call.
Kim immediately showed for the nut flush, after having flopped two pair, and Nakagiri's ended up in the muck. Kim raked this massive six-figure chip pot and sits on 105,000 chips.
On Day 1b of the PokerStars.net Asia-Pacific Poker Tour Main Event in Seoul, it was all about high-stakes online cash-game player Dong "Donger Kim" Kim. Kim bagged up 82,700 and is in strong contention heading into Day 2, while Takihiro Nakai (186,700) closed out the day with an overwhelming the chip lead.
Kim, who recently beat Nick "TCfromUB" Frame in an epic heads-up challenge for $120,000, will be trying add a tournament title to his poker résumé and his hopes are very much alive. The pro with South Korean roots played one of the biggest pots of the day when his river shove with the nut flush got called by a player who had a straight, and that gave him the chip lead for quite some time. However, Nakai got the best of him in a four-bet pot that gave him the advantage.
The second and final starting day of the APPT Seoul Main Event drew a crowd of 125 players, and 47 of those managed to survive. Together with the 116 players that entered on Day 1a, this tournament has a total of 241 players that created a prize pool of 645 million Korean Won. The winner of this event takes home ₩165,590,200, or about $151,000, and the top 27 places will get paid.
At the start of the day, a slate of familiar faces were in the mix, including Team PokerStars Pro Celina Lin, Winfred Yu, Raymond Wu, and ACOP Main Event winner Gabriel Le Jossec. The French Canadian had an awful day and was among the first to get knocked out when his queens fell to the ace-king of Daniel Kneafsey. Lin did manage to survive the day and will return with 33,400 on Day 2.
Freshly-minted Team PokerStar Pro Kosei Ichinose did not have a good day, either, as the former Supernova Elite got knocked out in the early goings. Other big names we lost on Day 1b included Stevan Chew, Raiden Kan, and MC HotDog. The latter, perhaps not too well known in the Western world, is a superstar in every Chinese speaking region as the award-winning rapper regularly performing at some of the biggest venues.
MC HotDog's performance in Seoul, however, was not as he had hoped, and towards the end of the day the birthday boy was knocked out. Before closing out the chapter of MC HotDog's tournament appearance we had to share the video of his rap about poker. Watch and enjoy:
When play resumes tomorrow, there will be 89 players in contention. Make sure to tune back in to PokerNews.com for a very lengthy second day of play. The goal is to play down to a final table, and the action kicks off at 12 p.m. local time.