Bin Wang Has the Best Songs on Day 1c of the TLPT Jeju Circuit Main Event
It was a busy day in the poker room of Landing Casino inside of the luxurious Jeju Shinhwa World Resort on Jeju Island as the second day of The Lord Poker Tournament Jeju festival kicked into higher gear. With three tournaments running simultaneously, the penultimate flight for Event #2 Circuit Series Main Event filled the lavish poker room with plenty of action, laughter and string of emotions.
The third starting day came with a buy-in of US$750 and attracted the strongest turnout thus far with a total of 210 entries, of which the top 16 finishers advanced to the money stages. However, an equally big figure is required in the final US$2,000 heat 1d which kicked off later in the evening to get close to meeting the US$700,000 guarantee.
At the time of writing, the final chance had accelerated to more than 130 entries of which the top 20% finishers will join all of the survivors of the previous three Day 1. That tally has now reached 25 players and may be doubled in the early morning hours when Day 1d will conclude.
A new overall chip leader was crowned as Bin Wang soared all the way to 877,000 in chips after a very active performance close to and on the Day 1c money bubble. Another two players bagged up more than half a million in chips including Yang Liu and Jiaming Zhao, while the two American pros Stephen Song and Yunkyu Song also advanced with top ten stacks.
Top 10 Chip Counts After Day 1c
| Rank | Player | Country | Chip Count | BB Day 2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bin Wang | China | 877,000 | 175 |
| 2 | Yang Liu | China | 620,000 | 124 |
| 3 | Jiaming Zhao | China | 589,000 | 118 |
| 4 | Stephen Song | United States | 492,000 | 98 |
| 5 | Boxin Jin | China | 412,000 | 82 |
| 6 | Yunkyu Song | United States | 374,000 | 75 |
| 7 | William Jia | Australia | 369,000 | 74 |
| 8 | Yu Zheng | China | 300,000 | 60 |
| 9 | Kaihua Liu | China | 266,000 | 53 |
| 10 | Gailiang Chen | China | 235,000 | 47 |
Song was eventually responsible for bursting the money bubble when he isolated the preflop all-in of Kai Cui with ace-queen and remained ahead against ace-eight. The third time was the charm for Song, who bagged up a very healthy 492,000 in chips. His namesake scored a big double on the final three tables through Fangui Zeng, who had his own memorable topsy-turvy story that almost the entire poker room knew about.
Zeng applied a high-risk playing style to get a lot of chips with the largest clash seeing his jack-three suited cracking pocket aces after which he vividly exclaimed "power, power, power" in a very emotional outburst. However, he also doubled Jiaming Zhao in the same manner a few levels later and missed out on the money stages by a few spots.
Four Chinese WSOP bracelet winners entered the fray today including Renji Mao, Yinan Zhou, Lei Yu and Dong Chen but none of them qualified for Day 2 just yet through the penultimate flight. Chen came the closest on the final three tables but his treys stood no chance against the pocket jacks of Xian Xiao.
Other big names that came and left without anything to show for but their buy-in slips were Dan "Jungleman" Cates, Christian Harder, Raffaele Sorrentino, Anton Lu, Julian Warhurst, Sean Ooi, and TLPT founder Quan Zhou.
The 16 Day 1c survivors locked up a reward of US$1,500 for their efforts but much higher cash prizes await on Day 2, which is set to kick off at noon local time on Thursday, May 15, 2025. On the penultimate tournament day, the schedule indicates a race towards the nine-handed final table which will then be live-streamed until a champion has been crowned the following day. Blinds will roll back to level 14 with 3,000-5,000 and a big blind ante of 5,000 as well as an increased level duration of 40 minutes each.
Day 1 Overview
| Flight | Buy-In | Level Duration | In the Money | Entries | Qualified Day 2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Day 1a | $500 | 20 minutes | Top 5% | 69 | 4 |
| Day 1b | $1,000 | 30 minutes | Top 10% | 45 | 5 |
| Day 1c | $750 | 20 minutes | Top 7.5% | 210 | 16 |
| Day 1d | $2,000 | 40 minutes | Top 20% | tba | tba |
Stay tuned right here on PokerNews as the live reporting team will be on the floor in South Korea to provide updates from most key events throughout the entire TLPT Jeju festival until May 22, 2025.