Minwoong Jeong Captures PokerStars APPT Manila Championship Title ($202,981)
The curtain came down on the 2025 PokerStars Asia Pacific Poker Tour (APPT) season with the crowning of the APPT Manila Championship champion. With re-entries included, 384 players exchanged PHP 165,000 (approx. $2,900) for the chance to become this event's champion. South Korea's Minwoong Jeong is the man who will forever be known for taking down this tournament. He banked a career-best PHP 11,850,000 ($202,981).
The top 55 finishers secured a slice of the PHP 60,000,000 ($1,027,753) prize pool. Familiar names such as Bernard Vu, 2025 APPT Manila Main Event champion Justin Ong, and 2025 WPT Prime Cambodia winner Alexander Puchalski were among them; the latter busted in tenth place and popped the final table bubble.
APPT Manila Championship Final Table Results
| Rank | Player | Country | Prize (PHP) | Prize (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Minwoong Jeong | South Korea | 11,850,000 | $202,981 |
| 2 | Craig Jones | United Kingdom | 7,405,000 | $126,842 |
| 3 | Eng Choi | Malaysia | 5,290,000 | $90,614 |
| 4 | Aditya Agarwal | India | 4,071,000 | $69,733 |
| 5 | Van Sang Nguyen | Vietnam | 3,132,000 | $53,649 |
| 6 | Waris Soontorn | Thailand | 2,409,000 | $41,264 |
| 7 | Anonymous | Netherlands | 1,853,000 | $31,740 |
| 8 | Ngoc Anh Cao | Vietnam | 1,528,000 | $26,173 |
| 9 | Daniel Lei | United States | 1,276,000 | $21,857 |
Daniel Lei, who finished fifth in this year's $1,500 Monster Stack at the World Series of Poker (WSOP), was the first APPT Manila Championship finalist to run out of steam. Talented Vietnamese grinder Ngoc Anh Cao joined Lei on the rail after coming unstuck in eighth place.
A Dutch player wishing to remain under a shroud of anonymity fell in seventh before Thailand's Waris Soontorn fell in sixth. Soontorn's only other in-the-money finish came early in the APPT Mania Championship festival. That netted him the equivalent of $1,170, with this final table appearance boosting his bankroll by another $41,264.
Another Vietnamese national, Van Sang Nguyen saw his latest deep run end in fifth place. Nguyen is a prolific tournament player withmore than 1,800 recorded live and online cashes. The prize money he collected in this Manila event pushed Nguyen through the $1 million barrier for live cashes.
India's Aditya "Bitti" Agarwal was the fourth-place finisher, which earned them the equivalent of a career-best $69,733. It was Agarwal's third five-figure score and their first since February 2016.
The APPT Manila Championship event progressed to the heads-up stage after Eng Choi crashed by the wayside in third. At the start of 2025, Choi scooped $89,741 after triumphing in an A$5,000 buy-in event at the Victorian Poker Championship in Melbourne. Choi may not have captured the title in this Philippines-based tournament, but the $90,614 he was awarded represents a new high score for the Malaysian.
Heads-up pitted the United Kingdom's Craig Jones against South Korea's Minwoong Jeong. Based on his recorded tournament results, it appears Jones may live in Asia as 30 of his 35 results stem from the region. Although Jones completed a hat trick of Asian victories in June, his wait for a fourth trophy goes on because he fell at the final hurdle and had to console himself with a $126,842 consolation prize.
Jeong, a player with just shy of $20,000 in live poker winnings before this tournament, now has a $202,981 score on his Hendon Mob profile along with a trophy to remind him of the day he became the 2025 APPT Manila Championship champion.
