All Remaining Players Guaranteed at Least TWD 844,300 (~USD 27,060)

APT CHAMPIONSHIP 2025 SCHEDULE | OFFICIAL RESULTS | PLAYER LISTS | LIVE REPORTING | IMAGES | WINNERS

TAIPEI, TAIWAN, November 26, 2025 – The biggest and richest USD 10K buy-in tournament to run outside of Las Vegas in the last decade, and the largest and wealthiest ever to run in Asia has reached the business end.

Playing out at the tournament tables of the cavernous Red Space 多元商務空間 and run in partnership with the Chinese Texas Hold’em Poker Club (CTP), Day 3 of the TWD 311,000 (~USD 10,000) APT Championship Main Event Freezeout saw the 133 Day 2 survivors from the initial 671 entries return to battle at the baize for a place in the paying positions.

Only 95 players would cash for a share of the massive TWD 194,080,973 (~USD 6,220,550) prize pool—the richest in APT history—while the remaining 38 would depart with nothing but a USD 10K bad beat story to tell their friends.

At least two sets of family and friends will have a real doozy of a story to listen to, with both Kazakhstan’s Sukhrat Massimov and Japan’s Shinya Maeda getting their pocket aces cracked as the bubble approached.

Of the two, it is Maeda who has the real sob story however, with Massimov left with a single 1K chip after his pocket rockets were shot down in flames, allowing the Kazakh player to squeak into the money.

Maeda was not so fortunate on the stone bubble, getting all the chips in preflop against the Philippines’ John Constiniano.

While Maeda’s aces were leading Constinino’s speculative queen-five, a queen on the flop and a five on the turn spelled disaster for the Japanese player, whose departure guaranteed the remaining field a TWD 572,500 (~USD 18,350) payday.

Shinya Maeda gets aces cracked to exit on the money bubble

This opened the floodgates for a slew of eliminations, with several notable hitting the rail shortly afterwards.

Former APT Mystery Bounty champion Isaac Phua, PLO Championship winner Kok Wei Teoh, Massimov, poker vlogger Frankie Cucchiara, Super High Roller Championship winner Roman Hrabec, and former APT Super High Roller champion Julian Warhurst were just some of the first paying casualties.

They were followed to the rail by the likes of Poker All Time Money List #15 Steve O’Dwyer, Australia’s Daniel Neilson, and Natural8 Ambassador Phachara Wongwichit, who all exited with a min-cash.

Only 34 players survived to bag chips at the end of Day 3, with APT tour regular Hao Shan Huang of Taiwan (2,727,000) sitting at the summit of the chip counts.

Hunag will return in the best of positions to make his play for the monstrous TWD 37,030,773 (~USD 1,186,880) first place prize, plus the exclusive APT Championship Gold Lion Main Event Trophy.

Alexandru Papazian (2,693,000) sits a close second, and the Romanian All Time Money List #1 will be looking to pad out his USD 4 million in live tournament winnings with a deep Main Event run.

Romanian All Time Money List #1 Alexandru Papazian

Only Huang and Papazian cracked the 2 million chip barrier, with Neng Zhao (1,688,000) rounding out the top three; the Australian player is looking to claim his second APT career title in the tour’s richest-ever tournament.

Other notables to bag a top ten stack include Lithuania’s Matas Cimbolas (1,624,000), computational wizard Dominik Nitsche (1,504,000), India’s Nishant Sharma (1,329,000), and Ankit Ahuja (1,303,000), and Singapore’s Jun Hao Wu(1,286,000).

MAIN EVENT TOP TEN DAY 3 STACKS

Other notables to make it through outside of the top ten include German bracelet winner Martin Finger (1,275,000), Malaysia’s Ben Loo (1,013,000), former APT High Roller champion Martin Sedlak (893,000), start-of-day chip leader Dohang Na(867,000), and bubble burster John Costiniano (318,000).

The 34 survivors will return for Day 4 at 11:15am on Thursday, November 27, all hoping to lock up a seat on the final table of the APT’s richest-ever tournament.

For Main Event Day 3 Player List please CLICK HERE

For Main Event Day 3 Survivors please CLICK HERE

For Main Event Day 4 Draw please CLICK HERE

For Main Event Results please CLICK HERE

All tournament information can be found on the APT Championship Main Event Freezeout Day 3 tournament page and you can follow all the action via the Main Event Day 3 APT Blog.

You can also watch all the action as it happened via the Main Event Day 3 live stream on the official APT YouTube channel.

The exclusive Gold Lion APT Main Event Trophy will be awarded on the Final Day, which will play out at 11:15am on Friday, November 28.