While the world watched on, something magical unfolded in Taipei.

There was doubt. Some called it foolish. Some called it ambitious. Others simply didn’t believe. Yet when it mattered most, the Asian Poker Tour Championship (APTC) delivered something no one in the region had ever seen before.

The TWD 311,000 (~USD 10,000) APTC Main Event Championship has rewritten history, drawing an astonishing 671 entries and generating a TWD 194,080,973 (~USD 6.2 million) prize pool. It is the biggest and richest USD 10K freezeout outside of Las Vegas in a decade.

The winner will walk away with TWD 37,030,773 (~USD 1.2 million) and the gleaming APTC Gold Lion Trophy, while 95 players share in a record-setting prize pool that now stands as the largest in APT history.

The Asian Main Event Has Arrived

To put the scale of it into perspective, the WSOPE Main Event this year attracted 659 entries, which also allows reentries into each opening flight. The APTC just topped that in a freezeout.

When asked about the freezeout format earlier in the festival, Erik Seidel captured what this moment means for Asian poker:

Erik Seidel

“I mean, I like the idea of a freezeout. I'm happy with both. It's kind of nice to have tournaments that you can rebuy into, but I also think there's room for freezeouts as well. The Main Event is a freezeout, and I think that kind of establishes this as, you know, kind of the Asian Main Event.

And you know, it's kinda cool what they're doing. There are plenty of other events where you can rebuy, so having a freezeout, it's risky for the APT to do it because the guarantee is so high, but that's pretty cool.” A decade ago, those words would have sounded far-fetched. Today, they make sense. For a tour once seen as regional, this moment felt different.

Festival-Sized Prize Pools in One Main Event

The transformation of the Asian Poker Tour can be seen in the numbers. In 2022, the entire APT season combined for roughly USD 14.9 million in total festival prize pools, averaging just over USD 1.24 million per stop. At the time, that was considered strong progress for a regional tour rebuilding after the pandemic.

Then came 2023, the year that the APT’s new era launched. Across all stops, APT events generated USD 35.9 million in total prize pools, averaging USD 5.14 million per festival. In one year, the tour more than doubled its output and became the clear leader in Asian poker.

Now, the 2025 APTC Main Event in Taipei has taken it to another level. One tournament, one freezeout, produced a USD 6.2 million prize pool, which is a figure larger than every festival in 2022 and higher than the 2023 average.

It surpassed entire stops that once marked the tour’s rise. The Summer Series Events in Hanoi (USD 3.34M) and Da Nang (USD 3.63M), along with Phu Quoc (USD 2.42M), were stops in Vietnam that attracted a lot of interest. The Main Event prize pool in Taipei topped them all, and it even came close to 2023 Incheon (USD 6.51M), one of the biggest stops on the APT calendar.

The average 2022 festival paid out USD 1.24 million. The 2025 APTC Main Event paid out more than five times that amount on its own. Even the largest stop of 2022 wouldn’t have come close to prize pool generated in the Main Event Championship.

It’s hard to grasp just how quickly the APT has changed. Just a few years ago, festivals were generating prize pools that averaged just over a million dollars. Now their Main Events are pulling in prize pools north of six million dollars.

Asia's Largest-Ever Satellite

The momentum started before the Main Event even began as just a day earlier, Red Space hosted what is now officially the largest poker satellite ever held in Asia — the APT Step 2 Mega Satellite.

With 399 entries paying TWD 53,000 each, the event generated a TWD 18,271,008 (~USD 585,610) prize pool, enough to award 58 Main Event seats and a cash prize for one more. It was a sign that players across Asia were ready to take their shot at something much bigger.

The huge satellite drew 399 entries

The Step 2 Mega Satellite actually paid out more prize money than several Main Events from the tour’s pre–new era seasons, including APT Philippines 2022, Da Nang 2022, and Phu Quoc 2023. It even came close to matching Hanoi 2023, one of the biggest stops in the region at the time.

It may seem unusual that a satellite turned heads across the industry, but in a festival full of firsts, this one deserved its own moment.

Voices from the Industry

If there was still any doubt about what just happened in Taipei, the voices that matter most in poker have already said it.

Kevin “Kevmath” Mathers, who has seen the inside of nearly every major poker stage in the world, was among the first to give his thoughts after witnessing the APTC from the front line.

"I'm definitely impressed with what the APT has done. This is a new era they’ve been building toward for three years, and they stuck their necks out, putting up a $10K freezeout with a USD 5,000,000 guarantee. Beating it by over a million is incredible."

Mathers also complimented the structure of the festival, pointing out the balance that few global tours manage to achieve.

"They’ve got buy-ins from USD 50,000 down to a hundred, catering to everyone. They’re hitting every market, and that’s what’s making this work."

Kevin Mathers & Gerard Noel

Henry Kilbane, who joined midway through the series, voiced the same sentiment.

"What APT does best is build the grassroots market," Kilbane said. "That’s why they’re getting so many unique entries. The ten thousand dollar Main Event proves it. You’ve got over 600 players here and some of the biggest names in poker making the trip."

Kilbane believes this moment will ripple across the industry. "This event is going to create a domino effect going forward," he said. "It wouldn’t surprise me if we’re talking about two or three of these a year. The onus is on the rest of the industry to step up now."

Leadership Reactions

For APT Vice President of Marketing Gerard Noel, the success of the $10K freezeout wasn’t all about numbers, but more about connection. When asked how you even begin to promote something so unheard of in Asia, Noel said he was “extremely overwhelmed by the support shown by the players,” adding that it proved “there’s a huge demand not just for poker but for an amazing player experience.”

Noel explained that the team’s goal from the start wasn’t to make history, but to deliver something memorable for everyone involved. “We keep our focus on our north star,” Noel said. “That’s to keep providing great poker player experience.”

APT Vice President of Marketing Gerard Noel

For APT President Neil Johnson, the entire experience still feels surreal. Known for his operational mindset and precision behind the scenes, even he admits the numbers took a moment to process. Johnson had spent a year quietly running scenarios in his head, worrying about what could go wrong and preparing for every outcome.

“In my head I’m always thinking about what we need from X to achieve Y,” he said. “So while I’ve been cautiously optimistic, I’ve also been really nervous about this guarantee for the last year. Seeing it just casually climb over 540 toward 600 yesterday was incredibly surreal for me.”

Looking back now, the APT President admits it might have been the boldest move in APT history. “In my time here, I can’t imagine a more bold move,” Johnson said. “While I agree one hundred percent with Fred [Leung] that a freezeout is the purest form of poker, it takes serious guts to pair that conviction with a five million dollar guarantee. I give all the flowers to Fred for believing in that vision and bringing it to life.”

Neil Johnson & Fred Leung

Hearing Seidel call it “the Asian Main Event” added an unexpected touch of praise. Johnson was surprised when he heard that, saying he was unaware of that statement but was genuinely touched. “The overall goal of ownership, and by extension Fred and myself, when the tour was purchased, was to repurpose the APT into the biggest and best tour in all of Asia,” he said. “To have one of the best players in the world alluding to the fact that we’re achieving that is a real compliment.”

Johnson explained that they didn’t set out to deliberately mimic the WSOP Main Event, but they understood what that experience meant to players. “If you ask players what the best day of the year is, they’ll say the day they sit down in the WSOP Main Event. If you ask what the worst day is, they’ll say the day they get up from it,” he said. “We’ve already seen a bit of that here. The sting of elimination hurts more from a freezeout, as it should. Real poker to me means a freezeout, where everyone starts together and plays through the same journey from start to finish.”

As for what comes next, Johnson’s outlook is measured. “The next frontier is proving that this isn’t a one-off or a flash in the pan,” he said. “We want to establish that the APTC has legs and becomes the pre-eminent poker tournament in Asia each year and hopefully even for the world in November.”

Neil Johnson

When asked about the idea of a $10 million prize pool, he said, “I certainly hope so, but as mentioned, my ops brain would like to see five million a second time before it starts dreaming of six, seven, eight, nine, or ten.”

More than the numbers, Johnson hopes the week in Taipei will be remembered for what it represented. “For the players, I hope they remember a tremendous festival with 200 tournaments that offered so much poker they went home exhausted and happy having played everything they wanted to — and hopefully with a Lion or two! For the world at large, I hope what we have achieved (with likely 25,000+ entries and $30M in prize pool) has entered the collective consciousness of the poker community."

"For those not familiar with the APT and what we’ve been building the last 3+ years, I hope that they take notice of the opportunities available for players from all over the world on the Asian Poker Tour. We’ve got the fastest growing tour in the world, and I believe we offer more games, more variety, more buy-ins and just more tournaments in a festival, than anyone in the world and we’d love to invite the poker world to discover us in 2026 and beyond!”

A $10K freezeout of this size outside of Las Vegas would have sounded impossible to anybody before APTC. Today, it’s a reality in Taipei.

Asia no longer looks westward for validation. The poker world is now looking east.