Jason Mo Leads the Final 13; Dong Kim, Celina Lin, and Bryan Huang in Contention
The final 13 of the PokerStars.net Asia-Pacific Poker Tour Main Event in Seoul is stacked, as two of the world's best heads-up no-limit hold'em cash-game players, Dong Kim and Jason Mo, remain, along with two Team PokerStars Pros, Celina Lin and Bryan Huang. The leader of them all is Mo, who bagged up a hefty 962,000 in chips after 10 hours of play on Day 2.
A few hours into the day, things weren't looking for Lin, but she managed to pull off a great run after the halfway point. After her kings held up against Patrick Weifels' ace-six, Lin turned it up and dominated her table for quite some time. It wasn't until Mo was seated at her table that she had to slow down a little bit. Lin ultimately bagged up 540,000 and sits third in chips.
The penultimate day of South Korea's biggest tournament of the year kicked off with 89 players all vying to make it to at least the final 27 so they would be in the money. Raymond Wu and Day 1a chip leader Alex Ward were among some of the first to hit the rail, together with former APPT Seoul winner Aaron Lim. One the fan favorites, Kitty Kuo, doubled up right at the start of the day, but she was ultimately eliminated short of a cash.
Defending champion and runner-up finisher the year before, Chane Kampanatsanyakorn, suffered his first Day 2 elimination in this event in three years. Kampanatsanyakorn could not win a coin flip with ace-ten versus sevens, and this opened up the road for someone else to take over in Seoul.
Team PokerStars Pro Aditya Agarwal looked good for a while as well, but he ultimately busted to Daniel Kneafsey, who's coming into the final day with 174,000 in chips. The eventual "bubble boy" was Hiroyuki Tanaka, who ran ace-ten into Huang's ace-king, and in one hand we moved passed the hand-for-hand phase.
Mo, the chip leader, had one of the steadiest routes throughout the day, as he never seemed to really drop down. Mo seemed very focussed and composed, and that resulted in great position heading into the final day. In years prior, Mo racked up two runner-up finishes at the World Series of Poker, and he'll have another great shot at taking down a big live event. Mo's good friend, Kim, brings 314,000 in chips into the final day, and he will be looking to make his first big live final table.
One of your live reporters on the scene, Remko Rinkema, did a video update at the end of the night with PokerNews host Sarah Herring, and here's what they had to say:
Here are the chip counts and seat draw of the final 13 players:
| Table | Seat | Name | Country | Chips |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14 | 1 | Daniel Kneafsey | Ireland | 174,000 |
| 14 | 2 | Boris Li | Russia | 128,000 |
| 14 | 3 | Dong Kim | USA | 314,000 |
| 14 | 5 | Tyler Jennens | Canada | 414,000 |
| 14 | 6 | Celina Lin | China | 540,000 |
| 14 | 7 | Bryan Huang | Singapore | 309,000 |
| 17 | 1 | Takuya Suzuki | Japan | 397,000 |
| 17 | 3 | Tai Zheng Tan | Singapore | 277,000 |
| 17 | 4 | Vladimir Demenkov | Russia | 259,000 |
| 17 | 5 | Daniel Demicki | Poland | 792,000 |
| 17 | 7 | Shintaro Baba | Japan | 170,000 |
| 17 | 8 | Junichi Nakagiri | Japan | 69,000 |
| 17 | 9 | Jason Mo | USA | 957,000 |
Stay tuned to PokerNews.com for the epic conclusion of this event. Play will resume Sunday at 12 p.m. local time, and at the end of the night a winner will be crowned. The players are guaranteed at least KRW 9,150,000 (US $8,365), while the eventual winner will walk away 165,590,200 KRW (US $151,384) richer!