The opening day of the Top Joy Poker Tour‘s debut in Seoul or TJPT Korea has gotten off to a strong start with the conclusion of day 1. Players from across the region from China, Korea, and Japan came to the Swiss Grand Hotel to take part in the festivities. Among these is the highly-anticipated TJPK Korea Main Event that promises a USD 1 Million guaranteed prize pool.
At the end of the first day, several front runners have taken the lead and positioned them to advance into the next round. Only time will tell whether they will be able to maintain their lead or not.
TJPT Korea Event Highlights
At the head of the pack was the Chinese poker play. Li Zhong Xian emerged from the main event with the largest stack. He currently has a stack of 183 bb which will carry over into Day 2 of the event. His top position will be difficult to beat by the players in the following days.
Behind Li is another distinguished poker player, Marc Inizan in second place. Marc gained fame when he won the WPT Prime Taiwan 2022 and hopes to carry his luck over to TJPT Korea. He does have a lot of ground to cover as he is almost 100 BBs behind Li with only 84 big blinds. Rounding out this group are Yake Wu, Jin-Woo Kim, and the recently crowned WPT Super High Roller champion, Nam Hyung Kim.
TJPK’s event progresses with Day 1B scheduled for Friday, September 29, 2023, where a new batch of players will enter the tables. Each player will pay a buy-in fee of ￦1,500,000 (US$1,110) which is expected to raise the prize pool.
TJPT Korea Side Event Results
Moving onto some of the smaller events, the Single Day High Roller Event had 39 players with the Australian poker star Van Quoc Tran winning the inaugural victory. This resulted in a career-best reward of ￦36,796,500 (US$ 27,247). Among his competitors was the former gamer Yo Hwan ‘BoxeR’ Lim who ended in 4th place with a prize of ￦11,934,000 (US$ 8,837).
Another notable success came from the TJPT Korea Omaha 7-Card KO Bounty event where Si Yeoul Lee of South Korea won a stunning victory. He competed against 20 other players, each paying a buy-in fee of ￦400,000 or $ 300. This led to a prize pool of ￦6,400,000 (US$ 4,740). Despite the odds stacked against him, Si managed to overcome the other players and claim the grand prize of ￦3,200,000.
The TJPT Korea isn’t the only up-and-coming poker event that made an appearance this year as a few months ago, Taiwan hosted the Taipei Millions event which broke records with its main event.
You can learn more about this fascinating main event in our Taipei Millions Main Event post.