After six thrilling days of intense pre-game action and minor events, it is time for the USOP Hanoi Main Event. This has drawn a crowd into the Crown Poker Club Hanoi as people attended to watch the main event that began yesterday at 11 am.
This event is expected to run from September 7 to 11, 2023 in four flights and hopes to attract players from across the world. As the main event, winning this tournament will provide the USOP Hanoi trophy and part of a guaranteed prize pool worth VN₫ 12,000,000,000 (USD 500,000).
USOP Hanoi Main Event Details
The USOP Hanoi Main Event opened on Thursday, September 7 at 11 AM. For the early birds, a special reward was offered. Following their tradition, USOP gave merchandise to participants actively playing in Level 1. This festival features a rare limited-edition hoodie exclusively for fortunate attendees. These items are not available for purchase, making early arrival essential. Only 250 lucky players will get their hands on this exclusive merchandise.
The prizes in this USOP tournament continue to grow as the tournaments get bigger and bigger. In the USOP Taiwan Main Event, the prize pool was around NTD 18M (around USD 600,000) and was considered a massive amount at the time. The previous USOP Hanoi was also quite large, offering a prize pool of VN₫ 16.5, equivalent to USD 700K.
This year’s USOP Hanoi Main Event is no different and is offering a guaranteed prize pool of VN₫ 12,000,000,000 (USD 500,000). Keep in mind this is just the guaranteed prize by the tournament. This amount is expected to grow even further as players sign up for the event, each paying a buy-in fee of around VN₫25,000,000 (USD 1,057). With enough players signing up, there is hope that this may even surpass the prize pool of the previous events.
The Day 1A of the USOP Hanoi Main Event was a strong start for the competition, drawing in 268 challengers to the Crown Poker Club. With so many players entering the opening match, the tournament lasted over 12.5 hours and gave plenty of competition. By the end, only 34 players managed to advance to the next round of the event and guarantee themselves a part of the prize pool.
At the head of this group was Dang Minh Dat, a local player who holds a stack of 912,000 chips (114 bb). The highlight of his performance was before the bubble burst when he was confronted with a 40-bb bet. Holding a pocket ace, he made a call and won the bet, securing his lead and a spot in the next round.
Dang wasn’t the only poker star to make it this far either and among the other survivors were High Roller Megastack champion Dao Minh Phu, multiple side event victor Khoi Nguyen, and WSOP bracelet holder Renji Mao. All four of these champions will face each other in the next round of the USOP Hanoi Main Event.
If this event interests you then you should learn more about the previous USOP Hanoi that happened several months ago.
You can find all the early details about this event in our USOP Hanoi Announcement post.