After six hours of incredibly thrilling final table action, Asia Poker League awarded its newest Main Event champion. The man claiming all the glory was Vietnamese pro Quang Nguyen who overcame a 4:1 chip deficit at heads up to seize the APL Ho Chi Minh City championship title and the VND 1,618,750,000 (~US$69,300) first prize.
Capturing this title was more than just another victory for Quang. Last month, he finished runner-up at the APT Vietnam Main Event losing only to Tetsuya Tsuchikawa. Returning to host-venue Pro Poker Club, his bid for a title was not denied this time around. At the final 8, he eliminated three players along the way to face Korean pro Soo Jo Kim at heads up.
The race to the top would prove to be a very steep climb for Quang. Not only was Kim highly decorated but he was also running hot and had built up a dominating stack. Kim doubled up on the first hand of the final 8, and eventually knocked out the day’s entering chip leader, Minh Le (3rd), with a crushing quads over full house. If there were a choice “hand of the day”, this would rank the highest.
To briefly recap the action, at three-handed the two big stacks Kim and Minh saw bets at every stage, from preflop to the river of a board 
. The last push, Minh raise-shoved and Kim called. Minh had 
full house and Kim with 
quads. This gave Kim a 4:1 chip advantage at heads up.
The heads up round ran for two hours. Within that time, Quang doubled up twice to take the lead for the first time. From there, he commanded the felt, widening the gap between them. Fans sensed victory approaching that a huge rail formed both behind him and up above. They were indeed correct. The final hand arrived with pocket threes surviving overcards to earn Quang the glorious APL Vietnam title.
Although Quang has two local Main Event titles under his belt, this victory was his first-ever international Main Event career win and his largest live tournament score. To date, he has earned over US$140K just in 2018.
Final 8 Payouts
1st Quang Nguyen – VND 1,618,750,000
2nd Soo Jo Kim – VND 1,134,820,000
3rd Minh Le – VND 729,730,000
4th Duy Ho – VND 521,080,000
5th Cao Ngoc Anh – VND 399,970,000
6th Jack En Ching Wu – VND 328,400,000
7th Thien An – VND 270,660,000
8th Nguyen Thanh – VND 215,830,000
The Main Event ran from November 18 to 24 at Pro Poker Club with 587 total entries. With buy-in at VND 16.5M, the 8BN guaranteed was surpassed. The prize pool amounted to VND 8,540,850,000 (US$366,300) with 74 players earning a piece.
You can relive the action at Somuchpoker via our daily live updates and recaps.
More: APL HCMC Road Series Vol.3 : Live Updates
Final Moments in video
Article by Tricia David
Tricia David
Tricia David has long experience as a recreational poker player and has been covering poker events since 2010 for numerous outfits in Asia. She spent one year working part time with Poker Portal Asia then became editor and lead writer for all event coverage of the Philippine Poker Tour (PPT). Under the PPT, she overlooked content for their website, and produced live updates on all their events. In addition, she served as the live and online events website content writer for the Asian Poker Tour. Currently, she does live events reporting in Asia for online news site Somuchpoker and is also one of their news contributors.
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