The first day of the event saw 57 entries take to the felt, ponying up the luscious USD 100,000 entrance fee, which is the biggest buy-in event of the King Poker Cup series.
A lot of big poker names came to play, such as Malaysia's Wai Kiat Lee, USA's Joseph Cheong, Matthew Wantman and David Coleman, China's Biao Ding and Haohui Ma, Austria's Samuel Mullur, Hong Kong's Dong Chen and Danny Tang and Poland's Wiktor Malinowski.
A total of 37 entries made it through to Day 2 with China's Tony Ren Lin leading the charge as the chip leader, followed by Elton Tsang and Tom Dwan.
Late registration was still open at the start of Day 2 with Bryn Kenney, 2025 GPI Player of the Year Punnat Punsri of Thailand and high roller crusher Calvin Lee of the USA among the late entries. A total of 71 entries were recorded, creating a whopping prize pool worth USD 6,674,000.
Only the top 11 players would get a share of the payout pie and it took until the 18th level of play for the bubble to burst on Lithuania's Gytis Lazauninkas, whose pocket kings were cracked by ace on the river against the ace-jack of David Miscikowski from the USA.
With 11 players in the money, Day 2 ended when the final table of 9 was set. Failing to join the Day 3 final were Tony Ren Lin (11th place) and Unknown 1 (10th place).
Lin's chip lead entering into Day 2 got brutalized during the bubble when his bluff was caught by Jesse Lonis. That hand catapulted Lonis to the chip lead and did significant damage to Lin.
On the very first hand after the bubble burst, Lin eventually lost all his chips to Lonis. Unknown 1 followed shortly when he committed all his chips on the flop against Xing's top pair to chase an open-ended straight draw, but not being able to convert.
With that elimination the final table was set to return for action on the Day 3 final and crown a champion.