$20,000 NLH SuperStar Challenge (30,000,000 KRW)

Drawing for a gutter and some running outs, Xu gets one of them on the turn T♥ , but his luck runs dry on the river J♠ and one of the remaining bracelet winners is out.

With late registration concluded and a total of 81 entries, the $20,000 Superstar Challenge prize pool ballooned to a whopping KRW2,262,330,000 (~$1,585,263) and KRW622,100,000 (~$435,932) for first. We have 28 player still in the hunt with ITM starting at 11th place.

With the board showing T♣ 5♠ T♥ 6♠ and 740,000 up for grabs, small blind Tobias Schwecht - bracelet winner and APT Super High Roller champ in Manila two weeks ago - leads 320,000 and sends Xu Qiang in the tank. Xu declares all-in, enough to get Schwecht off the hand and flicks a time bank to the dealer.

With an open to 55,000 from the hijack, Paulius Plausinaitis takes big blind Xu Qiang to the flop 4♠ K♣ J♠ . A 60,000 c-bet gets called for the turn A♥ where Plausinaitis takes it down with a second barrel of 200,000.

The Poker Dream 16 $20,000 Superstar Challenge Day 1 came to a close with 30 out of 59 players remaining after 11 levels of 40min each. The total entries will certainly increase with late registration still open throughout the first 40 minutes of play tomorrow until 13:40, giving the late entries still 20BB to work with in the hunt for a slice of the already over $1,100,000 prize pool.

Canadian 2-time WSOP bracelet winner Daniel Dvoress bagged the biggest stack with 2,550,000, after a massive all-in against Rainer Kempe just a few hands before the end of the day. Dvoress opened 2.5BB with A♠ Q♣ from UTG+1, big blind Rainer Kempe made it 10,7BB with K♣ K♠ and Dvoress called to hit the nuts on J♦ K♦ T♥ where Kempe led 7,5BB and snapped Dvoress' 58BB jam and couldn't improve on 6♣ and 2♥ .

2nd in chips is young Malaysian poker phenom Sean Ooi with 2,280,000 who continuously picked up small to mid-sized pots, growing his stack from start to finish.

Mao Renji from China, also a bracelet winner and runner-up of the Super High Roller last night, had a steady day as well, closing the gap to the chip leader last minute in a three-way pot, knocking out Rainer Kempe and winning a small side pot against Dvoress that left him with 1,880,000.

Poker Legends like Stephen Chidwick and Isaac Haxton - who are 3rd and 9th on the all time money list with live earnings of more than $50M each - are also still in the running, most likely getting company from some more all time greats during the last level of late registration tomorrow.

The Final Day will start at 13:00 on February 24 with 40 minutes of late registration and finishes when a new champion is crowned. Live updates will be there from beginning to the end!

Under the gun Xu Qiang opens 35,000, cutoff Winfred Yu - Poker Dream co-founder with over $9M in live earnings to his name - three-bets 100,000 and Xu fills up to see the flop 9♥ 6♥ 5♥ . Yu's 85,000 c-bet gets check raised to 175,000 with Yu calling, before folding to Xu's 220,000 all-in on the turn 8♥ .

Xu Qiang - another bracelet winner from China - kicks us off with a 10,000 raise from the cutoff and takes Jamil Wakil and John Juanda to the flop 5♥ 9♣ 7♦ . Checked to Wakil on the button, 20,000 enter the middle, Juanda folds before Xu Qiang raises to 65,000. Back to Wakil 150,000 three-bet goes out that sends Xu in the tank, but calls with the aid of a time bank. The turn T♦ has Wakil fork out another 180,000 that gets the job done.