Red Dragon Championship (2,500,000 KRW)

The third of four entry flights for the Red Dragon Championship ended with 78 out of 310 total entries bagging their chips for Day 2 at the end of level 14 and the KRW 2 Billion prize pool already eclipsed.

Fang Zhou Zhu finished the day on top, bagging 520,000 (104 BB) after flying under the radar the whole day until a few minutes before the end when he knocked out Haobo Zhu and picked up an additional 12 BB during the last hand of the day.

WSOP 2020 Online Bracelet Winner and 2nd in chips Huahuan Feng has been on the leaderboard since level 7 and had a pivotal hand during level 10 where he had 5♣ 5♥ and Jinbao Liu opened 2BB from +1, Feng called in +2 and lojack Pengfei Zhu went all-in for 19BB. Liu tried to isolate with a 20BB four-bet, but Feng remained sticky to see the flop T♠ Q♠ 5♦ , hitting bottom set. He got another 15BB out of Liu before he surrendered to Feng's all-in on the turn Q♥. Zhu was already drawing dead with A♦ 6♦ which let Feng scoop up a 116BB pot that catapulted him into the lead at the time. He ended the day with 445,000 (89 BB).

The rest of the 77 qualifiers consisted of players from four continents with international pros like Christian Harder from the United States - 148,000 (30 BB), William Jia from Australia - 138,000 (28 BB), Tom Verbruggen from the Netherlands - 93,000 (19 BB) and some of the best players from the Asian circuit. Poker legend John Juanda was on the leaderboard for a while as well, but unfortunately didnt make the cut.

All of them will continue their battle for the trophy an the champion's purse tomorrow at 12:00 local with the SMP team covering the action from start to finish.

Yong Zhao lays out 12,000 in +2 and takes hijack Fang Zhou Zhu to the flop 3♦ 8♣ K♥ where his 27,000 c-bet gets called by Zhu. The turn 9♣ gets rejected to complete the board 7♥ with Zhao slowing down to a check and ultimately surrendering the pot after Zhu forked out an almost pot-sized bet of 75,000.

Lights out for Zhang on the flop K♣ A♠ K♠ and Zhao jumps out of his seat starting to yell "yeahhh, chip leader" when the board completes 2♦ and T♥ . Its nice to see some emotion after a day of poker faces staring at each other ;)