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Jason Mo defeats Bryan Huang to win APPT Seoul Main Event Title

The APPT9 Seoul main event has reached it's conclusion, with 241 players having bought in, creating a prize pool of ₩645 million. Of the 241 runners, 70 were from Japanese shores, with 37 from China. A relatively small number of Europeans made the journey, with Russia contributing 10 players to the field, and 5 each from Germany, France and the UK.

An Impressive team PokerStars

One of the French participants was Pokerstars sponsored pro Bertrand 'Elky' Grospellier. With an EPT title, a WPT title and a WSOP bracelet to his name, he is familiar with this part of the world, having played professionaly StarCraft in South Korea ten years ago before finding his way to poker. Other team Pokerstars pros at this event included Naoya Kihara, who won 'The Big $162' on Pokerstars.com a few days ago, and Adi Agarwal, along with Celina Lin and Bryan Huang, who both played brilliantly to reach the final table, with Celina finishing 4th, and Bryan claiming 2nd place. Another of the new Japanese signings for team Pokerstars, Kosei Ichinose also participated.

Jason Mo for the Title

Despite the heroics of Celina Lin and Bryan Huang in making the final table, the day belonged to Jason Mo, who reached heads up with a 9 to 1 chip lead. He never let Bryan Huang back into the match, and took victory, with the ₩165,590,200 prize money (USD$151,384.).

Jason MO

Jason Mo is the new APPT champion (Photo Kenneth Lim)

Jason Mo is not an unknown player by any means, and has several big results over the past few years. His speciality has always been heads up cash and sit n gos, having played as high as $50/100 and he finished 2nd place in the heads up $10K Holdem event at the WSOP in 2012, along with another 2nd in the Holdem Mixed Max event last summer. He picked up a further USD$497,000 early this year for 5th place at event 11 of the Aussie Millions, and has a 2nd place online in the SCOOP $21,000 heads up event from last year. Jason Mo has triumphed at APPT Seoul despite the fact that he described on Twitter few days ago live full ring tournaments as “the nut worst form of poker” adding “sucks so many idiots love it and make it popular and profitable.” This latest result is further evidence that he remains a prolific and talented player in both the online, and live world, even in the tournament format that he apparently hates.

More Women playing the Asian Circuit?

Interestingly, in terms of female players, it wasn't just Celina Lin going deep in this event, as there were 9 women still involved at the end of day 1B in a field of 66. While it is important to see poker growing in new locations around the world, it is equally important for female poker growth, with women still making up a fairly small percentage of most fields. With players like Celina leading the way, let us hope that she inspires many more women to take up the game.

The next stop on the APPT circuit  will be the Nanjing Millions which runs from April 14th -19th. There should be a healthy field size for this event, with recent major tournaments in China attracted plenty of attention.

 

 

 

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Louis Hartwell

Graduated in Media Communication at the University of Lausanne, Louis Hartman is a co-founder of somuchpoker.com. He began his career in Cambodia as freelance journalist. In same time he was making his living by playing poker every night at that time. Intense learner, he read dozens of poker strategy books to improve his skills during many years. With a strong interest about poker "behind the scene" in Asia and his communication skills, Louis launched Somuchpoker in 2014.

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