John Matsuda Crowned At USOP Grand Finale Championship Event

last Thursday at 9:37 PM

The USOP Grand Finale hosted a string of poker events at the Pullman Grand Hotel in Hai Phong, Vietnam over 13 days from November 29 to December 11, 2024. Culminating the final day was the concluding day of the Championship Event, which crowned John Matsuda as its champion after 12 hours of play.

USOP Grand Finale Championship Event

Earlier in the day, USOP Grand Finale announced that play would be stopped by 11:30pm as imposed by local authorities. If any event was still running, the remaining players would be paid out according to ICM. This affected the Championship Event with six contenders remaining by cutoff time.

John Matsuda Crowned At the Championship Event

John Matsuda wins USOP Grand Finale Championship Event — John Matsuda

John Matsuda confessed, “This is my first time to play poker outside of the Philippines so it’s very special to win in another country. At first, we tried Cambodia and didn’t do so well, but now I’m very happy.”

Matsuda entered the final table as the chip leader and revealed that it was his strategy to make use of his big stack, “I had a lot of chips so the strategy was to be aggressive to earn more chips as much as I could.”

Matsuda’s strategy played to his advantage as he was responsible for eliminating Michael Falcon in 9th, Jinlong Hu in 8th and Li Shankui in 7th.

“I was lucky, but I think I also played well. I had enough chips to be comfortable.”

When asked who his toughest competitor at the final table was, Matsuda replied, “I think it was Hu Jinlong. I think if a player has a certain edge over you, one way to win over them is pre-flop and he’s hard to compete with [after the flop]. It’s a good thing he was less than 10 bigs, so I could take advantage.”

After tasting victory in foreign soil, Matsuda plans to attend more poker events outside of the Philippines, and is eyeing a trip to the United States for a crack at the upcoming World Poker Tour.

“The buy-ins are just like this, but with a bigger guarantee and a bigger prize, so that’s something I’m looking forward to,” he admitted.

Matsuda earned a first place payout of VND 3,700,000,000 (~USD 145,000), accompanied by a glorious golden trophy. For USOP it was another record-breaking turnout with 1,059 total entries (from the previous record of 560) to produce prize pool of VND 22,376,700,000 (~US$ 881,000).

Read up on the action via the SMP Live Updates.

Championship Event Review

Date: December 9 to 11, 2024
Buy-in: VND 25,000,000 (~US$ 1,005)
Guarantee: VND 20,000,000.000 (~US$ 805,000)
Entries: 1,059
Prize pool: VND 22,376,700,000 (~US$ 881,000)
ITM: 133 players

USOP Grand Finale Championship Event final table

Final Table Payouts

Place	Player	Flag	Payout In VND	In ~USD equivalent
1	John Matsuda	Japan	3,700,000,000	146,268
2	Harsh Bubna	India	2,500,000,000	98,830
3	Hung Wan	China	1,700,000,000	67,204
4	Luong Viet Bac	Vietnam	1,240,000,000	49,020
5	Zhang Xun	China	940,000,000	37,160
6	Lee Kun Han	Taiwan	760,000,000	30,044
7	Li Shankui	China	610,000,000	24,114
8	Jinlong Hu	China	480,000,000	18,975
9	Michael Kim Falcon	Denmark	370,000,000	14,627