Festival Recap: TMT20 Smashes Records Across the Board

The Taiwan Millions Tournament (TMT) has wrapped up its 20th edition , and the numbers confirm it was the biggest stop in the series’ history. Running from July 8 to August 3, 2026, in Taiwan across the combined Asia Poker Arena and Red Space venues, TMT20 posted its largest ever prize pool, entry count, and event schedule, continuing a growth trend that has now spanned three consecutive festivals, with the TMT Championship 2025 also factored in for context below. Full breakdowns for every edition are available on Somuchpoker’s in-house statistics page .

Key Figures: TMT20 by the Numbers

Total Prize Pool: $8,039,306 (GTD: 132M TWD, ~$4.19M) - up 39.4% from TMT19
Number of Events: 228 across 45 flights - up 40.7% from TMT19
Total Entries: 40,940 from 37 countries - up 24.5% from TMT19
Top Individual Payout: $199,440 to Malaysia’s Cheng Jing Lim

Prize Pool and Entries: A Festival on the Rise

TMT20 marks the third straight edition of growth for the series, though the scale of this jump stands out. The festival’s total prize pool climbed from $5,445,885 at TMT18 to $5,766,440 at TMT19 , before surging to $8,039,306 at TMT20 this time around. Entries followed a similar path, rising from 30,788 to 32,875 and now to 40,940, while the event schedule nearly doubled in size compared to two festivals ago.

Sitting outside that numbered sequence, the TMT Championship 2025, held in Taipei City from October 17-27, 2025, ran as a smaller, standalone stop, posting a $2,830,015 prize pool from 6,575 entries across 69 events. It serves as a useful mid-point marker between the two full-scale festivals either side of it.

Asked what has driven that sustained rise, TMT pointed to consistency rather than any single change. “It comes down to continuing to do the right things, year after year. That means putting the player experience first, collaborating with other tournament brands, strengthening our outreach to overseas players, and offering something players genuinely want to compete for, such as our Incense Cedar trophy plates. None of these are dramatic changes on their own. Sustained over several editions, they add up,” TMT told Somuchpoker.

Festival Growth: TMT18 vs TMT Championship vs TMT19 vs TMT20

Main/Flagship Event Comparison

The flagship event remained each festival’s centrepiece, though its share of the overall prize pool has shifted as the wider schedules have expanded. At TMT18, the Main Event accounted for nearly 39% of the total prize pool; by TMT20, with far more events on offer, that share had dropped to roughly 26%, even as the raw prize pool and entry numbers both grew. The Championship’s TMTC Main #18 followed the same pattern, taking close to 39% of its own prize pool.

Flagship Event Results by Edition

TMT20’s Main Event drew a record 9,094 entries, the largest field of any of the four festivals compared here, even though its prize pool fell just short of the TMT18 mark.

Growing a schedule to 228 events without pricing players out is a balancing act, and TMT is clear about which side of that equation comes first. “We work at optimizing every part of how the series is run. That is what allows the affordable buy-in structure and the high entry numbers to coexist rather than pull against each other. The size of the schedule follows from how much we can improve the operation, not the other way around,” TMT said.

Leaderboard Highlights

Cheng Jing Lim of Malaysia topped the TMT20 money list with $204,195 across five cashes, edging out South Korea’s Daeyoung Park ($190,095) and Taiwan’s Chun Liang Kuo ($141,073). It’s a notable shift from the previous editions, where the top spot on the leaderboard belonged to a Taiwanese player: Taiwan’s Shih Chen Tai led TMT18 with $216,220, and Taiwan’s Chih Kai Chang topped the TMT Championship with $162,085, while South Korea’s Zee Hyo Jung topped TMT19 with $215,200.

Daeyoung Park#294

14,178

$393,465

Chun Liang Kuo#656

8,690

$203,428

Shih Chen Tai#887

7,110

$220,275

Cheng Jing Lim#907

6,941

$208,240

Zee Hyo Jung#975

6,646

$221,536

Chih Kai Chang#1558

4,636

$172,025

On the SMP Poker Index , Taiwan’s Chiwen Sung led the way at TMT20 with 6,946 SPI across 40 cashes, the highest volume of any player across the festivals compared here. At the smaller-scale Championship, South Korea’s Daegyu Hwang topped the index with 3,820 SPI from just 3 cashes.

Breakdown by Region

Taiwan and South Korea have consistently produced the two largest contingents by prize money across all four editions, though Korea’s growth is especially sharp.

Top 5 Regions by Total Prize, TMT20

South Korea’s total prize haul has climbed steadily across the sequence, from $565,090 at TMT18, to $650,585 at the Championship, $889,170 at TMT19, and now $1,241,606 at TMT20, reflecting a consistently growing presence from Korean players on the Taiwanese felt.

For TMT, that growing international field ties back to the series’ original purpose rather than being a goal in itself. “CTP was founded to promote poker in Taiwan, and that has been our purpose for more than ten years of grassroots work here. The arrival of international players has significantly elevated what a TMT event feels like for our local players. It gives them a genuine international tournament experience without leaving home, and that directly serves our original mission of growing the game in Taiwan,” TMT explained.

Game Types

Texas Hold’em remains overwhelmingly dominant across every edition, but TMT20 offered the widest spread of game types to date by prize volume, splitting action across three categories.

Looking Ahead

With three straight editions of growth in prize pools, entries, and schedule size (bracketing a smaller standalone Championship stop in between), TMT20 cements the Taiwan Millions Tournament’s position as one of the fastest-growing stops on the Asian poker calendar. Yet TMT is keen to stress that the records are a by-product rather than the aim. “Breaking records isn’t really what comes first for us. What comes first is building the series around the events that the majority of players actually enjoy playing. If the records follow from that, we’ll take the satisfaction of it as the best reward the players could give the team behind TMT.”

Full player-by-player and event-by-event breakdowns for every TMT edition remain available on SomuchPoker’s statistics page . Stay tuned to Somuchpoker for full coverage as the series continues to expand.

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