APT Macau Championships 2018: Hung Sheng Lin Crowned Main Event Champion

The Asian Poker Tour (APT) visited the “Vegas of China” for the APT Macau Championships 2018 at the partner and host venue Macau Billionaire Poker inside the Babylon Casino. The festival began on April 25 and will run through May 6 and through the course of 12 days, offer 18 customized side events.

Headlining the schedule was the APT HK$11,000 Main Event – that boasted of an enticing HK$2 Million guarantee and the popular APT Championships Event. The Main Event kicked off on April 28 and found a champion Taiwan’s Hung Sheng Lin (cover image) on May 2. Lin sweeped half the players on the eight handed final table to capture his first APT Main Event championship title and received the HK$ 587,000 first place cash prize, the APT Championship Trophy, and the exclusive APT Championship Ring.

Lin is no stranger to APT events as he has cashed at numerous APT side events and has even appeared on two APT featured event final tables.

India’s PokerStars Team pro Aditya Agarwal was among the top pros in attendance at the series but unfortunately he was unable to get much going.

The two starting days registered a smashing total of 377 entries (114 entries on Day 1A, 215 entries on Day 1B and 48 entries on Day 2) breaking APT’s previous Macau Main Event record of 326 entries that was set in 2009. This resulted in the prize pool getting surged to a juicy HK$3,619,200 which was eventually shared among the top 63 players.

The money bubble was breached on Day 2 with China’s Lei Liu going out at 64^th place and Day 3 of the event played out till the 8-handed final table was locked in. All 8 finalists were eyeing their first APT title. Starting at the top of the chip rung was Russia’s Evgeny Kurilenko while Lin was the most experienced APT campaigner.

Final Table Recap

China’s Wang Meng was the first elimination of the final table and then Lin began his assault and railed the short-stacked Hiroshi Matsumoto in seventh place.

The next few bustouts were Japanese players – Hiroshi Matsumoto (7^th place), Toshimitsu Kamei (6^th place) and Chinaman Hele Lu (5^th place) and by then Lin had taken over the chip lead.

Post that, the eventual runner up Evgeny Kurilenko eliminated Wang Jun to bring us to the ‘Lin show’. Lin axed Hong Kong`s Sai Ho Philip Chiu in third place after the latter’s were dominated by Lin’s @12d. With that, the heads-up duel was set with Lin ahead with a roughly 1.5:1 chip advantage over Evgeny Kurilenko.

The swingy heads-up battle went on for a while until Lin began to pull out all his guns that left Kurilenko in critical mode. The final hand saw Lin moving all-in with and Kurilenko called with . The board ran the and Lin`s two pairs got him the title!

Final Table Results (HKD)

1. Hung Sheng Lin – HK$587,000

2. Evgeny Kurilenko – HK$391,200

3. Sai Ho Philip Chiu – HK$271,100

4. Wang Jun – HK$195,800

5. Hele Liu – HK$146,900

6. Toshimitsu Kamei – HK$115,100

7. Hiroshi Matsumoto – HK$93,700

8. Wang Meng – HK$79,300

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