The Asian Poker Tour is about to embark on its most ambitious poker journey yet, with the destination being the 17-day APT Championship 2025 festival—#APTC2025—running from November 14-30 at Red Space 多元商務空間 in Taipei, Taiwan, in partnership with the Chinese Texas Hold’em Poker Club (CTP).
This will be the tour’s twelfth visit to the Taiwanese capital, and the fifth visit of the APT New Era, which began in April 2023 with the APT Taipei 2023.
The APT is currently the fastest growing poker tour in the world, and holds international poker records in three out of the four regions it has run festivals in during the New Era—Taiwan, Korea, and Vietnam—and the APT Championship is poised to redefine the Asian poker landscape, with an unprecedented 200-event schedule boasting over TWD 288 million (~USD 8.7 million) in total prize pool guarantees.
The highlight of this epic series has seen the tour set yet another international poker record without a card being dealt, with the USD 10,000 buy-in APT Championship Main Event Freezeout offering a staggering USD 5 million guarantee; making it the largest guaranteed tournament in both the Eastern Hemisphere, and in Asia, and one of the top five largest guaranteed poker events of 2025.
You can read in more detail about how to qualify for the Main Event, and check out who's planning to play via the below articles:
The inaugural APT Championship will break new ground for the tour at what is already historically the APT’s most successful tour stop, offering players tournaments of a size and scale never seen before in Asia.
“The APT Championship is something that’s been in the pipeline since 2022 as part of the multi-year plan, but we had to first build a strong foundation of our standard offering before launching something of this magnitude,” said APT CEO Fred Leung.
The APT has gone from strength to strength since the launch of the New Era, with records broken at every tour stop in 2025, but it all started in Taipei back in 2023.
With the tour about to embark on its magnum opus of poker festivals we decided to take a closer look at the history of the Taipei tour stop and examine just what it is that makes it such a successful destination for the tour.
The Record Growth of the APT in Taipei
The APT first launched in November of 2006 with the inaugural Betfair APT Singapore. In the nineteen years since, the tour has run over 124 festivals at 27 tour stop locations in 16 different countries and regions, awarding over USD 213,855,500 in total prize money.
Historically, while the Asian Poker Tour’s home base is considered to be Manila as it has offices there and has operated more festivals in the Philippines’ capital than anywhere else (although not in the New Era), it is Taipei that is the tour’s most successful tour stop, both in terms of total festival entries, and in terms of prize money awarded both in the New Era, and all time.
Taipei was first introduced as a tour stop back in February 2019, with 12 festivals held here since and the Taiwanese capital has accounted for USD 57,201,907, or close to a third (27%), of the all-time total tour prize money awarded.
APT Taipei Entries & Prize Money
However, it was the launch of the APT New Era that really put Taipei on the poker map, and it’s when you examine the Taipei tour stop in the context of the New Era that you can see just how successful it has been for the tour.
The APT has run 1,141 tournaments over 14 festivals at seven tour stops located in four regions since the start of the New Era, attracting 146,515 total tournament entries which have generated over an impressive USD 124 million in prize money.
Taipei has hosted close to a third (32%) of the New Era tournaments run (363 in total so far) and accounts for over 40 percent (41.6%) of all New Era prize money awarded.
When it comes to entries, Taipei has attracted 74,868 total tournament entries across both the old and New Era, accounting for 27 percent of the total APT tournament entries of all-time. Of the 146,515 New Era tournament entries, 62,338 of them (43%) have been generated exclusively in Taipei.
The Perfect Partnership
The APT can’t take all the credit for the success of Taipei as a tour stop, it’s also thanks to the hard work of the APT’s official partner in the region – the Chinese Texas Hold’em Poker Club (CTP).
The APT Championship will mark the twelfth time the tour has partnered with CTP to bring international topflight tournament poker to Taiwan, with ten of the previous festivals playing out at the Asia Poker Arena (APA) and CTP’s other Taipei-based venue the Chinese Mahjong League (CML).
The APT heralded the start of the New Era at the then brand-new APA venue at APT Taipei 2023 with what was, at the time, the largest and richest poker festival ever to play out in the region. The tour has witnessed unprecedented growth since, setting new records on every subsequent visit to Taipei.
The tour exceeded the capacity of Asia’s largest permanent poker room in less than 12 months, utilizing both the APT and CML to jointly operate the record-breaking APT Taipei 2024, and APT Taipei Poker Classic 2024.
However, with series participation growing at an average of 33 percent (32.5%) in terms of total entries per festival and just over 21 percent (21.5%) in terms of unique players per festival, the tour had to relocate to a larger venue—the brand new Red Space 多元商務空間—for the record-breaking APT 2025 festival – which proved to be the largest and richest festival ever to play out in the region, and the most successful APT festival of all-time.
It’s not just the player numbers that have gone through the roof with this exponential growth, with the total prize money played for increasing by an average of 43 percent (43.1%) per festival, with the recent APT Taipei 2025 series awarding almost triple (172%) the amount of prize money than the APT Taipei 2023 festival.
The Player Base
Of course, it is the players that are at the core of any successful poker tour and all of the APT’s recent achievements would not have been possible without the tour’s dedicated player base.
Of the thousands of players who have competed in APT’s Taiwan-based tournaments over the years there have been those who have risen above the rest and etched their place in the annals of Taipei tour history.
Natural8 Ambassador Kitty Kuo cemented her place in the APT record books with her APT Taipei 2021 Main Event victory making her the first APT female Main Event champion in tour history. Kuo has also enjoyed two deep Main Event runs in Taipei in the New Era, finishing in 16th place in the APT Taipei 2023, and 21st in the APT Taipei 2025.
Kitty Kuo in the APT Taipei 2025 Main Event
No mention of former APT Taipei Main Event champions can be made without the inclusion of Thailand’s Punnat Punsri, who won the inaugural New Era APT Taipei Main Event in 2023, becoming the first player in tour history to tame the 24K Gold Lion APT Main Event trophy. Punsri will be looking to add further to his Taipei legacy at the upcoming APT Championship.
Punnat Punsri won the first APT Gold Lion Main Event Trophy ever awarded
Japan’s Akira Takasugi is another who will have fond memories of Taipei having won the largest and richest APT Main Event of all-time at the APT Taipei 2025 festival, becoming one of the first players to earn his ticket to the APT Championship Main Event.
Akira Takasugi booked his ticket to the APT Championship by winning the largest APT tournament of all-time
Other notables to have tasted APT success in Taipei include Natural8 Ambassador Phachara Wongwichit, who won the tour’s first ever Rose Gold Lion APT High Roller trophy awarded back during APT Taipei 2023, poker superstar Isaac Haxton who won the APT Taipei 2024 Super High Roller, and France’s Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier who tamed the Black Stealth Lion Superstar Challenge trophy at the APT Taipei 2024.
You too could play your way into tour history by becoming the first person to win one of the twenty inaugural APT Championship Events – see you in Taipei!