Abraham Ceesvin has won the largest poker tournament ever to play out in Korea
APT JEJU 2025 SCHEDULE | OFFICIAL RESULTS | PLAYER LISTS | IMAGES | WINNERS
JEJU, SOUTH KOREA, October 4, 2025 – Playing out at the tournament tables of the LES A Casino—located at the luxurious Jeju Shinhwa World resort and hosted in partnership with Landing Entertainment Korea—the largest international poker tournament ever to play out in Korea has crowned a champion.
It proved to be fourth time’s the charm for Abraham Ceesvin who came into his fourth career APT Main Event final table seventh out of nine players.
The catalyst for Ceesvin's title run came on the fifth hand played when the Singaporean found himself teetering on the brink of elimination with the best starting hand in poker.
A timely pair up on the river saw Ceesvin turn the tables on opponent Peng Zhou, counterfeiting the Chinese player’s flopped two pair to send him out ninth place and shoot Ceesvin up to third in the counts.
“My goodness. Those aces… I thought I was out in ninth when I saw he was ahead with two pair. I thought ninth place was where I was going to go out,” Ceesvin stated in his post match interview.
From this point onwards Ceesvin put on a dominating final table performance, eliminating five of the other eight competitors to tame the award-winning 24K Gold Lion APT Main Event trophy, flopping the nut straight against heads-up opponent Lili Tang’s pocket queens to close out the win.
“Firstly, I’d like to give credit to my heads-up opponent Lili,” Ceesvin stated in his post-match interview.
“If she won she would have made history as the first female player to win in the New Era, she played a great game to get to heads-up. I am so lucky I flopped the straight against her over pair. If it was reversed I would have busted myself,” said Ceesvin.
Abraham Ceesvin shares a handshake with heads-up opponent Lili Tang
In addition to the trophy, title, and an APT Championship Main Event seat valued at KRW 14 million (USD 10,000), Ceesvin claimed the lion’s share of the KRW 3,803,155,200 (~USD 2,716,540) prize pool – the richest APT Main Event purse ever generated in the country, and second richest APT Main Event prize pool of all-time.
Ceesvin earned a career best KRW 649,835,200 (~USD 464,170) top prize for his victory – the largest the tour has ever awarded in the country, and the third-largest APT Main Event prize ever awarded.
The top three Main Event finishers received an APT Championship Main Event seat for the tour’s largest-ever USD 5M GTD tournament running November 24-28 in Taipei, Taiwan.
With all nine finalists guaranteed a payout of at least KRW 47,990,000 (~USD 34,280) it wasn't just Ceesvin who cashed for life-changing money.
Of the eight other finalists, runner-up Tang, third place Shuang Qiu, fourth place Hao Zhang, and seventh place Bizhen Li all cashed for career-best scores.
MAIN EVENT FINAL TABLE RESULTS
*Plus an APT Championship Main Event Seat valued at KRW 14M (USD 10,000)
Persistence Pays Off
Abraham Ceesvin tamed the Gold Lion APT Main Event Trophy on his third attempt
Out of the 13 APT New Era Main Events to have played out since APT Taipei 2023, Abraham Ceesvin has competed in 8 of them, and boasts a 100 percent cash finish success rate.
Of those eight cashes, five saw the Singaporean finish in the top eighteen, three of which resulted in final table appearances: APT Incheon 2023 (5th), APT Taipei Poker Classic (2nd), and of course, the APT Jeju 2025. Ceesvin also final tabled the old era APT Manila 2016 Main Event where he finished ninth for USD 6,770.
However, when you don’t win a poker tournament it can feel like failure even if you cash, something Ceesvin was keen to point out in his post-match interview.
“I was a bit inexperienced in my first one [the final table at APT Incheon 2023] I could have done better, but we’re all human. We all make mistakes. I didn’t hold it against myself. You have to improve. I got better in the second one and did better in it.”
This resulted in a runner-up finish in the APT Taipei 2024 Poker Classic Main Event, which was good for a TWD 7.9 million (USD 251,160) score – Ceesvin’s best result before this tournament.
“When I got second, it really hurt. Maybe due to my inexperience. Sometimes you don’t get a chance again, but I kept trying,” Ceesvin stated in his post-match interview.
Proving that friendships are forged in the crucible of poker, APT Taipei Poker Classic 2024 Main Event champion Rene Von Reden—who Ceesvin finished runner-up to the last time he final tabled the APT Main Event—immediately came over to congratulate the Singaporean on his monumental victory.
“I really wanted to win the [APT Championship] ticket. Now I can tell my wife I need to go Taipei!” Ceesvin stated.
“It’s going to be tough. There’s definitely players who will have studied and prepared themselves for the Championship because it’s going to be big money.” he opined when asked about his views on the upcoming tournament.
You can read all about the Final Table action in more detail in the APT Blog or view it as it happened via the Main Event Final Table Live Stream on the official APT YouTube channel.
All tournament information can be found on the Main Event – Final Day tournament page.
Main Event by the Numbers
For Main Event Breakdown by Country/Region please CLICK HERE with a graphic available HERE.
The tours’ largest-ever Korean-based Main Event drew a sizable 1,693 entries comprised of 905 unique players from 41 different countries and regions from across the globe.
China made up the highest proportion of the field with 929 entries representing close to fifty-five percent (54.9%) of the total field.
All other country and region participation was below ten percent, with Japan the next best represented with 112 entries making up close to seven percent (6.6%).
Hong Kong was the third best represented region, with 95 entries making up just over five percent (5.6%), with Taiwan the only other region providing over five percent (5.2%) of the total entries with 88.
Singapore (3.8%), Thailand (3.6%), and Vietnam (3%) were the only other countries in the top ten to make up over three percent of the total entries, providing 64, 61, and 50 entries respectively.
Australia's 41 entries accounted for a further two percent (2.4%), and the United States 37 entries accounted for an additional two percent (2.2%), with India (1.5%) rounding out the top ten with 25 entries.
Germany's 22 entries (1.3%), Malaysia's 21 entries (1.2%), and Russia's 19 entries (1.1%) accounted for a just over a combined three percent (3.5%) of the tournament's total entries, with the other 28 countries and regions from the rest of the world making up the remainder of the field.
APT Jeju Main Event Growth by Year
The APT Jeju Main Event is the largest international poker tournament ever to be played in Korea, and the third-largest APT Main Event of all-time.
It is the richest poker tournament the tour has ever operated in the country, over ten times larger and twenty-one times richer than the inaugural APT Jeju 2013 Main Event, which drew 166 entries and generated a KRW 174,858,388 (USD 160,520) prize pool.
The New Era of the Asian Poker Tour (APT) continues to showcase the tours’ unprecedented growth with the APT Jeju 2025 Main Event seeing an impressive 55 percent increase in entries over the APT Jeju 2024, and a sizable 60 percent increase in the prize money played for.