Japan's Kaito Hirai outlasted 214 entrants to claim victory in the Mystery Bounty Hunter - Sponsored by Natural8 for a tasty payday of ₫261,960,000 ($11,265). This is Hirai's first APT title after finishing 5th in a No Limit Hold Em event at APT Korea in Incheon.
Hirai was one of thirteen players who progressed from Flight B after eighteen players had earlier made day two from Flight A. The total number of entries across both flights was 214 —124 of which came entered in Flight A and 90 in Flight B.
The 31 survivors of the two opening flights returned for the second and final day all looking to take some scalps and claim as large a slice of the prize pool as they were able. It took seven 30-minute levels to whittle this down to the official eight-handed final table.
During the early stages of the final table, Hirai had a hand against Tyler James Warken in which he flopped quads and earned a full double-up from the Canadian. Moments later Warken would be eliminated by Farukh Tach when Warken's pocket fours could not hold against the ace-king of Tach.
Just a few hands later Kyle William Joseph Jones would join his fellow Canadian on the rail when he got his chips in with a pair against Lester Edoc who, unfortunately for Jones, had a higher pair.
Next to fall would be Viktor Zhuchkov when he went off to the races with ace-king suited against Edoc's pocket tens. Zhuchkov could find no help from the dealer and the Russian would finish in 6th place.
Konstantin Generalov was the next player to be eliminated and he fell at the hands of Aleksi Vanin. Generalov flopped a flush draw against the top pair of Vanin but could not improve.
Whilst play was 4-handed Hirai would double-up when his pocket eights were too good for the ace-five of Edoc. Though this was only a minor setback for Edoc as he continued to rake pots and at the time of the next elimination he had over half of the chips in play.
Farukh Tach fell to the eventual champion, Hirai, when Tach's ace-six was no competition for the flopped set of Hirai. The turn did bring Tach an open-ended straight draw but the river wouldn't be friendly to Tach and he was out in 4th.
Play was not 3-handed for long because Edoc would knock out another opponent and this time it was the last remaining Russian, Aleksi Vanin. In an all-too-common blind-on-blind battle, Vanin was all in with jack-ten against the king-nine of Edoc. Vanin could not find any help with the pretty-looking hole cards and he was our third place finisher.
When heads-up play began, Edoc had a 3-1 chip advantage and seemed the crowd favorite to lock up his 17th APT title. Hirai had other thoughts, though, and slowly ground down the experienced Edoc and at one point he was level on the chip counts.
After around an hour of heads-up play, a crucial hand played out that went the way of Hirai. The Japanese player had limped pre-flop with pocket queens only for Edoc to raise eight times the big blind. Following that huge, out-of-character, raise Hirai shoved all-in and Edoc called with king-nine. Hirai held and the momentum had well and truly shifted his way. Lester Edoc was up against the ropes.
In the final hand with Edoc having only ten big blinds, he shoved all-in and was called by Hirai. Hirai needed to hit as his queen-ten was behind the king-deuce of Edoc. The flop bought no favors for Hirai but the queen on the turn all but sealed the title. Edoc could not find one of the last remaining kings on the river and Kaito Hirai punched the air in celebration.
That concludes the live coverage from the Mystery Bounty Hunter tournament. Join us tomorrow for the **APT Main Event - VND 10,000,000,000 GTD Flight A ** that begins at 12,00 pm local time (GMT + 7). The buy-in will be ₫30,000,000 + 3,000,000 and Monday's Flight will be the first of four. Join us tomorrow to see who has what it takes to become the next APT Main Event Champion.
