Chane Kampanatsanyakorn wins the Asian Pacific Poker (APPT) Season 8 Main Event in the South Korean capital of Seoul, thus becoming the first player from Thailand to capture an APPT main event title.
If at first you don’t succeed?
Yes…you’ve got it…try, try, again.
That’s the motto of Chane Kampanatsanyakorn as he followed up on his Season 7 APPT Seoul runner-up finish with victory in the Season 8 event at the Paradise Walker Hill Casino in the heart of the South Korean capital.
256 players took to the felt and they included the former darling of the Seoul gaming world, Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospellier. The Frenchman exiting without a whimper on Day 1B when his flush draw failed to improve against his opponent’s second pair.
Kampanatsanyakorn lost out to the amazing talents of Aaron Lim in this event last year, but it seems even his poker powers are no match for the traffic of Seoul. Lim arriving 40-minutes late only to see his Day 2 short stack looking a lot shorter than he last remembered. He got it in, nothing much happened, he then left the building.
Following Lim out of the contest were two members of Team PokerStars Asia: Celina Lin and Brian Huang. Both members of the Asian Red Spade leaving the tournament on Day 1A, and Team Online pro, and World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet holder, Naoya Kihara followed them after being eliminated on Day 2.
Sam Razavi is an Englishmen that can seemingly do no wrong when it comes to battering opponents on Asian felts, but this was not going to be another notch on his poker bedpost after also succumbing to the poker Gods on Day 2.
Despite these high profile eliminations the final table was still a little cracker with the former Aussie Millions final table starlet Sam Cohen being joined by the man for the High Stakes occasions Winfred Yu.
Yu would leave in fifth place after moving all-in holding [Qh] [Jd] only to be called, and defeated, by the [Ah] [Js] of Christian Haggart.
Sam Cohen would make it down to the final three places and a deal was struck that gave Christian Haggart the lion share of the cash with $123,240; Kampanatsanyakorn took $114,000, and Sam Cohen settled for a not too shabby looking $82,000.
That left around $28,500 and a HK$100,000 package for the ACOP Main Event in November to play for, and after Cohen was sent spiraling to the rail in third it was Kampanatsanyakorn who put the 2013 demons to rest after finding pocket aces right on cue to call the shove of Haggart holding queen-jack.
Final Table Standings
1st. Chane Kampanatsanyakorn – $142,200 *
2nd. Christian Haggert – $123,240 *
3rd. Sam Cohen – $82,000 *
4th. Shinya Umano – $47,155
5th. Winfred Yu – $39,022
6th. John Marshall – $30,889
7th. Keiichiro Sugimoto – $24,389
8th. Makoto Yoshimichi – $19,511
9th. Kosaku Akahi – $14,646.
