Stephen Pang was already holding the Asian Poker Tour’s golden lion, mid-way through his winner’s interview, when officials at Paradise City realised the 2026 APT Incheon Main Event was not over. Shoumin Zhang, apparently eliminated on a queen-of-clubs river, still had 700,000 in chips behind — one big blind, and enough to put the trophy back on the table.
Pang did eventually win it, and the KRW 1.5 million ($1,700) event delivered a record for the tour’s Korean stop along the way: 1,393 entries from 807 unique players, a prize pool of KRW 2,966,540,000 (roughly $2.1 million) and 207 players paid. The Hong Kong player collected $293,700 for the win.
Thirty hands, four double-ups
By the time the false finish happened, the money was mostly settled. The three remaining players had already cut a deal that flattened the top payouts, leaving $29,060 and the lion itself as the only things still in dispute. That is usually the cue for a quick, low-stakes heads-up match.
Instead Zhang, restarting with a single big blind, ran off four consecutive double-ups and survived around 30 more hands, dragging his stack back to roughly 14 million against Pang’s 42 million. A formality turned into a genuine contest before Pang finally closed it out for real.
Zhang, from China, banked $261,785 for second. American Yifu He took $183,570 in third. The top finishers also picked up $10,000 seats into the APT Championship Main Event in Taipei this November, which keeps a large slice of the Incheon prize money circulating inside the tour.
Hong Kong’s second lion of 2026
Pang’s win makes it back-to-back APT Main Event titles for Hong Kong. Lau Chun Shing took the Taipei Main Event in May, and the pair have now bookended the tour’s biggest Asian stops this year — a decent showing for a jurisdiction with no live poker scene of its own to speak of.
“I’ve been preparing for this event for over a year, refining my strategies,” Pang said, crediting online volume for the work behind the result. On the trophy he was blunter: “I feel fulfilled. Truly fulfilled. I’ve always been dreaming about this lion for years.”
Incheon keeps growing
The festival ran August 7-16 at Paradise City Casino Resort, with the Main Event playing out from August 9. A 1,393-entry field puts it firmly among the year’s biggest Asian live tournaments, and it followed a fortnight in which APPT Manila also set a record with 1,413 entries — two of the region’s flagship stops breaking their own marks within days of each other.
Incheon was busy elsewhere on the schedule too. Jeremy Chan finally broke a long heads-up drought earlier in the series, and Korea’s growing rota of international festivals continues to pull fields that Seoul’s own domestic rooms could not host a few years ago.
Next up for the tour is the Taipei Championship in November, where a chunk of the Incheon field will arrive on seats they won in Korea. Whether anyone else has to win it twice is another matter. For a fuller picture of the circuit’s stops and buy-ins, see our Asian Poker Tour guide.