Huy Hoang Nguyen walked into the Royal Poker Club in Hanoi as the final-table chip leader and walked out a local hero, closing out the RPT Championship III Main Event for 4.6 billion VND — roughly $174,570 — and the festival’s headline trophy. The win capped a 1,047-entry Main Event that turned the Royal Poker Tour’s third championship stop into one of Vietnam’s biggest live poker moments of the year.
The original 20 billion VND guarantee never stood a chance. Entries kept pouring in until the prize pool swelled to 25,088,750,000 VND, a little over $952,000, comfortably blowing past the promised number and stacking the final table with serious money.
An all-Vietnamese duel to the finish
Nguyen carried a commanding stack into the final nine, but the closing stretch still had bite. Heads-up play came down to two countrymen, with Nguyen squaring off against Hoai Anh Tran. The decisive hand was a sweat: Nguyen’s top pair had to survive against Tran’s double draw — a flush and a straight both live — and it held. Tran settled for 3.085 billion VND (about $117,075), a result that still cements him as one of the standout performers of the series.
Vietnamese players dominated the top of the board. Van Duong Ha took third for roughly $82,730, Anh Duc Nguyen fourth and Nhu An Le fifth, giving the host nation five of the top six finishers. China’s Xiaobin Zheng (sixth) and Chuan Feng (seventh) flew the flag for the visiting contingent, while South Korea’s Yushin Lee rounded out the final table in ninth.
Hanoi keeps building momentum
The Royal Poker Club has quietly become one of the region’s reliable big-field venues, and this result is more evidence of how deep the Vietnamese player pool now runs. A local grinder topping a four-figure field for a near-million-dollar prize pool is exactly the kind of story that pulls more recreational players off the rail and into the seats.
RPT Championship III also slots into a packed Vietnamese summer that has already seen huge turnouts at other Hanoi and coastal festivals. With the tour running multiple championship editions a year, the next RPT stop won’t be far off — and on this evidence, the guarantees attached to it are likely to be treated as a floor rather than a ceiling.
Final table payouts
1. Huy Hoang Nguyen (Vietnam) — 4,600,000,000 VND (~$174,570)
2. Hoai Anh Tran (Vietnam) — 3,085,000,000 VND (~$117,075)
3. Van Duong Ha (Vietnam) — 2,180,000,000 VND (~$82,730)
4. Anh Duc Nguyen (Vietnam) — 1,600,000,000 VND (~$60,720)
5. Nhu An Le (Vietnam) — 1,190,000,000 VND (~$45,160)
6. Xiaobin Zheng (China) — 890,000,000 VND (~$33,775)
7. Chuan Feng (China) — 670,000,000 VND (~$25,425)
8. Trong Quyet Nguyen (Vietnam) — 520,000,000 VND (~$19,735)
9. Yushin Lee (South Korea) — 415,000,000 VND (~$15,750)