Daniel Lee took home the tournament title in the Asian Poker Tour main event at the City of Dreams Manila Resort for a top payout worth $256,020. Lee holds a handful of tournament titles, but this was his largest score to date. He also took home his first 24K gold lion APT main event trophy.

“Back in college and high school I would game professionally, I always loved games, always got to the top. I also love markets, I love risk, I love betting. I love that type of stuff, so poker is like a great mix of those two. I have a deep passion for the game, it’s so fun, it’s so exhilarating. This deep run makes it so worth it,” said Lee to reporters after the win.

He continued, “It feel’s so surreal, I’ll be honest, I got pretty lucky. I think heads-up I didn’t play it that well, but in the end we ground it out and persevered and came away with the victory.”

Although the main event was the star of the series, multiple tournaments set records for the APT in both terms of turnout and prize pool.

The 85,000 Philippine Peso buy-in main event saw a large field of 8,102 entries to put the total prize pool at $5,944,757. The top 159 players all made the money including Joey Weissman (45th), Hye Park (72nd), Joseph Cheong (97th).

Lee held the chip lead at the start of the final table, but a rocky start saw him fall near the bottom of the pack. Jaejoong Kim fell in ninth place, and Vincent Huang followed him in eighth place. Renji Mao hit the rail in seventh place, and then Lee bounced back and took over the final table by eliminating the next three players.

Gab Yong Kimn (sixth), Sandagdorj Munkhbaatar (fifth), and Ferdinand Lu (fourth) all fell at the feet of Lee, and then Edgar Antezana got in on the action by busting John Costiniano in third place to set the heads-up final. Antezana had a slight edge by just five big blinds over Lee when that final skirmish began.

The remaining two players decided on a chop, but it still took 53 hands between them to decide a winner. There were three lead changes between them before the fate of the tournament was decided. Lee rivered a flush in the most consequential hand to best the trip threes of Antezana, and that all but settled the matter.

The final hand was just a formality to crown Lee as the new APT champion. Antezana took home a nice consolation prize worth $235,450 thanks to his deep run in the tournament. This second-place finish was the largest score of the South African player’s career by far.

Final Table Results

Photo Credit: Asian Poker Tour