Marc Inizan Leads Final Nine Players in 2022 WPT Prime Taiwan Main Event

Chip leader Marc Inizan

The final table is set in the record-setting 2022 WPT Prime Taiwan Main Event, which saw a huge field of 877 entries emerge for the TWD 33,000 ($1,100) buy-in. It was the biggest live poker event for the Chinese Texas Hold’em Poker Association in Taipei City, as the TWD 25,196,700 ($808,623) prize pool represents more than two and a half times the guarantee to make it the largest competition in Taiwan to date.

After three starting days and nearly eleven hours of poker action on Day 2, the nine remaining contenders bagged up for the night at the CTP Club. Only four different nationalities are represented on the final table and London-based French poker pro Marc Inizan leads the way with a stack of 5,245,000. He came into the day second in chips and remained near the top of the leaderboard for the entire duration to retain his chances of becoming the next WPT Prime Main Event champion.

Six local players from Taiwan will aim to keep the trophy on home soil and Chih Feng Li has the biggest tally of them with 4,385,000 while South Korea’s Jeyoung Park (4,220,000) occupies the final spot on the overnight podium.

The middle of the pack contains Kai Jan Chou (3,210,000), Yuan Hsu Lee (2,505,000), Yao Wei Huang (2,400,000), and Chang Le Lin (2,175,000. Last woman standing is Japan’s Sumire Hori (1,195,000) while Yu Fan Chang (1,030,000) follows only a few big blinds behind.

2022 WPT Prime Taiwan Main Event Final Table

There are 30:45 minutes remaining in level 25 at blinds of 30,000-60,000 and 60,000 big blind ante. The conclusion of the marquee event is scheduled as of 1pm local time on Monday, November 21, 2022.

All finalists have locked up TWD 431,900 ($13,861) for their efforts so far. The winner will walk away with a cash prize of TWD 4,326,600 ($138,851) and an entry worth $10,000 for the WPT Championship Main Event at the Wynn in Las Vegas.

Action of Day 2

The penultimate tournament day started with 108 hopefuls still in contention and the early stages saw a rapid decline of the field size. Several dozen players departed in the opening stages including Kenny Shih, WPT Champions Club Member Pete Chen, Junfeng Wang, Jaehyung Park, Nobuaki Sasaki, Maki Ikeda, and Daisuke Ogita.

Pieter Borremans started as one of the shorter stacks and spun it up to an average stack only to see his turned top pair and top kicker go down in flames against the back door straight of Ryuichi Tsuchida. Joint chip leader Zachary Tay had dropped back into the middle of the pack but then won a flip against Marc Inizan to get back into contention. When the first break after two hours and a quarter kicked off, the field of hopefuls was cut down to 53 already.

Kenji Hata fell during the next two-hour session at the tables when his queens were cracked by pocket treys. Tay’s run was halted by Tsuchida when turned trips hours were crushed by a full house and Day 1a chip leader Carter Chan saw a series of losses result in his exit soon thereafter. Hajato Kitajima and Ken Gi Lin bowed out, too, with the latter first getting his aces cracked by Yuan Hsu Lee to then run into the aces of the very same nemesis.

The field was racing towards the redraw of the final three tables with the likes of Orathai Nasathaen, Louis Bilodeau, Kuang Hung “Luke” Lee, Tae Hoon Han, Thananat Therdtakoonrat, Bradley Ritschel, and Metasit Pratipsangkom all departing.

Notables to bow out thereafter included the WSOP bracelet winner and WPTDeepStacks champion Sung Joo Hyun, Ken Okada, and second-last woman standing Chi Ying Tsai. Ryuichi Tsuchida lost a series of pots to narrowly miss out the final table, which was then set with the elimination of Chain Ru Chuang.

The final nine contenders will be back in action at 1pm local time on the main feature table at the CTP Club and the WPT.com live reporting team will be there to provide all the action until a winner has been crowned.

Remaining Payouts