Championship Warm Up ($600)

A player from utg +1 opens the action to 12,000 but is quickly 3-bet by erstwhile chip-leader Seok Jaemoon of Korea from the cutoff to 40,000. Suddenly, from the sb, China’s Zhang Hongru makes a 4-bet shove for 201,000 prompting the initial raiser to fold but getting a snap-call from Seok.

Zhang tables A♣ K♣ while Seok brandishes A♥ A♦ .

The runout goes: 9♠ 7♣ 4♦ 8♦ 9♣ as Zhang gets eliminated and Seok increases his stack to over 700,000 and regains his seat atop the leaderboard.

Indian poker icon Ankit Ahuja opens from the lowjack for 8,000 and gets 3-bet from the button by Minh Dat Dang of Vietnam for 25,000. However, the action isn’t done yet as China’s Zhang Hongru 4-bets it to 60,000 from the sb. It is folded back to Ahuja who executes a 5-bet shove as he also covers both of his opponents.

Minh quickly folds while Zhang takes awhile to consider but ultimately decides to fold.

With the preflop heist, Ahuja has now overtaken Korea’s Seok Jaemoon for the overall chip lead.