Lifeng Shen Beats His Idol Johnny Chan To Win APT Korea

Chinese player Lifeng Shen (photo left) has won the APT Korea 2013 Main Event, after besting a field of 45 players to capture the title, and collect the $35,300 first place prize.
Not surprisingly, the small sized field at the $2,700 buy-in tournament soon reached its final table of six, with Lifeng Shen starting out as the chip leader (266k), followed by Lulu Yang Xi (265k), and Johnny Chan (231k). Also competing, but with much smaller stacks, was Jae Kyung Sim (58k), Song Saohuan (53k), and Daniel Lee (38k).
Eventually, Lifeng Shen would face a formidable task to seal the victory as he would find himself heads-up against poker legend and 10 times WSOP bracelet winner Johnny Chan. The tournament was subsequently decided after an exciting final hand in which Johnny Chan was all-in pre-flop holding pocket queens to Shen’s A-K. Fortunately for Shen, an ace then hit on the flop and held through the rest of the board to hand Shen the title of APT Korea Main Event champion.
Following his remarkable win at the Ramada Casino in Jeju, South Korea, Lifeng Shen commented: “To go heads up with Mr. Johnny Chan was a dream come true. He has been an idol of mine since taking up the game of poker. It was an honor to play with him and I learned so much.”
As for Johnny Chan, one has to just take a look at the above photo to see how he felt about his runner-up finish.
The final table payouts were as follows:
1st: Lifeng Shen (China) – $35,300
2nd: Johnny Chan (USA) – $23,800
3rd: Lulu Xi Yang (China) -$18,900
4th: Jae Kyung Sim (Korea) – $15,900
5th: Shaohuan Song (China) -$14,300
6th: Daniel Lee (USA) – $5,770
Earlier this year, the APT Main Event was held in Korea as a $1,000 buy-in tournament and managed to attract 166 players, but this time around the almost tripled buy-in meant the turn out had fallen to around a third of that total. Commenting on the change, APT CEO Jeff Mann
“..our partners here wanted to try the bigger, higher buy-in event this time. We have had fewer players although that was to be expected. But we are very confident that we have the foundation now for staging at least two APT events in Korea in 2014.”