Imagine showing up to an APT stop and walking away with not one, but two new career-high scores. Imagine making two final tables and winning the Main Event for nearly 75 times your previous best score. The typical poker dream became a reality for William Li, as he shipped the record-setting APT Jeju Classic Main Event for a life-changing $399,540.
Who is William Li?
William Li is a recreational poker player from Red Deer, Alberta, Canada. Li mostly plays in South Korea but also has a recorded cash in the WSOP Circuit in Calgary.
Prior to APT Jeju, Li had nine recorded cashes on his official Hendon Mob database, totaling just over $26,000.
Unfortunately, not much else is known about Li at the time of writing.
A historic APT stop
The APT Jeju Classic was far and away the biggest Asian Poker Tour series in APT history. The KRW 2,300,000 (~$1,600) Main Event attracted 1,718 entries, a record for most APT Main Event entries and the largest poker tournament in South Korean history.
The KRW 2,200,000,000 (~$1.5 million) guarantee was obliterated, as the players combined to create a massive KRW 3,370,809,600 (~$2.35 million) prize pool.
Prior to the Main Event, the APT Jeju Classic made headlines as Ren Lin won a pair of high rollers in three days, winning roughly $600,000 – about 1.5 times the Main Event top prize.
Legendary five-time WSOP bracelet winner John Juanda won another APT title, taking down a single-day turbo high roller.
An astonishing week
Before the start of the Main Event, Li was already thrilled, finishing third in the KRW 3,500,000 (~$2,500) high roller for KRW 56,840,000 ($39,302). This smashed his previous record cash of $5,438 that he earned about 18 months prior in a Red Dragon Poker Tour event in Jeju.
However, Li could never have predicted what was about to come in the APT Main Event.
With a massive $176,000 pay jump between second and first and no deal made, Li started as more than a 3:1 underdog. Li would double up in the very first hand of heads-up play, flopping two pair against Sato’s top pair.
A few hands later, Sato called twice and then lead-jammed the river for 4x pot on an 8-7-2-6-2 board, where a flopped flush draw missed. Li tank-called with 5-4 offsuit, a turned straight, to beat Sato’s airball king-ten offsuit bluff, leaving Sato with crumbs.
The very next hand, Li’s ace-deuce offsuit held against Sato’s king-six offsuit, and Li was miraculously crowned the APT Jeju Classic Main Event champion, earning nearly $400,000. Li, Sato, and third-place Romanian finisher Cristian Tabac Mihai ($156,135) all picked up added $10,000 APT Championship Main Event tickets for their incredible runs.
Li, holding the famous APT Gold Lion trophy, couldn’t believe his five-day run to the title.
“I think this trophy represents a lot to me,” Li told the APT via Somuchpoker.
“Over the past two years, I’ve played many tournaments. There were happy moments and frustrating ones, ups and downs along the way. In the end, this feels like a milestone, something worth commemorating. At least for one of my hobbies, at some point in my life, it feels like it has finally given something back to me.
Despite having most of the chips throughout the day, he never allowed himself to feel overconfident.
“I’m actually a relatively pessimistic person, so I don’t really let myself feel happy too early. If there was a moment when I felt the most confident, it was after I won the second-to-last pot. The chip gap became huge, and at that point, I felt the title was basically mine.
“Before that, everyone knows how poker is; anything can happen. Nothing is ever certain. So I only truly relaxed after it was completely over.”
APT Main Event final table results
| Place | Player | Country | Prize |
| 1 | William Li | Canada | $399,540 |
| 2 | Shintaro Sato | Japan | $223,278 |
| 3 | Cristian Tabac Mihai | Romania | $156,135 |
| 4 | Zhang Lei | China | $113,152 |
| 5 | Zu Wang | China | $90,150 |
| 6 | Quang Nguyen | China | $71,726 |
| 7 | Naohiro Arita | Japan | $54,811 |
| 8 | Haohui Ma | China | $38,682 |
| 9 | Yuefeng Pan | China | $29,576 |
