This event has been a major milestone for poker in the region, tearing down a barrier in a country which has a complete blanket ban on gambling beyond the state-run lottery.
It was a significant achievement by the World Poker Tour organisers to get this championship scheduled in Thailand, but this has even been surpassed by the news that poker will now be recognised as a sport by the Thai government.
The ฿37,000 (~$1,040) buy-in WPT Prime Exhibition Championship event attracted an impressive 2,337 entries, building a prize pool of ฿75,488,000 (~$2,325,066).
Due to regulations restricting week day play to only six hours, it took three days of play for the field to whittle down to the final 14 contenders.
But when China’s Haoran Sun arrived for the Day 4 action, he would prove to be unstoppable from the first hand.
The 33-year-old engineer was hyper-aggressive throughout and from second in chips at the end of his Day 1 starting flight, he never dropped out of the top chip counts.
Action Recap
Although this was a four-day event, the structure was still relatively fast due to the reduced number of hours allowed. Twenty-minute levels left the 14-man field with an average of only 11 big blinds as Day 4 kicked off.
Five of those stacks were on life support and with barely more than half an hour the final table was set.
Nikhil Kedia was at his second final table of the series but left this one after only one hand. Amit Ashkenazi followed him to the rail minutes later when the final scraps from his stack were all-in with ten-six.
Allen Nielsen was next to leave, banished from the playing hall by Sun who was now starting to stretch his legs.
Japan’s Atsunobu Konishi was knocked out by Philipp Zukernik who was desperately trying to stop Sun running away with it.
The Canadian then picked up a timely double-up against Alex Lee when his A♥ 5♦ came out on top on a A♣ Q♣ 9♦ 8♥ 5♣ board. Lee’s A♦ K♦ had just been rivered in horrible fashion.
Lee exited the playing hall on the very next hand to leave only four players in the hunt with Hong Cai and Duhan Lee critically low on chips.
Within minutes, both of the shorties were all-in together and the other two players checked it down to send Cai home in fourth place with a ฿4,231,000 prize as compensation.
Lee was out in third a couple of hands later when the same check down line happened again.
Heads-up wasn’t much of an event. Sun took the remainder of the chips on only the second hand.
Zukernik jammed his last 12 big blinds in with 10♦ 7♦ and got a call from Sun who flipped over K♣ 7♣.
The board ran out J♥ 6♣ 3♠ Q♥ 4♦ and Sun was the first-ever WPT champion in Thailand, with many more expected to follow in the coming years.
2025 WPT Prime Thailand Exhibition Championship Final Table Results
| Place | Player | Country | Travel Funds Prize | Prize in USD |
| 1 | Haoran Sun | China | ฿11,477,000 | $353,497 |
| 2 | Philipp Zukernik | Canada | ฿7,620,000 | $234,699 |
| 3 | Duhan Lee | South Korea | ฿5,658,000 | $174,269 |
| 4 | Hong Cai | China | ฿4,231,000 | $130,317 |
| 5 | Alex Lee | Singapore | ฿3,201,000 | $98,592 |
| 6 | Atsunobu Konishi | Japan | ฿2,442,000 | $75,215 |
| 7 | Allen Nielsen | Denmark | ฿1,879,000 | $57,874 |
| 8 | Amit Ashkenazi | Israel | ฿1,458,000 | $44,907 |
| 9 | Nikhil Kedia | India | ฿1,142,000 | $35,174 |
