KRW 1 Billion on the Line: The WPT® Seoul INSPIRE Championship Is Live

It's finally here, the moment we've been waiting for. It's the WPT® Seoul INSPIRE Championship.

A KRW 1,000,000,000 guaranteed centrepiece of WPT®'s first-ever South Korea festival in history. As we write this, it is underway at the INSPIRE Entertainment Resort near Incheon. The first cards are already in the books.

In regards to the performance, Day 1A drew 221 entries. We have 28 players bagging through and Russia's Aleksandr Goloborodko leading the way. That guarantee works out to roughly $700,000. Over the coming days it'll be decided at the new YY Poker Club, at a livestreamed final table on November 9.

Here's all you need to know as Day 1 takes place.

The Championship is a KRW 1,750,000 buy-in event (about $1,250). It will be playing for that KRW 1 billion guaranteed prize pool. The structure gives players plenty of room and plenty of chances:

Four starting flights with re-entry means we'll see that field and prize pool build over November 5–7. And, only the survivors' best stacks carrying forward. The legal age to play in Korea is 19 and over.

The warm-up week set the stage, and the Japanese players were shining.

Daisuke Nagano took the opening INSPIRE Superstack. Ryoichi Katsumata won the Championship Warm-Up out of a 353-entry field. And, Ryuta Nakai took the Super High Roller Warm Up. It was a strong showing for the Japanese. The same contingent even stacked podiums even where they didn't win.

The main event will answer if that form will carry all the way. (For the full warm-up story and the significance of WPT®'s Korean debut, see our companion pieces.)

There's a WPT® Global presence in the field, too.

In the Super High Roller Warm Up, WPT® Global ambassador Romulo Dorea of Brazil finished third in the week's toughest field. He's one to watch if he fires the Championship.

Whoever comes out on top on November 9 writes their name in as the first-ever WPT® Seoul champion. It's a milestone result on the tour's Korean debut. Whether it goes to one of the high performing Japanese players, a home player, or a qualifier who laddered in.

The opening flight drew 221 entries, and 28 of them bagged a stack for Day 2.

Topping the counts is Aleksandr Goloborodko of Russia with 1,018,000. That's more than 25 times the 40,000 starting stack! He places ahead of Mongolia's Temuulen Adiya (742,000) and Vietnam's Chinh Khoi Dinh (603,000).

After a warm-up week that belonged to the travelling Japanese contingent, the top of Day 1A is Russian, Mongolian and Vietnamese.

It shows us that the Championship field is becoming more international. It's going beyond the players who swept the side events. It's one flight of four, though, so the picture will shift as the rest of the field files in. (These Day 1A figures are from SoMuchPoker's recap and worth confirming against WPT®'s official counts.)

There are still three more flights to come playing out over November 6–7. The number we have to keep track of is the cumulative turnout against the KRW 1 billion guarantee. Day 1A's 221 is the first, with each flight adding to the field and the prize pool.

Watch, too, whether Goloborodko's overnight lead survives the later flights. Let's also see whether the week's hot Japanese names , and WPT® Global ambassador Romulo Dorea, climb the leaderboard.

Live updates run on WPT®'s channels and wptseoul.com. The final table on November 9 will be livestreamed from the YY Poker Club's dedicated studio.

We'll update this piece with Day 1A numbers as soon as they post. Alongise the full champion-and-payouts recap follows after the November 9 finale.