For several years now, Triton has been holding tournaments with fields made up of many businessmen or wealthy amateurs, each of whom chooses a strong professional as a partner. Players who can be classified as the more amateur group are determined by a special committee (rumor has it that a few years ago it included Jason Koon, Rob Yong and Michael Soyza, but it may be different now). Almost every series is accompanied by a lively discussion on social networks since the VIPs they select can cause bewilderment. But recently, the organizers have moved away from categorical terms like “recreationals” and “businessmen”. At the Bahamas series, they used the wording “Elite invitees”.
In our social media review, we reported that this time, one of the most controversial figures was Jared Bleznick.
Daniel Negreanu also took the opportunity to poke fun at Jared in his vlog.
– I got a question for you buddy. So, you are what's known as an invitee, so they deem you worthy of being an invitee versus being a professional. How'd you pull that off?
– Because I suck in No Limit Hold'em, replied Jared.
– You just won the $50k at the World Series of Poker.
– I still suck at No Limit.
– But you're still in,
– But I still suck at No Limit, that's why I'm in VIP in this tournament. It's that simple.
– Well, okay. If you say so.
– He should have been a VIP! [Daniel turns to Shaun Deeb]
– I should have been a VIP, he agreed.
– I should have been a VIP! I'm a businessman.
– You 100% should have been VIP.
Sean was invited to the tournament by Michael "Texas Mike" Monchek. Alex Foxen and Michael Addamo also received the coveted invitations at the very last moment. We also talked about their ordeals in the social media review.
Addamo received an invite from another dubious VIP, Yoshiaki Nagaki.
– Yoshiaki is a very strong player (many cash regs know him well, he is a guy with a bunch of dashes (lilillllliilll) on his Chico and WPN), – avr0ra wrote in Telegram.
– Regs sell each other 90% of the action, and then divide the value from the rich whales who play this tournament as if it were a CIS with friends for $10. I'm just dying of impatience! – wrote one of the critics on 2+2.
– No, that's not how it's working, – ggbruce countered in the Triton $500K entry semi invitational thread. Considering roughly half of the field is a bit weaker they work as a team with their partner sort off. The invited player will have endless options when it comes to what pro to pick so he can negotiate in terms of getting swaps / buying action for a low mark up. I'm honestly not entirely sure where all the ev ends up. People charge very high mark ups so I would sort off imagine some pros / backers losing quite significantly. I think super highrollers are sort off broken. Regs swap and sell action to chop up the fish. Even though it's against the meritocracy of poker (which might not matter since its a 500k buyin), it might be a reasonable way to get these buyins going.
For all the people questioning vip /business man and so on, the invited player is essentially just someone who isn't a triton regular. It obviously isn't a secret that elias, saya, bleznick and a couple of others are pros lol. Considering elias was listed as a business man at a previous event I assume you kinda get one chance. If you want to play future stops you have to accept your status as a pro.
In addition to Talviti, this version is confirmed by Punnat Punsri, who was also among the VIPs at one of the series, and recently he has been consistently considered a regular. So far, Konstantin Maslak has managed to cheat the system, who was among the "businessmen" at both the Monte Carlo and Bahamas series. Both times he invited Artur Martirosyan to the tournament.
In the end, 37 pairs registered for the tournament, 22 players re-entered. The prize fund was $48 million, $12 million for first place, 17 people in the money.
One of those who had to re-enter was David Einhorn.
He was eliminated in the very first hand of the tournament when he 6-bet all-in with , "businessman" Bleznik did not throw away and received 600 blinds at his disposal.
On the second try, David reached the money.
68 players made it through to the second day. There was only one professional in the top 5 chip count – Fedor Holz.
Phil Ivey (with a rebuy) and Daniel Negreanu also made it through to Day 2 , with Reddit users getting witty with their captions for a photo of them together.
Daniel: She's over 21, right?
Ivey: And you can play poker on this thing?
Ivey: Solver is wrong.
Daniel: How do you like my Halloween costume?
On the second day, Ivey was one of the first to be eliminated.
He defended the BB and called on all streets.
This giveaway also caused a heated discussion on Reddit.
The most popular comment: "Remember the days when Q4o was folded preflop?"
Negreanu busted in the second level of the day. He three-bet with AKs and called Kayhan Mokri's four-bet shove with KK.
Konstantin Maslak flew out about 10 people before the money.
He played a limp-push on SB with With a stack of 27 big blinds, Sosia Jiang in the BB made the call with .
Three people short of the prizes, Artur Martirosyan and Nick Petrangelo were eliminated in one hand.
Nick shoved 4 big blinds preflop, Artur and Dvoress called. The flop was checked, Arthur bet 900,000 on the turn, Dvoress called. On the river, Arthur check-called his entire stack.
– Overestimated the impact of BB Ante and payouts, – wrote Artur in Telegram. – Expected that they should play more widely here, as a result, I made a big mistake preflop (there was a fold with a reserve), and then they laid it out without options, GG. I am upset because I made a mistake, but everything is natural, I lost focus during the game and misjudged the situation, as a result, I was punished by being eliminated.
And a little later he added:
– I thought about postflop now and decided that I was wrong there too. It’s hard to come up with bluffs other than AQ, and it’s not a fact that he’ll want them. Somehow I completely lost during this hand, <...> everything was completely off. It’s very strange, I don’t remember this happening to me for a long time, and as always, excessive haste will not lead to anything good. On the river I was choosing between a push and a check-call, I didn’t even consider a check-fold, so after a check and a push I quickly called, and a check-fold was probably the only correct decision.
Ryan Feldman became the bubble boy :
– Direct bubbled. Max pain. Sick to my stomach cuz I didn’t realize there were 18 left or I prob fold bb. 20 left a minute before that.
Defended bb and led shoved flop after flopping combo draw. 11 outs on flop, 14 outs on turn.
Gave it my all, really wanted this.
The first to be eliminated from the prizes was Nikita Bodyakovsky ( < Stephen Chidwick). Punnath Poonsri followed him out of the tournament, making it to the money with a 4BB stack. Both took home $755,000.
Michael Moncek and Daniel Dvoress entered the final day as chip leaders.
It seemed like no one could stop Dvoress that day, as he knocked out Chidwick in 14th place, Kornuth in 10th, Sosia Jiang in 8th and Alexey Ponyakov in 7th.
Alexey pushed 20 blinds from the SB, Daniel asked for a stack count and called.
At one point, Dvoress had about as many chips in his stack as all the other players combined. By the next break, Daniel had lost a bit, but still held the lead.
In 6th place he knocked out Alex Foxen ( < ). But in 5-max the switch was switched, and from that moment on Alejandro "Papo MC" Lococo was the soloist in the tournament.
In one of the hands, Alejandro got a river hit from Ben Heath.
Heath thought for a long time, but paid and looked at .
A couple of hands later, Ben defended the BB with 97o, got nothing and folded postflop. At the 300k/600k level, he was left with a stack of 175k, but eventually made it to second place. In an auto all-in on the SB, he was dealt a pair of sixes, with which he held against two opponents. There were more than 1 million chips, after which Heath won 4 more all-ins and spun up to a comfortable 16 blinds.
Without waiting for the pay jump, Elias Talvitie was eliminated in 5th place.
In a blind-on-blind situation, Lokoko raised preflop and three-barreled postflop. Elias called it all off.
Immediately after that, Dvoress was eliminated, pushing with a pair of deuces.
There was no fight in 3-max. Alejandro started it with a stack of 87 blinds against 13 of Sinan Unlu and 17 of Ben Heath and quickly brought the matter to victory.
Final table replay:
In addition to the $12 million, Alejandro earned the Triton title and a WSOP bracelet.
Not everyone appreciated the latter.
– This might not be a popular opinion or it might be!, – Mike Matusow decided to grumble . – But how can you earn a WSOP bracelet in an event which wasn’t open to the public, in an event you needed to be a VIP or invited to play? I know of at least 4 top pros who wanted to play but were denied to play!
