The organizers of Triton divide their series into two parts – regular hold'em and short deck. The first week is traditionally played using all 52 cards.
The series in Vietnam kicked off with a $25,000 tournament that set a new record for 166 entries. The previous one (131 entries) was set in the autumn in Cyprus when Patrik Antonius won a tournament with a similar buy-in.
This time, one of the most successful Asian regulars, Chin Wei Lim from Malaysia, became the first champion.
Lim dedicated the victory to his friend and mentor Ivan Liao, who died during the previous stage in Cyprus.
– All my friends know very well what kind of relationship I had with Ivan. If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't be here at all. I won for you, Ivan. You are greatly missed. I didn't seem to lose a single all-in in the entire tournament. But I won’t say that it was an easy walk, I’m still squeezed out like a lemon.
The tournament was held in collaboration with GG Poker, so the final table was held according to the online rules – the players themselves chose their place depending on the size of the stack, and the levels increased every 15 hands, and not by time.
The fate of the tournament was decided by two bluffs for the entire stack.
At first, Chris Brewer failed to beat trips and finished 3rd.
Lim raised preflop and c-bet, the turn and the river were check-called.
In a key heads-up hand, Lim caught a daring bluff from Czech regular Roman Grabets, who made his Triton debut.
The whole friendly Triton team came to congratulate Lim on his victory.
The record only lasted one day. In the cheapest $15,000 tournament of the series, the field was 172 entries.
The winner was Nacho Barbero, who has been in the news since the beginning of this year. In early February, he made headlines at the final table of the Players' Championship in the Bahamas.
From there he went to Las Vegas, where he managed to quarrel and quickly make peace with Daniel Negreanu.
After the victory, Nacho admitted that he returned to active grinding due to the collapse in crypto-investments, on which he lost a significant part of his fortune. It turns out he's good. He won $1.5 million at the PCA, and the Vietnam win netted him another $600k, Nacho's first and third live results in his rich career.
At the final table, Nacho was left with almost no timebanks, and in many situations that required thought, he made very risky decisions. This tactic worked – he did not lose all-ins on the final table either from the lead, from behind, or in coin flips. He knocked out seven opponents out of eight himself.
In heads-up, the famous regular Graftekkel was defeated in 30 minutes. Like the previous one, this tournament also ended with an all-in bluff.
On the river, Nacho thought for a long time but found a call.
9th place went to Linus Loeliger. He entered the final table with a stack of three blinds and was immediately eliminated with ATo against the QJo of Nacho.
Linus impressed the audience with a new collection of shirts. On 2+2 it was suggested that he said hi to BERRI SWEET.
In terms of bright outfits, only Aleksey Ponyakov can compete with the Swiss in this series (he was knocked out by Nacho in 5th place in a coinflip 99>AK).
On the first day of the tournament, long before the money, there was an episode that showed how dangerous the job of poker commentators is. At the 10k/15k/15k level, Roland Rokita SB called and Biao Ding checked tens with a six-blind stack in the BB.
“Wow, is this some kind of new level trap?” – Randy "nanonoko" Lew commented with obvious irony.
“I don’t understand such a play at all,” Ali Nejad supported. – Completely unorthodox performance from both.
As a result, the hand ended for the Chinese player being eliminated.
The flop was checked, Rokita bet 25,000 on the turn, and on the river – he set his opponent all-in.
After the deal, the commentators talked about the check for a few minutes, hinting that this mistake led to the bust out.
This did not go unnoticed by the regulars. Fedor Holtz explained that when playing blind for blind, this is a completely standard hand:
– Heard Nanonoko and Ali Nejad mocking the check back with TT at 7BB deep, even though the guy played this hand absolutely correctly 😂
In the comments, they asked to explain the logic of such a play.
“The thing is, the SB limp is very polar,” wrote Jason Koon. – Range – TT+ or the lower limit of our VPIP type T5o, 96o, 73s and so on. In response, it makes sense to push hands like A2o or K3o, with which we block traps, but do not block limp folds. Also, with TT we don't have to defend as hard as you think, because, with the big cards, SB would go all-in.
– That is why you play poker, and we only comment, – Randy Lew said to the world. – Do not take our words as if we consider ourselves stronger than the players who are sitting at the table at this moment.
“Like many of our spectators, we do not understand the game at the highest level,” Ali Nejad supported his colleague. So sometimes you have to ask perplexed questions.
– Excellent commentary, – Fedor did not exacerbate. “I don’t think that this hand deserves such attention at all. It's just that your words resonated with me, so I decided to speak out.
The real Cinderella story was the $20,000 Mystery Bounty tournament.
It was won by streamer and NL200 regular Mark "Weazel_1991" Rubbatan. Prior to this series, he had never won more than $15,000 live.
Mark got to Vietnam by winning a promo in the ACR room. More than 40 people participated in three grueling challenges where one $100k package was up for grabs. Mark told the details of the victory in his video.
First, the contestants had to grind MTTs, in this leaderboard he took 2nd place.
In the second challenge, it was necessary to collect the maximum stack in a week at the "No Rathole" tables, where everyone starts with 10BB and does not have the right to reset during the week if they finish the session in the black. Participants of the promotion could play as many tables as they wanted, but only the maximum stack counted, and only one table could be opened at a time. This has led to the fact that in recent days, the leaders of the list deliberately sat down at the tables of competitors in order to prevent each other from filling stacks.
Mark managed to snatch victory in the final hours of the action. The situation has developed, so in one of the last hands, it was profitable for him to play for a pot of more than 500BB with 85o. He was dominated but won both boards.
“Now if I ever whine on the stream that it doesn’t work out for me, immediately send me a clip of this hand,” Mark addressed the audience.
In the final challenge, it was necessary to win as many “On Demand” tournaments as possible in 48 hours (ed. – tournaments that do not start on schedule, but when a certain number of players gather ). For the victory, the participant received 10 points, for the second place and below – 0. Mark even had to play PLO8 tournaments, the rules of which he learned on the go. This game also added some gray hair to the streamer.
There was one more condition – only those tournaments that were played on the stream were taken into account. In two days, Mark streamed 42 hours, at one point he played 18 tables at the same time. His main competitor TravisTPoker played non-stop for 48 hours in a row, but it did not help him, and the package went to Mark.
In Vietnam, Weazel_1991 first placed 10th in the $15,000 buy-in event, earning him $50,000. And the next day he won the main victory of his career. Heads-up, Mark beat the stellar Viktor Malinovsky and, including the bounty (he made 10 in the entire tournament, 7 of them on the final table), earned $636k.
After winning the package, and succumbing to euphoria, Mark promised to get a tattoo with the image of Phil Nagy's face if he manages to win the tournament in Vietnam.
Phil himself has already written that he is categorically against such nonsense:
– The purpose of the action is to change people's lives for the better, and we have already succeeded in this.
The maximum bounty of $250,000 went to Orpen Kisacikoglu, who knocked out one opponent and did not even make it to the money.
The organizers also made a real show out of the envelope opening ceremony. You can watch the post with Dmitry Shakhov's comments:
Bounty payments (the name of Artur Martirosyan is still not always successful by the organizer of Triton):
The final table had a hilarious hand where four players shoved preflop but no one busted.
Jans Ahrendts managed to get revenge for his heads-up loss against Nacho Barbero and became the winner of the $30,000 buy-in tournament (171 entries).
After the victory, Jans admitted that online remains his main priority, but Triton's streams are so attractive that he could not help but break into Vietnam.
“Well, are you sure you’ll come to the next one now?” Ali Nejad asked him.
– It seems to be in May? Jans asked doubtfully.
– So what?! How can this bother you?
– SCOOP.
For Ahrendts, the debut Triton event was also successful. After the deal in the top 3, he received a little less than $1 million.
The last prize place was taken by Linus Leliger, marking a new "berry" shirt.
The $50,000 buy-in tournament turned out to be one of the longest in the history of the series. Dmitry Shakhov and the guests spent more than 13 hours on the air.
The short stacks didn't want to be eliminated, so the final table was played in such depth:
Patrik Antonius ended up getting 5th place. And Viacheslav Buldygin showed so far the best result in the series for our players. Throughout the tournament, he thanked his lucky cap for good luck.
But on the last hand, even she failed. The kings of legend HUSNG couldn't resist Biao Ding (the one who correctly played TT 7BB deep).
Bubble-boy was Viktor Kudinov.
Linus Leliger, of course, in a new outfit (without berries, they are apparently in the wash!) designed another plot. On the straight bubble, he bluffed Patrik Antonius.
Antonius thought for a few minutes and threw away , Linus said he had .
As a result, Linus took 8th place, which he is unlikely to be very happy about. With two tables he had more than 80 blinds when the nearest competitor had only 32, and he entered the final table with the second stack.
In the final hand, Linus shoved QQ against Dan Smith's AK and even caught a set, but couldn't win.
The champion was local player Dao Ming Fu, who had no Hendonmob entries at all prior to this series.
In the $75,000 buy-in tournament, well-known amateurs Orpen Kisachikoglu, Santosh Suvarna, and Rob Yong gave a decent fight to established professionals.
Suvarna humiliated Michael Soiza before the money with a spectacular call with A-high.
Yong correctly folded aces on the river against Henrik Hecklen with two tables left.
And Orpen in the final hand with K6s managed to beat the same hand of Chidwick.
In fairness, it should be noted that in heads-up, the Turkish player and businessman looked very dignified and successfully bluffed several times, despite the fact that from the very beginning, he spoke out loud about how his brains "boil" from the need to confront such a poker monster as Chidwick.
3rd place went to Steve O'Dwyer. In this series, he uses an owl as a card protector.
Same with Dan Smith.
The history of the appearance of "happy owls" in the arsenal of top regs can be read in a recent interview with Steve.
The $25,000 one-day turbo tournament drew 104 entries.
In the top three were Dao Ming Fu and Nacho Barbero, who had already won one title in the series. But they could not repeat the success. The winner was 43-year-old amateur Andrew Leatham from Scotland. In the main tournaments, he also got on the TV table and shocked Russian-speaking commentators with his unorthodox actions – fortunately, they are traditionally not listened to so carefully, and there were no showdowns on Twitter.
Artur Martirosyan has one cash in the series so far – 11th place in the first tournament. But our high roller does not lose his enthusiasm and continues to describe his adventures in telegram.
You can also follow the series in daily broadcasts, conducted by Dmitry Shakhov and his guests.
The main tournament started yesterday (Arthur finished the first day with the 9th stack; Viktor Kudinov is 11th, Viacheslav Buldygin is 14th), and the final table on March 10 will be commented by Ilya Gorodetsky.