All eyes will be on London this week as the biggest buy-in poker tournament in history goes down at the Triton Million.

London won’t be burning with boredom this week. The biggest buy-in poker tournament ever takes over London this week with many of the world’s best high roller poker players playing at the invite of big-swinging recreational players.

The Triton Million is a £1,050,000 buy-in tournament with unique rules designed to provide some level footing for the businessmen and women against some of poker’s elite and all of the action will be streamed live.

Leveling the Playing Field

Not just anybody can play though. The Triton Million features a unique format designed to ensure the tournament isn’t a shark fest. Triton organizers invited 23 recreational players, mainly businessmen and women, and each of them is allowed to invite one professional poker player as their guest.

In an attempt to create a fair playing environment, recreational players will be separated from the pros for the first six levels of play with a full re-draw taking place following the sixth level. At that point, all players will be inter-mingled with the exception that recreational players can not be seated with the pro they invited until reaching the final table.

Players are also not permitted to wear any form of clothing that covers their face or head. This includes scarves, funnel neck sweatshirts, turtle neck jumpers, hats/caps.

All-Star Calibre Field

As with any Triton Poker event, Paul Phua and Richard Yong will be in the field as two of the recreational players. They’ll be joined on the recreational side by the likes of Bobby Baldwin, Cary Katz, Rob Yong, Talal Shakerchi, Tony G, and Leon Tsoukernik.

Fedor Holz, Tom Dwan, Jason Koon, Sam Greenwood, Bryn Kenney, Mikita Badziakouski, Stephen Chidwick, Nick Petrangelo, and Timofey Kuznetsov are just a sprinkling of the players who have accepted an invite to play.

There are currently 47 players registered including two additions made late Monday when hedge fund manager Bill Perkins invited Dan Smith to play. The only recreational player who has so far chosen not to extend an invite to a pro is Rick Salomon.

The History of $1 Million Buy-In Poker Tournaments

The £1,050,000 buy-in – roughly $1,285,000 US – make this just the fifth tournament in history to have a seven-figure buy-in. The previous four were all World Series of Poker Big One for One Drop events.

The first Big One for One Drop in 2012 featured 48 players and was won by Antonio Esfandiari and represents the largest prize pool of the four.

Year Event Entries Winner Prize pool
2012 $1,000,000 Big One for One Drop 48 Antonio Esfandiari $42,666,672
2014 $1,000,000 Big One for One Drop 42 Dan Colman $37,333,338
2016 €1,000,000 Monte-Carlo One Drop Extravaganza 28 Elton Tsang $27,437,564
2018 $1,000,000 Big One for One Drop 27 Justin Bonomo $24,840,000

The 2016 event in Monte Carlo was only open to recreational players and was won by Elton Tsang.

Multiple Charities Set to Benefit

Like the Big One for One Drop, the Triton Million also has a charitable angle. £50,000 from each buy-in goes to Triton Million beneficiaries, a hand-selected collection of charities including Caring for Children Foundation, Healthy Hong Kong, Credit One World Charity Foundation, Sarawak Children’s Cancer Society, Malaysian Red Crescent, One Drop, and Raise for Effective Giving (REG).

Full Triton Super High Roller London Schedule

The Triton Million is the star of a seven-event Super High Roller London schedule that includes a mix of traditional No Limit Hold’em and Short Deck Hold’em spread over the eight days of play.

Event # Buy-In Game Dates
1 £25,000 Six Max No Limit Hold’em Turbo July 31
2 £1,050,000 Triton Million for Charity August 1-3
3 £50,000 No Limit Hold’em August 2-3
4 £100,000 Main Event August 4-5
5 £25,000 Short Deck Ante Only No Limit Hold’em August 5-6
6 £100,000 Short Deck Main Event August 6-8
7 £50,000 Short Deck Ante Only No Limit Hold’em August 7-8

How to Watch the Triton Million

Triton Poker has an established history of hosting live streams of their events to huge audiences around the world with commentary in multiple languages. Previous tournaments have been streamed on YouTube and Twitch, but the all three days of Triton Million will be streamed for free on PokerGO beginning, August 1 at 8 AM ET.

Ali Nejad and Nick Schulman will be in the booth calling all of the action.

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