The opening three events of the Triton Poker Series in Jeju have concluded, and three first-time winners celebrated victories in South Korea. As well as the winners, however, several PokerStake players have put themselves in profit for the Super High Roller Series already, with Justin Saliba, David Coleman and Vladas Tamasauskas among them.

Event #1 Sees Theologis Rise

The opening event of the Triton Jeju series cost just $15,000 to play, and a massive field of 204 total entries were topped by Greek online poker legend Alexander Theologis. In fact, the 33-year-old star of the GGPoker documentary series Online Poker Millionaires came from behind in stunning fashion to deny the chip leader when heads-up.

It was a strong event for PokerStake’s Vladas Tamasauskas, who came 21^st for $32,000 as he showed how worthy of our series preview he really is.  There was an 18^th-place finish for Vlad’s fellow PokerStake player Justin Saliba that earned the American $35,500. When the eight-handed final table began, Theologis led from Daniel Rezaei in second place. While the Austrian faltered, however, dropping down the chip counts, the opposite was true for Theologis.

After players such as Adrian Mateos (8^th for $79,000), the aforementioned Rezaei (6^th for $147,000) and Triton regular Wai Kiat (4^th for $245,500) each departed, the Thai player Punnat Punsri moved all-in with ace-three, but Victor Chong was dominating with ace-jack and sent Punsri home with $302,000 in third place.

Heads-up, Chong had the lead but a turned straight put Theologis almost back to par and when Chong made a bold bluff on a board where the Greek player had made third pair, Theologis pulled off a brilliant hero call, claiming 95% of the chips. A few hands later the title was his and he was ecstatic with the result.

“I’m very excited and very fortunate that I run this well to win. I value the Triton trophies above others because of the competition and the buy-in, so I couldn’t have asked for anything else.”

Triton Poker Series Jeju $15,000 NLHE Event #1 Final Table Results:
Place	Player	Country	Prize
1st	Alex Theologis	Greece	$642,000
2nd	Victor Chong	Malaysia	$431,000
3rd	Punnat Punsri	Thailand	$302,000
4th	Wai Kiat Lee	Malaysia	$245,500
5th	Tao Yin	China	$194,500
6th	Daniel Rezaei	Austria	$147,000
7th	Ehsan Amiri	Australia	$108,000
8th	Adrian Mateos	Spain	$79,000

Roiter Runs Over Lococo to Claim Debut Triton Title

In Event #2, the buy-in was bumped up to $20,000 and 174 total entries made sure there was a  big prize pool, with $3.48 million up for grabs. A total of 27 players made the money places, with PokerStake’s David Coleman (25^th for $35,500) sneaking into profit. Daniel Dvoress (18^th for $42,000) and Matthias Eibinger (13^th for $57,500) both cashes before another deep run for PokerStake’s Vladas Tamasauskas earned the Lithuanian $66,000 in 10^th place.

At the final table, Chinese player Yu Zhang led the final eight players while the eventual winner Klemens Roiter rose from the middle ranks as the final progressed. What looked like the key hand of the tournament played out with four remaining, as Alejandro Lococo knocked out two of his three remaining opponents. PokerStake’s Justin Saliba was all-in with queen-jack and the Moroccan Medhi Chaoui was also at risk with pocket nines. Both of them lost to Lococo’s ace-ten of clubs as the Argentinian player made a straight flush to send play heads-up with ‘Papo MC’ in a 2:1 chip lead.

Nothing is ever over heads-up until it is, however, and just like Theologis in the opening event, Roiter came back into contention. Winning an important pot and, after getting Lococo to call with second pair to Ropiter’s top pair, the Austrian turned trips and rivered a full house to take the lead. Possibly tilted by making the wrong call, Lococo called again, and with just queen-high. That was nowhere near good enough and after dropping to one big blind, he eventually lost with ace-nine to Roiter’s ten-eight to end the event as runner-up for $520,000. Roiter took home his first ‘trident’ trophy and the $771,000 top prize.

“I’m so happy. I couldn’t be prouder,” Roiter told Triton Poker’s Stanley Ma after victory. “I’m grinding all the time, I’m barely home. I’m going from live stop to live stop, I put in the work. I think after all this work I’m being rewarded finally, and I’m just very happy how everything has turned out.”

Triton Poker Series Jeju $20,000 NLHE Event #2 Final Table Results:
Place	Player	Country	Prize
1st	Klemens Roiter	Austria	$771,000
2nd	Alejandro Lococo	Argentina	$520,000
3rd	Justin Saliba	United States	$358,000
4th	Mehdi Chaoui	Morocco	$292,000
5th	Justin Chu	Taiwan	$233,000
6th	Chin Lim	Malaysia	$179,000
7th	Yu Zhang	China	$130,000
8th	Jesse Lonis	United States	$94,000

Coleman Leads Final Table but Falls in Fifth

In the third event of the series, David Coleman was the PokerStake player who made it the furthest, cashing for $733,000 in fifth place. In fairness, however, David might have been disappointed with where he finished. In the event, which had 210 entries, players such as Phil Ivey (34^th for $43,500), Nick Petrangelo (18^th for $60,000) and Victor Chong (12^th for $84,500) all made the money before the eight-handed final was formed.

David led the field to the final table with a massive lead but it evaporated over a frustrating period that kicked off the final day, as six turned to five with the elimination of British player Joe Hindry for $250,000. Running king-jack into Ngo Khoa Anh’s pocket aces, David lost a chunk of his chips and the last went when the Armenian Aren Bezhanyan’s ace-king won through, sending David (below) to the rail with a still impressive $330,000.

With four left, Bezhanyan made his bow in fourth for $417,000) before Isaac Haxton’s elimination in third for $515,000. The American got his chips in bad with a dominated ace and never caught up as Anh took a lead of 51 big blinds to Anatoly Filatov’s 37 bigs. Just eight hands into the final duel, everything was done and dusted as both men flopped a pair of eights and the chips went in. Filatov had Anh out-kicked with a queen to the Vietnamese player’s eight-five, but a five on the turn gave Anh two pair and he faded the river to take the top prize of $1,090,000, while the Russian claimed $733,000 as runner-up.

Triton Poker Series Jeju $25,000 NLHE Event #3 Final Table Results:
Place	Player	Country	Prize
1st	Ngo Khoa Anh	Vietnam	$1,090,000
2nd	Anatoly Filatov	Russia	$733,000
3rd	Isaac Haxton	United States	$515,000
4th	Aren Bezhanyan	Armenia	$417,000
5th	David Coleman	United States	$330,000
6th	Joe Hindry	United Kingdom	$250,000
7th	Chu Chi-Jen	Taiwan	$184,000
8th	Batmunkh Unubukh	Mongolia	$134,000

 

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