The Triton Jeju stop had the most expensive tournament of the entire schedule, and that was the $159,000 buy-in NLH 8-Handed, which brought 128 entries and a prizepool worth $19,200,000.
The top 8 players advanced to the final day and all of them had already pocketed at least $595,000. However, $4,610,000 was waiting for the winner. The chipleader was Joao Vieira with a stack of 5,275,000, and there was no shortage of names like Aleksejs Ponakovs, Dan Smith, Alex Foxen and Fedor Holz.
And it was Fedor Holz who was the first player eliminated on the final day. He was followed to the cash desk by Bing Diao, Alex Foxen, Kiat Lee and Dan Smith. After Smith's elimination in 4th place, three players remained in the field that did not win a Triton title yet.
Heads-up for the first title
Sitting in the final heads-up were Joao Vieira with a stack of 11,675,000 (39 bb) and chipleader Alexey Ponakovs with a stack of 13,925,000 (46 bb). Both players' Triton earnings are counted in the millions, but neither has taken home a trophy yet.
The very first hand before the flop brought an all-in/call situation where A-Q (Ponakovs) and A-J (Vieira) were facing each other. An ace and two jacks appeared on the board, making Joao Vieira the chipleader, with Ponakovs falling to 9 blinds.
Ponakovs was then able to multiply to about 20 blinds, and the whole heads-up lasted about 25 minutes, after which we had already seen the last hand. Vieira's nines resisted and he became the new Triton Series champion, taking home his first Triton trophy and a $4,610,000 prize. Ponakovs earned $3,139,000 for his second-place finish, and has now earned nearly $17.5 million in total for the Triton Series.
The Main Event kicked off
After the most expensive tournament of the Triton Jeju Series, it's the turn of the $106,000 buy-in Main Event, which has registration open until the start of Day 2. After Day 1, the entry count stands at 259 and 134 players have advanced to Day 2.
The chipleader is Zhou Quan with a stack of 1,328.000, but there are also names like Daniel Cates, Daniel Rezaei, Jason Koon, Alex Foxen, Mikita Badziakouski, Roman Hrabec, Samuel Mullur, Christoph Vogelsang, Isaac Haxton, Kristen Foxen, Bryn Kenney, Nick Petrangelo, András Németh, Sean Winter, Patrik Antonius, Adrian Mateos, Espen Jorstad, Chance Kornuth, Fedor Holz, Jeremy Ausmus, and Phil Ivey in the mix.
Source - Triton Poker