The world's most luxurious poker series is anchored in Cyprus these days, where it brings 14 events with buy-ins beyond the reach of ordinary mortals. The entire marathon was already started a week ago in style by the legendary Patrik Antonius, who became the champion of the opening $25k event. For that, he took home his first Triton title, along with a prize of $825,000 and of course the respect and honor he earned for his incredible hero call!
After Ben Tollerene, Pieter Aerts, Kahle Burns and the home player Christopher Philippou grabbed their trophies, the most awaited tournament of the whole stop, the Coin Rivet Invitational, took the stage. The $200,000 buy-in tournament consisted of 45 businessmen and 45 poker professionals who first played in separate pools on the first day of play and then mixed together, creating an interesting show for the fans.
Thanks to the contribution of 25 re-entries, the tournament produced a total of 115 entries, which meant the creation of a 23 million prize pool. The prize pool was waiting to be distributed among the top 17 players, ranging from $380,000 to a massive $5,500,000.
After a rough first day, where we saw only a few eliminations, the decisive day 2 awaited us, at the end of which a group of 16 finalists was formed, led by none other than Fedor Holz. Mixing the field worked perfectly until the final day, where exactly eight were made up of professionals and the second eight of businessmen, including names like Tony G and Leon Tsoukernik.
After a few bustouts, the poker pros came to the front, joining the final table in the following layout:
- Karl Chappe-Gatien – 9.5 million
- Linus Loeliger – 7.175 million
- Seth Davies – 4.825 million
- Ebony Kenny – 3.425 million
- Sam Grafton – 2.575 million
- Tom Vogelsang – 2.250 million
- Fedor Holz – 1.925 million
- Elias Talvitie – 1.775 million
- Aleksejs Ponakovs – 1.050 million
Tom Vogelsang ($620,000), Seth Davies ($770,000), Elias Talvitie ($1,050,000) left the table to the cash desk, and it was chip leader Chappe-Gatien took care of all three of them. The next eliminated was birthday boy Aleksejs Ponakovs ($1,375,000), who was followed by the first female professional to ever play an invitational tournament - Ebony Kenney ($1,700,000).
The aforementioned Ebony was also taken care of by the running Chappe-Gatien, who after few minutes got the better of the biggest favorite of the final day, Fedor Holz. He was aiming for his third Triton title, but in the end he had to settle for "only" fourth place and a prize of $2,100,000.
At this moment, the star of the French businessman Chappe-Gatien had already reached its peak, but the beautiful fairy tale ended on the third place. In the last three players, the sharks Sam Grafton and Linus Loeliger gradually gnawed their opponent to the bone, who thus had to go to the cash desk for the $2,600,000 reward, which moved the tournament to the final heads-up.
Sam Grafton went into it with a massive advantage of 70bb to Loeliger's 16bb, but two successful double-ups in a short period leveled the scales. The third all-in showdown, however, still awarded the win to Sam Grafton, whose A 7 settled the battle with K 6 and finally decided that Loeliger took home the $3.9m bonus, but the overall title along with a trophy and a check for $5.5m got Sam Grafton!
„It was a lot of fun! Playing against one of the world's most important businessmen was something unique, the mood in the tournament was great, everyone was relaxed and having fun. This tournament was really special and I appreciate the win even more because I was able to beat Linus in the heads-up. That is probably my biggest success, as I think he is the best player in the world in the heads-up format!“
Source: Triton-Series.com
