The Super High Rollers festival has turned London upside down. What a torrent of news from the London capital about the Triton Poker Series.
We must open with Event #7 200k $ 8-Max and the final table that Juan Pardo, our only representative in the tournament, managed to reach.
It goes without saying that the registration of the tournament had not yet closed, so the first thing to emphasize is that the growth of the field to 83 entries made available to the 13 players who had room in prizes more than $ 16,000,000 to be distributed, and that was noticeable in how tense and challenging the bubble was in this tournament.
In other events, the heads-up phase had been resolved relatively quickly, but with a $325,000,000 min-cash within reach, the all-ins didn’t come out so easily. Juan Pardo approached the prizes from relative safety valued at 22bb, but the unusual ranges applied in this case ended up getting him into trouble.
Daniel Dvoress and Cristoph Vogelsang had the target on their backs for a long time, but both found a hand before they were blinded out and stayed in play while others lost capital waiting for their defenestration. The last blind raise before prizes left Malaka with 11bb and Mikita Badziakouski in an even more delicate situation. The Belarusian had 77 on the button and went for the blind of Espen Jorstad, who was waiting for him with AK. The former Main Event champion won the flip and certified Juan’s second cash of the festival.
As torturous as the prize bubble was, it turned into placidity for the FT bubble. In addition to improving his own stack as much as possible in the immediate aftermath of the bubble, the Spaniard was grateful for the cooperation of his opponents when the deck once again denied him something playable.
Vogelsang and Dvoress finally accepted their fate, Sam Grafton abandoned his precautions and Seth Gottlieb happily paid with fifth pair on the river trying to put Nacho Barbero in his place to stay with pipes. The pair of Seths, Gottlieb and Davies, ended up all-in at the same time at different tables and left their seats empty.
With all this, John, who still hadn’t seen a decent hand, found himself sitting for the final table photo and $600,000 secured.
There was no more gum to stretch, andbetween David Yan and Nacho Barbero, who had led the last two tables during heads-up play and the FT bubble, Malaka decided to stand up to the Asian. With a K6 dominated by KT, Pardo resigned himself to appear in eighth place in the final standings.
David Yan and Nacho Barbero reached the last stage of the game with another partner, Espen Jorstad, and together they found an agreement to limit the variance and split half of the tournament purse. This is undoubtedly the year of Barbero, who despite losing to Yan in the HU, had secured the biggest payout of all during the negotiations($3,446,807).
The barbaric amount of money that ended up at stake in Event #7 is going to pale before what is expected in the Luxon Pay Invitational, which is going to be the biggest of all those held to date, by far.
With just a few hours to go, the list of participants already contains 93 names, which at $250,000 an entry and without waiting for re-buys puts a purse north of $23M in conversation.
Adrian Mateos appears on the starting grid, sitting at a super-attractive table that should pit him against Badziakouski, Steve O’Dwyer, Andrew Robl, Patrik Antonius, Espen Jorstad, Ben Heath and the Swede Robert Flink, the mythical “gulkines” of the nosebleed tables era.
As a cherry on top, players who didn’t have their afternoon occupied with Event #7 or preparing for the Luxon Pay Invitational were able to sign up for a $30k buy-in turbo tournament.
It staged the first Brazilian HU in Triton Series history. Pedro Garagnani and Bruno Volkmann shared the first two prizes, with the former winning.
The only thing left to do was to wait for lunchtime and prepare for an after-dinner chat with the Triton streaming channels on the screen, in the hope that Adrian’s table would get some attention. In reality, any of the tables where the professional players will be confined during the first eight levels is very worthwhile.
