Joao Vieira Wins Triton's Biggest Event

Author

Vargoso

Published

3/8/2025

Updated

3/8/2025

Portugal's top player, Joao Vieira, won $4,610,000 in the $150,000 event at Triton Poker Jeju. This is the crowning achievement in the tournament specialist's 17-year career.

Joao Vieira Wins Triton Poker Jeju 2025 150 K Event

The Best Portuguese

Triton Poker Jeju's most expensive tournament, with a buy-in of $150,000, raised 125 entries, attracting some of the world's best players. However, the winner was a player who had never triumphed at Triton.

Portugal's Joao Vieira won $4,160,000 in Event #9 $150,000 8-Handed.

Joao nearly doubled his previous best cash ($2,590,000) for his second place finish at the WSOP Paradise Triton Main Event in December 2024.

Vieira is known for playing high-stakes tournaments at GGPoker under the nickname "Naza114". There he has made the final table of top GGMillion$ tournaments several times. On the live circuit the Portuguese has won almost $17M and leads the Portuguese earnings rankings.

Joao played basketball before becoming a professional poker player and was even part of the Portuguese youth team. However, his career ended relatively early as he was burned out and decided to dedicate himself to poker.

Joao Vieira commented on his victory at Triton Poker:

"In poker sometimes things go well for you. Sometimes they don't. Today everything went well for me. You just have to work on yourself and give your best, to get lucky at the right time."

Final table

150K NLH 8 Handed Event Triton Poker Jeju Final Table

Joao was joined by players like Dan Smith, Alex Foxen, and Fedor Holz in the top 8.

Interestingly, Foxen was the one who beat Vieira in the heads-up at the WSOP tournament in December 2024. The Portuguese quickly climbed to the chip lead, but Latvian Aleksejs Ponakovs did the same, knocking out four players from the final table.

The heads-up between the two Europeans could have ended on the first hand after a preflop all-in with AJ vs. AQ, but Joao hit the J on the flop.

After this bad beat, Ponakovs fought for another 20 minutes but eventually lost all his chips in an all-in with J7 on a K57 board but crashed with Vieira's 99.