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Lessons from the biggest buy-in tournament in poker history

Author
Vargoso
Published
8/8/2019
Updated
3/2/2022

One week ago, the Triton Poker organization smashed biggest buy-in tournament in poker history with the Triton Million — A Helping Hand for Charity. Before this massive event, the 2012 edition of the WSOP Big One for One Drop held the record with 48 participants paying a $1,000,000 buy-in. Triton Million had an incredible field of 54 players with a £1,050,000 buy-in. In this article, we share our thoughts about how Triton changed poker history with this event.

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Triton Million results

With 54 participants (27 businessman and 27 PRO-players) and a £1,050,000 buy-in (with £50,000 as a charity donation), the total prize pool of the Triton Million was £54,000,000 ($65,5M). Eleven players received a prize and the tournament winner, Aaron Zang received £19,000,000.

£2,700,000 ($3,2M) were raised for charity; organizations such as Caring For Children Foundation (Hong Kong), Overcoming Multiple Sclerosis (UK) or One Drop (Canada) benefit from this event.

PositionPlayerBusinessman / PROPrize
1Aaron ZangBusinessman £19.000.000 
2Bryn KenneyPRO £11.670.000 
3Dan SmithPRO £7.200.000 
4Stephen ChidwickPRO £4.410.000 
5Vivek RajkumarPRO £3.000.000 
6Bill PerkinsBusinessman £2.200.000 
7Alfred DeCarolisBusinessman £1.720.000 
8Timothy AdamsPRO £1.400.000 
9Wai Leong ChanPRO £1.200.000 
10Chin Wei LimBusinessman £1.100.000 
11Winfred YuBusinessman £1.100.000 

What can we conclude from Triton Million?

Poker can still be a fun game

We all know the tension produced by a downswing or receiving news as a HUD prohibition. But Triton proved that poker is still an enjoyable game, which is fantastic news for regs as billionaires are willing to expend lots of money playing just for fun. Being the Triton Million Champion a Businessman and not a PRO is for sure, encouraging amateurs everywhere to join the tables and follow his steps.

The Triton Million created the "perfect" balanced field between amateurs and regs, invited a Businessman who in turn invited a Professional player; online poker rooms can learn one or two things from this.

India is profiled to be the next booming poker market

Before Triton Million, most players had never heard about Vivek Rajkumar or even knew nothing about the Indian poker industry. Vivek "Psyduck101" Rajkumar is the Indian poker player with most profit ever (he also won a WPT title in 2008), a position he had before Triton Million and that of course with the $3M that he won, he secured first place for a long time. India is living a poker boom right now, very similar to the USA in 2004 before the Black Friday; a growing interest in online poker is being attended by several poker rooms such as Spartan Poker, Adda52 or UMA Poker.

Rajkumar results confirm India as an emerging market which in short must compete with China as the softest and wealthy field to play online.

Etiquette at the tables shouldn't be lost

Triton Million asked the players to wear a formal suit at the final table. This small detail remembered us Dario Sammartino at the WSOP Main Event Final Table, who although didn't win the event, will be remembered as the classy player of the table. Some unexpected events as players getting naked at the tables screaming "all-in, all-in", reminds us that poker must be a gentleman's game; etiquette at the live-tables or online cannot be forgotten.

In the online poker industry is crucial to have a good reputation, always pay on time, give an answer to player's complaints, etc. 

A special note must be made to Bill Perkins, a businessman that can be easily considered the coolest guy at the Triton Million final table; he wore a very traditional suit, and we are sure that every grinder with a little of his lifestyle (charismatic, deviant, sybarite) in his veins was betting on him.

VIP services are a must for high-rollers

If you pay £1,050,000 to play a poker tournament, the less you expect is VIP treatment. Of course, the Triton organization exceed the player's expectations as every detail was carefully considered. The same thing happens to online high-stakes players: for being an NL2000 reg, you expect to receive VIP treatment for sure. The good news is that to get the VIP services of Worldpokerdeals you don't need to play the Triton events (although is desirable for sure), the only thing you need to do is to contact our team and you will get private rakeback deals and our VIP-package for poker professionals.

partypoker went ahead of PokerStars by joining forces with Triton

partypoker defined in its roadmap to become the most recognized live poker brand on the market. Partnering with Triton was a tremendous success as every single poker media was talking about Triton Million last week, and the partypoker brand and Rob Yong's presence clearly boosted the room's image among the players. Besides Triton, party has also partnered with WSOP, WPT and it extended its MILLIONS brand to South America and the Caribe.

Summary

Triton made history with the biggest buy-in poker tournament, but not only for gathering 54 millionaires to play poker; it showed that the gambling industry is well-alive, that everyone must adapt to the new era (the poker ecology fight for example), and even revealed the kindness face of players with massive donations to charity. If you want to challenge yourself against poker PROs and amateurs, just contact our team for personalized advice about the best online poker rooms to play in 2019.

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