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Record Payout Of $23 Million To Go To Champion of Triton Millions Poker Tournament

The Largest Buy-In Event In Poker Tournament History Drew 54 Total Entries

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The 2019 Triton Million £1,050,00 no-limit hold’em charity event is going to go down in history as the largest buy-in poker tournament ever held. The charity invitational event required poker pros to be invited by a recreational player in order to participate. A total of 54 entries were made in this event, each putting up the equivalent of $1,281,000 in US dollars (USD). The prize pool swelled to £54,000,000 ($65,880,000 USD) with £2.7 million raised for charity. A list of the charities that the money will be donated to can be found on the official Triton website.

The top 11 finishers will make the money in this event, with the eventual champion set to take home an unbelievable £19,000,000. With an exchange rate of $1.22 USD for every 1 pound sterling, that means that the winner of this event will earn $23,180,000 USD, the single largest payout in poker tournament history.

The prior record for the largest payday ever belonged to Antonio Esfandiari, who took home $18,346,673 as the winner of the first-ever $1,000,000 buy-in poker tournament, the 2012 World Series of Poker Big One For One Drop.

Whoever wins this event would climb into 19th place on poker’s all-time money list even if they had exactly zero dollars in prior earnings. There are several players participating in this event who could surpass the $50 million mark in career earnings were they to win. Justin Bonomo could climb to $68 million in lifetime cashes were he to emerge victorious.

The action kicked off on Thursday, Aug. 1 at 1:00 p.m. local time at the Hilton Hotel at Hyde Park in London. For the first six levels of play, the ‘invitation holders’ (recreational players) will be separated from the ‘guests’ (poker pros). At the conclusion of the sixth level, the remaining players from both segments of the field will combine following a redraw.

The first level of action saw two eliminations go down. Rick Salomon was the first to hit the rail. The high-stakes regular has cashed in three prior seven-figure buy in events, including finishing third in the €1 million One Drop Invitational for just shy of $3.3 million. Salomon got all-in with ASpade SuitKSpade Suit on a QSpade SuitJDiamond Suit8Spade Suit flop in a four-bet pot. He was up against the QHeart SuitQDiamond Suit of Andrew Pantling. The turn was a blank and the river paired the board, giving Pantling a winning full house and sending Salomon home as the first player eliminated.

Over in the professional player section, Tom Dwan got all-in with the nut flush draw up against top pair, top kicker for Timofey Kuznetsov. Dwan failed to improve and joined Salomon on the sidelines shortly after he had needled him on Twitter. Jean-Robert Bellande took to social media to get in some needling of his own. Dwan responded with a red-faced angry emoji:

Here is a look at the field, split into the recreational players and the professional they invited to participate:

Recreational Players Professional Players
Paul Phua Tom Dwan
Richard Yong Daniel Cates
Stanley Choi David Peters
Wai Kin Yong Rui Cao
Bobby Baldwin Jason Koon
Cary Katz Bryn Kenney
Yu Liang Mikita Badziakouski
Ivan Leow Timofey Kuznetsov
Rob Yong Sam Trickett
Alfred DeCarolis Stephen Chidwick
Chin Wei Lim Wai Leong Chan
Hing Yang Chow Christoph Vogelsang
Pat Madden Nick Petrangelo
Talal Shakerchi Igor Kurganov
Sosia Jiang Sam Greenwood
Qiang Wang Elton Tsang
Aaron Zang Tan Xuan
Tony G Fedor Holz
Leon Tsoukernik Martin Kabrhel
Orpen Kisacikoglu Matthias Eibinger
Ferdinand Putra Justin Bonomo
Andrew Pantling Andrew Robl
Bill Perkins Dan Smith
Rick Salomon Vivek Rajkumar
Winfred Yu Danny Tang
Benjamin Wu Michael Soyza
Haralabos Voulgaris Timothy Adams

Here is a look at the payouts to be awarded in this event:

Place Payout ($USD)
1st $23,180,000
2nd $14,237,400
3rd $8,784,000
4th $5,380,200
5th $3,660,000
6th $2,684,000
7th $2,098,400
8th $1,708,000
9th $1,464,000
10th $1,342,000
11th $1,342,000