Phil Ivey Wins Third Career Triton Title Playing High-Stakes Short Deck

Phil Ivey is considered by many to be the best all-around poker player in the world, with incredible success in essentially all games and formats, whether playing live or online. He has even found particular success playing one of the biggest new games to emerge in the past decade: short deck no-limit hold’em. Ivey has now won a trio of Triton Poker titles, with all three coming in short deck events. The 45-year-old Poker Hall of Fame member and ten-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner’s most recent victory saw him defeat a field of 38 entries to win the 2022 Triton Mediterranean Poker Party $30,000 short deck event for $387,000.

“I love playing short deck,” Ivey told Triton reporters. “It’s a great game so I’m very happy.”

This score saw Ivey increase his career tournament earnings to more than $37.5 million, which places him 11th on poker’s all-time money list. He was also awarded 336 Card Player Player of the Year points. This was Ivey’s third title and 11th final-table finish of the year. With nearly $5.5 million in POY earnings and 3,730 points accrued thus far, he currently sits in 18th place in the 2022 POY race standings, which are presented by Global Poker.

Ivey also secured 232 PokerGO Tour points as the champion of this event. He currently sits in third place on that leaderboard.

The top six finishers split up the $1,140,000 prize pool that was built in this event. 2022 Triton Madrid €30,000 seven-max champion Paul Phua was the last player eliminated outside of the money, with his A-Q running into the pocket kings of Kiat Lee.

Bracelet winner and Super High Roller Bowl Bahamas champion Daniel Dvoress was the next to fall, with his J-10 suited failing to beat out the A-K of high-stakes cash game regular Tom Dwan. Dwan made aces full of kings to narrow the field to five, while Dvoress earned $80,00 as the sixth-place finisher.

Dwan was the chip leader heading into five-handed play. He then proceeded to lose three key all-in hands to find himself on the bottom of the leaderboard. Not long after his pocket jacks fell to Ivey’s A-K, Dwan got his last few antes in with K-7 up against the 9-8 of a surging Ivey, who made a ten-high straight to send the man known to many as ‘durrrr’ home with $103,000 for his fifth-place finish.

Ivey continued to add to his stack when his A-Q beat out the A-K suited of bracelet winner and four-time Triton champion Mikita Badziakouski. The chips went in preflop with Badizakouski ahead, but a queen-high flop turned the tables. Ivey held through the turn and the river to eliminate Badziakouski in fourth place ($131,000). This was the tenth final-table showing of 2022 for Badziakouski, with three titles won and more than $6.7 million in POY earnings accrued along the way. As a result, he now sits in eighth place in the overall POY rankings. He now has more than $40.3 million in career tournament earnings to his name.

Kiat Lee was the next to fall, with his K-10 suited failing to overcome thew A-J suited of Canadian bracelet winner and high-stakes tournament regular Sam Greenwood. Lee earned $171,000 as the third-place finisher.

With that, Ivey took 7,025,000 into heads-up play with Greenwood, who sat with 4,375,000. Greenwood was able to close the gap somewhat in the early going, but Ivey pulled back out to nearly a 2:1 advantage by the time the final hand was dealt. All of the chips got in preflop with Greenwood holding JJ to Ivey’s KQ. Greenwood shoved, Ivey called, and the board came down QQ810Q to make quads the winning hand for Ivey. Greenwood earned $268,000 as the runner-up finisher, increasing his career total to just shy of $27 million.

Here is a look at the payouts and rankings points awarded at the final table:

Photo credits: Joe Giron / Triton Poker.

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