Fourteen super high roller tournaments in two weeks sounds like a good idea until you remember that that means 14 bubbles in the same space of time, and 14 crestfallen poker players.
At around 1.10am today, Yuri Dzivielevski, the brilliant Brazilian, became the first to earn that ignominious distinction at the Triton Super High Roller Series in Cyprus. Dzivielevski was knocked out in 18th place of the curtain-raising Event #1, a $25,000 buy-in no limit hold’em tournament.
As we learned earlier, this tournament was popular — a record-breaker, in fact, with 131 entries making it the most populated of any event on the Triton Series.
But just taking part will be of scant consolation to Dzivielevski, whose name will not appear on the payouts list, and who missed the $51,400 min-cash by the narrowest margins. Seventeen places paid and Dzivielevski did not fill one of them.
Dzivielevski’s departure came at the hands of Viacheslav Buldygin — 
losing to 
— whose stack made him a strong bet to head towards the final table tomorrow, and an $825,000 first prize. But this tournament has now shallowed out dramatically, to the point that the average stack at the start of play tomorrow will be only around 23 big blinds.
Dzivielevski followed Jean-Noel Thorel out the door, who perished in 19th at the hands of Paul Phua, and whose elimination offered a picture-book in disappointment and anguish. Phua, meanwhile, bagged a chip-leading stack as a result.
No one is guaranteed a place at the final, however, with the volatility of short-stack play only too apparent.
Super High Roller poker tournaments don’t play like other events in numerous ways, and the bubble is just another example of how these elite players do things differently. Gone are the days where you “just get ’em in!” with a sub-10 big blind stack. Players instead know that you’re never out of it until you absolutely must be and Phil Ivey, for instance, blinded down to just one big blind before he got it in, being knocked out in 21st. Fedor Holz was down to four big blinds before he went, and Adrian Mateos has something similar before he could cling on no more.
None of those are on the list of survivors, which looks like this overnight — and still contains plenty of phenomenal players:
Paul Phua – 2,715,000
Seth Davies – 2,710,000
Danny Tang – 2,415,000
Patrik Antonius – 2,280,000
Kannapong Thanarattrakul – 1,855,000
Eric Worre – 1,825,000
Santi Jiang – 1,730,000
Artem Vezhenkov – 1,570,000
Fahredin Mustafov – 1,540,000
Selahaddin Bedir – 1,465,000
Viktor Kudinov – 1,330,000
Bruno Volkmann – 1,205,000
Ebony Kenney – 1,050,000
Viacheslav Buldygin – 875,000
Steve O’Dwyer – 755,000
Event #1 – NLHE – 8-Handed
Dates: September 5-6, 2022
Entries: 131 (inc. 34 re-entries)
Prize pool: $3,275,000
1 – $825,000
2 – $557,000
3 – $362,000
4 – $300,000
5 – $240,500
6 – $190,500
7 – $145,700
8 – $109,500
9 – $81,800
10-11 – $67,100
12-13 – $59,000
14-15 – $54,000
16-17 – $51,400
Photography by Joe Giron/PokerPhotoArchive