Four cards. Five figures in the buy-in. Seven figures up top.
It’s a specific recipe, served pretty-much exclusively by the Triton Super High Roller Series, that whets the particular appetite of a certain type of poker player–especially those from the PLO mean streets of Finland and Hungary.
Here in the Landing Casino, Jeju, South Korea, tonight two of those archetypes squared off in the closing stages of the $50,000 buy-in PLO event on the Triton Series latest stop.
Gergo Nagy, a 42-year-old pro from Budapest, sat opposite Joni Jouhkimainen, 33, from Helsinki and played until they settled where the latest Triton title headed. In this instance, Nagy snagged it, turning the tables on the man who beat him the only other time he’s been heads-up for a major PLO title.
Nagy banked $1.36 million for the win. Jouhkimainen’s runner-up finish was worth $930,000. “It was really good for me that I can take this revenge,” Nagy said at the end.
“Most of the time the cards played themselves,” an understated Nagy added in his post-tournament interview. But that wasn’t really true. This is a game of fine margins and intricate skills. Both Nagy and Jouhkimainen have everything it takes, and tonight claimed the riches they earned.
“I made some risky plays, but at the end of the day it worked out,” Nagy said. That’s as may be, but his risky plays were exceptionally well timed in a tournament that was characteristically swingy.
By the point these two sluggers squared off, a litany of the game’s stars were on the rail, including two more Finns — Patrik Antonius and Eelis Parssinen — and equally tough players from the UK, the USA and China (to say nothing of those who fell before the money bubble).
But Nagy joins his countrymen Andras Nemeth and Laszlo Bujitas as a winner on the series. And there’s no way we’ve seen the last of either him of Jouhkimainen.
TOURNAMENT ACTION
This was the second PLO event of the trip to Jeju and it had double the buy-in of the first. But did that adversely affect player numbers? Not one bit. This is the Triton Poker Series, where the higher the buy-in, the better.
In all, there were 112 entries and 57 re-entries for a prize pool of $5.6 million. As always, the great and the good of the four-card game got involved, and many of them were still battling as the field tightened to its money bubble.
But then it was a case of deju vu for one of the PLO experts.
Gavin Andreanoff, a Triton PLO champion in Monte Carlo, stone bubbled the first PLO event here in Jeju. And history repeated itself in the following event, when he was knocked out in 20th place, once again just a single spot from the money.
Andreanoff had nine blinds and raised from the small blind with 
. Luc Greenwood, with a massive stack, called from the big blind with 
.
The flop of 
gave Andreanoff top pair and a Broadway draw. Greenwood had a flush draw and some backdoor straight draws.
Greenwood got there, however, when the turn and river came 
. Andreanoff was out in 20th, another stone bubble — a double sickener for the British player. The rest of the field was in the money and, after playing a little longer to finish Day 1, Tom Vogelsang led the last 17 coming back to play to a winner on Tuesday.
Play on Day 2 began slowly. This tends to be the case with these high buy-in PLO tournaments: the fast action of the registration period gives way to careful control of pot size and slow accumulation of chips. Santhosh Suvarna gave a showcase of those skills through the early part of the day, but he then also demonstrated how dangerous it can be to abandon these ideals.
Suvarna had amassed enough chips to take over the lead, but then lost a big one to Xu Liang’s aces, followed by an even bigger pile heading to Jeremy Ausmus. Suvarna tried a big bluff on the river holding 
on a board of 
. Ausmus had 
, i.e., aces at the start, but now two pair using both lower cards. It was enough to vault him to the top of the counts.
Suvarna was out soon after, followed by the aforementioned Luc Greenwood. With eight-handed play dragging on, the stacks shallowed before they reached the final. Eventually, some Finn-on-Finn action accounted for the best-known of them all, Patrik Antonius, who was knocked out in eighth by Joni Jouhkimainen. The final seven (with only two Finns) reconvened as follows:
Joni Jouhkimainen – 4,675,000 (37 BBs)
Gergo Nagy – 4,310,000 (34 BBs)
Xu Liang – 3,065,000 (25 BBs)
Gruff Jones – 3,060,000 (24 BBs)
Jeremy Ausmus – 2,840,000 (23 BBs)
Eelis Parssinen – 2,400,000 (19 BBs)
Tom Vogelsang – 2,050,000 (16 BBs)
To the untrained eye, a 26 big-blind average seemed shallow. But the game has changed so dramatically as skill levels have increased that none of these wizards will have considered themselves out of it. And there was no guarantee that this would get done too quickly either.
When you talk about PLO wizards, the name of Eelis Parssinen is never too far from people’s lips. But this final table was not really one he’ll go on to remember at the end of his career. Parssinen was first out, four-bet ripping his 10 blinds with 
pre-flop, with Xi Liang as the opponent.
Xu had 
and a single pair of queens was all it took to win this one after a board of 
.
Parssinen’s $235,000 for seventh place went straight over the other side of the room to the $100K Main Event, where he’ll hunt his third consecutive PLO cash of the week.
This was the precise same route taken by Jeremy Ausmus, who was knocked out next. Ausmus has already won a title from this trip to Jeju, in no limit hold’em, but he too could get no further than a four-bet pot against Xu.
In this one, Xu opened 
and Ausmus three-bet 
. Starting the hand with 16 blinds, he was essentially committed and called off when Xu jammed. Ausmus had 56 percent, according to equity calculators, but Xu hit his five and his six to win the hand.
Ausmus won $318,000 for his sixth place.
The double knockout for Xu catapulted him to the top of the counts, while the remainder of the field had between 10 and 20 big blinds. The shortest of all was now Tom Vogelsang, the player who had led the field for the longest periods on Day 1 and had progressed all the way to the final.
But Vogelsang’s stack was now short enough that a three-bet pre-flop was for all of it, and when he picked up queens — 
, to be precise — it was decent enough to get everything in over Jouhkimainen’s early-position open.
Jouhkimainen called with 
after after both players paired their ace on the flop, the turn was the crucial card for Jouhkimainen’s come-from-behind win.
Vogelsang tumbled out in fifth for $408,000.
True to form, this tournament was by no means wrapped up, even though Xu and Jouhkimainen had clear air at the top of the leader board between them and anyone else. Indeed all it took was a timely double for Gruff Jones, with aces through Liang’s kings, to put the Brit on top of the pile and leave Liang at the foot.
As the tournament levels ticked by, the blinds continued to nibble at stacks, and Xu was in trouble. True to form, he did his best to muscle his way out of his predicament, but found Jones again with a hand. Xu opened the button with 
. He had a 10-blind stack.
Jones three-bet the small blind holding 
and Xu then jammed. Jones called and though his kings were already ahead, his two other cards played after the full board ran 
.
That meant a fourth-place finish for Xu, who adds $505,000 to his bankroll. It’s his 10th career Triton cash, but his first of this trip to Jeju.
The remaining three players had 45 blinds between them and, as expected, the chip lead rotated between them. Jones seemed to be sitting pretty, but Jouhkimainen doubled through him, which put Nagy into the lead. Nagy had probably been playing the snuggest of all of them, steadily chipping up while avoiding almost all of the big all-in confrontations.
For Jones, his decline was now terminal. He was able to hang tough for a little while, but then ran into another Joukimainen full house to lose all but one of his blinds. Though he doubled that micro stack once, he couldn’t do it twice. His kings lost to Jouhkimainen’s (three hearts did it), and that was the end of the road for Jones.
The online PLO crusher took $611,000 for third, a new career high. But with high stakes PLO tournaments now featuring more commonly on schedules, that bar will go up again pretty quickly.
The heads-up duel was between leading exponents of the four-card game from two European PLO hot-beds. Joukimainen had 33 blinds to Nagy’s 11, but Nagy doubled with aces on the first hand of heads-up and it was truly game on.
Jouhkimainen slipped below 10 blinds again after the next significant confrontation went to Nagy. But he doubled back once more to bring the stacks level again. It was fascinating to see two players of this skill level battle with fewer than 40 blinds between them.
Eventually, it had to give and it went in Nagy’s favour. He had 19 blinds to Joukimainen’s 18 when Nagy picked up aces for one last time. He limped with and then when Jouhkimainen raised with , Nagy stuck in a three-bet.
Jouhkimainen called and they saw a flop of . That was two pair now for Jouhkimainen, and he called when Nagy jammed. The turn added a flush draw to Nagy’s gutshot, but it was the seemingly innocuous 
on the river that ended up sealing it. Nagy’s two pair was better.
That was the difference between $1.36 million for first and $930K for second. And the difference between holding the trophy aloft and having to wait for another day. “The quality of the series, the tournament, the venue, I really like it,” Nagy said. He has even more reason to love this series now.
Event #15 – $50,000 PLO
Dates: March 10-11, 2025
Entries: 112 (inc. 57 re-entries)
Prize pool: $5,600,000
1 – Gergo Nagy, Hungary – $1,360,000
2 – Joni Jouhkimainen, Finland – $930,000
3 – Gruffudd Jones, UK – $611,000
4 – Xu Liang, China – $505,000
5 – Tom Vogelsang, Netherlands – $408,000
6 – Jeremy Ausmus, USA – $318,000
7 – Eelis Parssinen, Finland – $235,000
8 – Patrik Antonius, Finland – $174,000
9 – Luc Greenwood, Canada – $136,000
10 – Santhosh Suvarna, India – $113,000
11 – Ben Tollerene, USA – $113,000
12 – Wai Leong Chan, Malaysia – $101,500
13 – Sean Rafael, USA – $101,500
14 – Pascal Lefrancois, Canada – $90,000
15 – Isaac Haxton, USA – $90,000
16 – Lautaro Guerra, Spain – $82,000
17 – Chance Kornuth, USA – $82,000
18 – Chris Brewer, USA – $75,000
19 – Adam Hendrix, USA – $75,000