The buy-in hit six figures at Triton Madrid today as the €100,000 No Limit Hold’em Main Event kicked off.
Although we are only through one day of three, and registration is not yet closed, it’s already clear that we’re looking at an enormous event. There have been 72 entries, including 18 re-entries, which means €7.2 million in the prize pool already.
The pattern established early in this Triton Series stop has continued: the higher the buy-in, the busier the event. Or maybe it was just the lure of the sirens standing next to the registration desk.
Either way, the world’s elite poker players were all in attendance, as well as many of the familiar figures from the world of business who enjoy mixing it in poker’s top echelons in their spare time.
The opening line-up on Table 6 was a perfect distillation of that: the high stakes superstars Michael Addamo, Michael Soyza, Stephen Chidwick and Steve O’Dwyer were all in a line, but playing into them was Alfred DeCarolis, a man who has played only once on the Triton Series. That just happened to be the €1 million buy-in event in London in 2019, where DeCarolis made the final table and more than $2 million.
Of course, the line-up changed significantly as the day progressed. Players came and went; stacks grew and shrank. When the tournament paused after its first eight 40-minute levels, Kevin Paque was out in front.
The Dutch player secured a big knockout early in the day, dispatching Sirzat Hissou. And after that it was a story of steady accumulation.
There were also fine showings from Mikita Badziakouski, Orpen Kisacikoglu and Aleksejs Ponakovs, with Patrik Antonius rounding out the top five, and they will all come back confident of further progress tomorrow.
Day 2, which resumes at 1pm, will play on until we reach a final table. That will mean a few more entries early on — registration is still open for two 50-minute levels — and then a rush to the bubble, which will likely be around 15 players. Then they will need to cram onto the final table, ahead of a big finale on Sunday.
Here are the full chip stacks at this stage:
Kevin Paque – 1,460,000
Mikita Badziakouski – 880,000
Orpen Kisacikoglu – 833,000
Aleksejs Ponakovs – 816,000
Patrik Antonius – 769,000
Michael Addamo – 696,000
Elton Tsang – 684,000
Ferdinand Putra – 639,000
Phil Ivey – 598,000
Phachara Wongwichit – 555,000
Michael Soyza – 544,000
Daniel Dvoress – 532,000
Christoph Vogelsang – 495,000
Tom-Aksel Bedell – 489,000
Chris Brewer – 480,000
Fedor Holz – 402,000
Laszlo Bujtas – 401,000
Nick Petrangelo – 395,000
Kannapong Thanarattrakul – 393,000
Paul Phua – 383,000
Andy Ni – 366,000
Wiktor Malinowski – 359,000
Stephen Chidwick – 356,000
Henrik Hecklen – 348,000
Seth Davies – 339,000
Jeremy Ausmus – 330,000
Andriy Lyubovetskiy – 287,000
Jason Koon – 239,000
Steve O’Dwyer – 218,000
Matthias Eibinger – 213,000
Sam Grafton – 211,000
Alfred DeCarolis – 208,000
Andras Nemeth – 206,000
Luuk Gieles – 202,000
Ivan Leow – 186,000
Sam Greenwood – 175,000
Danny Tang – 163,000
Sergio Aido – 162,000
Linus Loeliger – 155,000
Wai Kin Yong – 142,000
Artur Martirosyan – 132,000
Brian Kamphorst – 131,000
Wayne Heung – 123,000
Yaman Nakdali – 100,000
Photography by Joe Giron/PokerPhotoArchive