People in poker don’t like making wild guesses, especially not when errors could result in embarrassing mistakes. Triton Tournament Director Luca Vivaldi thought he was setting himself up for a fall when he predicted an absolute maximum turnout for the HK$500,000 Six-Max tournament this week of 49. “That’s ten more than last year,” he said, explaining his cautious optimism.
It turns out that Vivaldi was indeed wrong. But only because he had under estimated. It’s true: players just continued to arrive and buy-in to this event at the Landing Casino, Shinhwa World Resort, Jeju, today. By the time registration closed, the 81 entries (including 32 re-entries) was more than double last year’s total.
These players are now involved in the richest Six-Max poker tournament in history, with a prize pool of HK$38.07 million (US$4.85 million approx). The winner will take home HK$11.15 million (US$1.42 million). No wonder the world’s best continue to flock to the Triton Series.
Today marked the first appearance in this year’s series of the WSOP champion John Cynn, the Hall of Famer Erik Seidel, as well as contemporary titans including Steve O’Dwyer, Patrik Antonius, Christoph Vogelsang and Nick Petrangelo.
All of those players who had already played Events #1 and #2 also joined the field, including last year’s Six-Max champion David Peters and both Devan Tang and Justin Bonomo, who already have titles this year.
By the end of the day only 23 remained, which will make for a long and fiercely contested denouement tomorrow. With only nine players due to be paid, even Michael Soyza’s chip lead is not certain to be enough to guarantee a cash. These events are nothing if not volatile.
That said, Soyza finished in the strongest way possible, knocking out Justin Bonomo to consolidate his position at the top of the counts on the day’s penultimate hand.
It started with a Bonomo raise to 28,000 in the cutoff and a three-bet on the button to 85,000 from Soyza. Both players then checked the 
flop. The 
turn brought a check from Bonomo and a bet of 110,000 from Soyza. Bonomo called for the 
river.
Bonomo checked again and Soyza moved all-in, covering the 280,000 Bonomo had in his stack. After going through about a minute of thinking time, Bonomo called and saw Soyza’s 
, which was better than Bonomo’s 
That sent Bonomo out and gave Soyza, with 1.776 million, breathing space ahead of a stacked chasing pack. Timothy Adams is closest behind; Bryn Kenney is there or thereabouts; Jason Koon again has heaps; Sam Greenwood is packing nearly a million as well.
The full chips counts are as follows (with tomorrow’s seat assignment also alongside). The full payout schedule is at the bottom of this post.
DAY END CHIP COUNTS
| Name | Country | Chips | Table-Seat |
| Michael Soyza | Malaysia | 1,776,000 | 1-2 |
| Timothy Adams | Canada | 1,180,000 | 3-1 |
| Jason Koon | United States | 1,140,000 | 3-3 |
| Wai Leong Chan | Malaysia | 1,031,000 | 2-2 |
| Liang Xu | China | 1,024,000 | 5-7 |
| Sam Greenwood | Canada | 929,000 | 2-7 |
| Robert Flink | Sweden | 895,000 | 1-1 |
| Peter Jetten | Canada | 878,000 | 1-5 |
| Bryn Kenney | United States | 840,000 | 1-6 |
| Seth Davies | United States | 816,000 | 3-2 |
| Nick Petrangelo | United States | 815,000 | 1-7 |
| Matthias Eibinger | Austria | 602,000 | 2-5 |
| Gabe Patgorski | United States | 558,000 | 2-3 |
| Daniel Dvoress | Canada | 499,000 | 2-6 |
| Ivan Leow | Malaysia | 448,000 | 3-6 |
| Stanley Choi | Hong Kong | 416,000 | 5-6 |
| Wei Hsiang Yeu | Malaysia | 414,000 | 5-3 |
| Erik Seidel | United States | 403,000 | 5-5 |
| Paul Phua | Malaysia | 358,000 | 3-7 |
| Beh Kok Weng | Malaysia | 351,000 | 3-5 |
| Stephen Chidwick | England | 261,000 | 5-2 |
| Henrik Hecklen | Denmark | 252,000 | 1-3 |
| Tong Siow Choon | Malaysia | 242,000 | 2-1 |
PAYOUT SCHEDULE
Triton Jeju Event #3: Six-Max Hold’em
Buy-in: HK$500,000
Entries: 81 (inc. 32 re-entries)
Prize pool: HK$38.07 million
1 – 11,150,000
2 – 8,000,000
3 – 5,200,000
4 – 3,921,000
5 – 3,040,000
6 – 2,360,000
7 – 1,860,000
8 – 1,439,000
9 – 1,100,000