Tag: Triton Super High Roller Series

The £100,000 no limit hold’em main event at the Triton Super High Roller Series in London is down to its last nine players–but the tournament is now edging into a third and final day.

As has happened often at this festival in the Hilton Hotel, Park Lane, increased player numbers have forced a change to the advertised schedule with another day necessary to find a winner.

Not that Triton co-founder Paul Phua (pictured above) will complain. By his standards, the vivacious Malaysian had had a poor stop in London so far, with only one cash, but he went on a remarkable late surge late tonight to carry the chip lead into the final.

He was the short stack on the bubble, but now has the most. He only has a tiny pip more than Ben Heath and Wai Kin Yong, but a lead is a lead. (It’s been good for the Triton family, and Malaysia, all round: Wai Kin is the other co-founder Richard Yong’s son, and four of the final nine are from the same country.)

It’s always true, but let’s say it again: the full line-up features a clutch of the game’s very best players, and the prize pool is enormous. There was £12.22 million to be divided between the last 17, with the winner set for £3.08 million.

FINAL TABLE PLAYERS

Paul Phua, Malaysia – 5.875 million
Ben Heath, UK – 5.81 million
Wai Kin Yong, Malaysia – 5.03 million
Michael Soyza, Malaysia – 3.87 million
Michael Zhang, UK – 3.74 million
Stephen Chidwick, UK – 2.955 million
Sam Greenwood, Canada – 2.385 million
Wai Leong Chan, Malaysia – 1.65 million
Daniel Cates, USA – 1.2 million

Registration closed at the start of play today, with the final total hitting 130 entries (including 52 re-entries). They vast majority gradually hit the skids until the bubble loomed into view at around 8.30pm. Only Seventeen were due to be paid.

There was major drama in the run-up to the most nervous period, with Justin Bonomo sending both Mikita Badziakouski and Randy Lew out of the tournament on the same hand. It was grim for Lew in particular as his was in fine shape against Bonomo’s and Badziakouski’s .

But the run out of filled Bonomo’s straight and what could have been a timely near-triple for “nanonoko” instead became a dreadfully timed bad beat. Lew’s 420,000 and Badziakouski’s 320,000 went to Bonomo.

But Bonomo himself was soon the man in danger on the stone bubble. Michael Zhang got it all in with pocket queens and Bonomo called with pocket tens. This was a pot of more than 2.5 million chips. The queens won this time, leaving Bonomo with only seven big blinds to try to weave his way into the money.

He got a big boost thanks to a pair of kings, which earned him a double through Wai Kin Yong’s and it was at this point that Paul Phua, a tournament short stack, came over and said to Bonomo: “I might be bubble boy.”

But he survived too during a protracted period of hand-for-hand play, which lasted a little over an hour. Eventually it came down to another bad beat with Michael Soyza’s spiking a seven to beat Tong Siow Choon’s . Phua offered his countryman and neighbour a fist bump that was equal parts consolation and celebration.

The post-bubble rush of eliminations, either side of a dinner break, accounted for a number of established Triton superstars, and two who likely have a great future.

Timothy Adams and Bonomo went out on the same hand, busted by Dan “Jungleman” Cates and a pair of kings. Bonomo had and Adams had (both were short-stacked) and Cates accounted for them both. Adams secured his third in-the-money finish from three tournaments entered this week, but missed out on another final. He won £192,000 for 16th; Bonomo took £201,600 for 15th. Overnight leader Tan Xuan went out in 13th, with Isaac Haxton quickly behind.

Wiktor “limitless” Malinowski preceded them all, but will almost certainly be visiting a final table soon enough on the Triton series. He is one of the huge online stars who has recently migrated to the live arena and this was his first Triton cash. But his reputation ensures that there will be plenty more, should he continue to play.

A word too about Sosia Jiang, who was the only woman to play the £1 million Helping Hand for Charity tournament this week, despite battling what looked like a fairly dreadful cold. She played the main event while clearly still suffering — standing away from the table drinking hot water and honey — but despite all became the first woman to cash on the Triton Series.

Her tournament came to an end when she shoved from the button with and slammed into Michael Soyza’s aces. Jiang left, but left her mark as well.

The tournament was now very shallow, and sure enough there was still time for Isaac Haxton, Xu Liang and Matthias Eibinger to bust and gather everyone around a final table. Phua was still among the shorties, but now started a surge. He had only 15 big blinds but doubled up for the first time with to beat Wai Leong Chan’s and then won another big pot from Cates on the last hand of the night. Phua flopped a full house with his pocket threes while Cates’s flopped trips. Cates managed to get away without losing his whole stack, but he is now nine out of nine coming back.

That allowed Phua to go on a victory lap around the short-deck tables, saying “Chip leader!” to anyone who would listen.

They start again at 1pm tomorrow when we’ll see if he can translate the lead into his first title.

Triton London Main Event
Dates: Aug 4-6
Entries: 130 (inc. 52 re-entries)
Prize pool: £12.22 million

1 – £3.08 million
2 – £2.07 million
3 – £1.35 million
4 – £1.12 million
5 – £902,000
6 – £711,000
7 – £544,000
8 – £410,000
9 – £305,000

10 – Matthias Eibinger, Austria, £250,400
11 – Liang Xu, China, £250,400
12 – Isaac Haxton, USA, £220,000
13 – Xuan Tan, China, £220,000
14 – Sosia Jiang, New Zealand, £201,600
15 – Justin Bonomo, USA, £201,600
16 – Timothy Adams, Canada, £192,000
17 – Wiktor Malinowski, Poland, £192,000

Les Ambassadeurs is one of the most prestigious private clubs and casinos in London, with a history dating from the early 19th century. Situated in the heart of London’s exclusive Mayfair district, it is formerly the favoured gambling destination of Victorian aristocracy and diplomats and is still one of the most elegant and stylish casino floors in the world.

partypoker LIVE was created in January 2017 as a global poker tour, with the aim of bringing large field, high guarantee tournaments to players all over the world. Within just 12 months the partypoker LIVE tour has grown into the world’s largest ever poker tour and is guaranteeing over $70,000,000 in the 2018/2019 season.

Photography by Joe Giron/PokerPhotoArchive

The Grand Ballroom at the London Hilton, Park Lane, was hopping tonight. That was inevitable as the biggest buy-in poker tournament of all time awarded the biggest ever first prize.

But it’s a measure of just how high they play on the Triton Super High Roller series that shortly after the Aaron Zang/Bryn Kenney party moved to more traditional nightclub surroundings, tournament organisers prepared to hand over another prize of more than £1.3 million to another champion, in front of a silent and deserted room. Yes, enormous tournaments are so routine on the Triton Super High Roller series that even a seven-figure first prize can pass by silently in the dead of night.

Or that was the plan. But in fact, a second event of the week had to pause in the dead of night, with UK gaming regulations demanding a halt to proceedings at 4am. That left Jason Koon and Charlie Carrel, pictured above, still with chips and still with the task of splitting around £2 million between them.

The plan is now to play this one out tomorrow, at the same time at the £25K turbo finishes and the £100K Main Event gets started. Koon has the marginal advantage with 12.15 million to Carrel’s 9.6 million.

THE STORY SO FAR

As the £1 million event was still playing its early final table stages, registration closed on the £50K with 109 entries (including 43 re-entries) building a prize pool of £5.123 million. They burst the bubble when Sergio Aido lost his last six blinds to Talal Shakerchi, but Shakerchi himself was knocked out in a torrent of post-bubble eliminations.

All of Benjamin Pollak, Christoph Vogelsang, Jesus Cortes, Sam Greewood, Mikael Thuritz and Ike Haxton were similarly swept away before the final table (receiving between £87,000 and £133,000 for their troubles). Canada’s Daniel Dvoress joined them on the rail before seven-handed play decamped to the feature table at the conclusion of this week’s flagship event.

Malaysia’s Jun Wah Yap was enjoying his first cash from several attempts on the Triton series, but ended up on the rail in seventh after losing his last 13 big blinds to Linus Loeliger. Off he went, with £238,000.

The race began as to whether this tournament could get finished tonight at all. Gambling regulations in the UK meant that we had to be done by 4am, and it pushed past 2am with still six players left. The short-stacked Matthias Eibinger doubled up twice, with better than Kahle Burns’ and then with over Robert Flink’s .

It left Flink in shoving mode, and he was less fortunate. Flink, who led overnight, lost with to Charlie Carrel’s when an eight flopped. Flink won £302,100. “See you tomorrow,” Jason Koon said, even though tomorrow was already today.

Carrel might have knocked out Burns on the next hand, but Burns survived his all-in push with pocket queens against Carrel’s . Burns continued to push with his relative short stack, getting no callers, before a possibly tournament-defining hand played out.

The only “haves” at a table of mostly “have nots” were Carrel and Loeliger, and the two of them went to war. Loeliger open-shoved under the gun, with but with a stack big enough to withstand any issues from his left. Carrel was the only opponent who could hurt, and he called all in, for close to 5 million. (The big blind was 160,000.) Carrel’s ended up staying good to double him up and relegate Loeliger back into the pack.

With all the shoving, something had to give, and it was Eibinger who went out in fifth. Burns jammed his small blind with 2.45 million, and Eibinger, with a smaller stack, called in the big blind. Eibinger’s was ahead of Burns’s , but the river changed that. Eibinger won £386,000.

Koon, the Triton Ambassador from the United States, had been sitting tight while the chips changed hands around him. He looked weary, and he was also bemoaning his bad luck earlier when neither of his sweats at the Triton Million final table was able to seal the deal.

But Koon suddenly sprang to life in three quickfire hands. He doubled through Carrel with over and then took heaps of Burns’s stack, before finishing off the Australian with staying good against Burns’s . Burns, who needs to play the final table of the delayed £25K turbo tomorrow, was free to get some sleep at about 3.30am. He took £481,500 for fourth.

At this stage, it was clear that the clock was going to be the real winner tonight. There was no hope of a conclusion. But Loeliger, who also has a seat at tomorrow’s £25K final table, still had time to hit the rail.

This was a brutal one, which played through the streets, and put a board of out there. Carrel made a big bet, big enough to force Loeliger to make a decision for his tournament, and Loeliger called with . “Sorry man,” Carrel said and turned over .

Loeliger took £594,000 and the two remaining players immediately decided to bag, booking themselves a return at 2pm tomorrow. Carrel’s 9.6 million is slightly behind Koon’s 12.15 million, but there’s still plenty of play. See you tomorrow/today!

Triton London Event #3 – No Limit Hold’em
Dates: August 3-4, 2019
Buy-in: £50,000
Entries: 109 (inc. 43 re-entries)
Prize pool: £5.123 million

1 £1,321,000
2 £907,000
3 – Linus Loeliger, Switzerland, £594,000
4 – Kahle Burns, Australia, £481,500
5 – Matthias Eibinger, Austria, £386,000
6 – Robert Flink, Sweden, £302,100
7 – Jun Wah Yap, Malaysia, £238,000
8 – Dvoress Daniel, Canada, £182,000
9 – Isaac Haxton, United States, £133,000
10 – Talal Shakerchi, UK, £107,500
11 – Mikael Thuritz, Sweden, £107,500
12 – Sam Greenwood, £94,700
13 – Jesus Cortes, Spain, £94,700
14 – Christoph Vogelsang, Germany, £87,000
15 – Ben Pollak, France, £87,000

ABOUT OUR PARTNERS

Les Ambassadeurs is one of the most prestigious private clubs and casinos in London, with a history dating from the early 19th century. Situated in the heart of London’s exclusive Mayfair district, it is formerly the favoured gambling destination of Victorian aristocracy and diplomats and is still one of the most elegant and stylish casino floors in the world.

partypoker LIVE was created in January 2017 as a global poker tour, with the aim of bringing large field, high guarantee tournaments to players all over the world. Within just 12 months the partypoker LIVE tour has grown into the world’s largest ever poker tour and is guaranteeing over $70,000,000 in the 2018/2019 season.

Photography by Joe Giron/PokerPhotoArchive

The biggest buy-in poker tournament in history ended in the most spectacular surprise tonight when Aaron Zang, (pictured above), a previously unheralded financier from Shanghai, China, beat some of the world’s best known poker players to win the Triton London – A Helping Hand for Charity tournament.

The event required a buy-in of £1.05 million, the most ever for a poker tournament, from which £50,000 per person went to charity. With 54 entrants, the total prize pool weighed in at £54 million, and was originally scheduled to pay its winner £19 million.

However with two players left, Zang, 37, arranged a deal with his final opponent, Bryn Kenney, from Long Island, New York, to split the remaining prizes. At that point, Kenney had four times as many chips as Zang and so took the most money: £16,890,509 to Zang’s £13,779,491.

But Zang, with shaking hands and a racing heart, was able to overcome the imbalance in chips and experience, and won two crucial hands to clinch the title and the trophy. “Miracles happen,” an emotional Zang said, as he became the first Chinese player to win on the Triton Series.

“I didn’t think you were that good,” joked Triton co-founder Paul Phua as he handed the trophy to his old friend Zang.

Kenney cannot be too disappointed. The 32-year-old’s payday was the biggest ever awarded to a poker player in tournament history, even if he is officially the runner-up. His near £17 million ($20.5 million) prize sent him to the top of poker’s all-time money list, leapfrogging his countryman Justin Bonomo. It took Kenney’s career winnings to more than $55 million, more than $30 million of which has come this year. Kenney’s spectacular run has included huge scores in Australia, South Korea, Montenegro and now London.

“I wanted the trophy but it’s the biggest win that anybody’s ever had, number one on the all-time money list, what can I complain about?” Kenney said. “It’s incredible.”

Eight players remained at the start of play on the final day, including three other players – Dan Smith, of the United States, Stephen Chidwick, of the UK, and Canadian Timothy Adams – who also could have become the leading money earner in world poker had they won. But Adams was knocked out in eighth, and Kenney then eliminated both the other two, with Chidwick falling in fourth and earning £4.41 million, and Smith knocked out in third, taking £7.2 million.

The tournament was open only to a select group of recreational poker players extended an invitation by Triton, who could then bring one guest—a professional poker player—with them to play. Both Chidwick and Smith were joined at the final by their businessman partners, although Alfred DeCarolis (Chidwick’s partner) was knocked out in seventh, for £1.72 million, and Bill Perkins (Smith’s partner) went out in sixth, for £2.2 million. The overnight chip leader Vivek Rajkumah perished in fifth.

Zang played in the businessmen side of the draw, and admitted on several occasions that he was not as skilled as the players he outlasted in the tournament. “This shows that anyone can win,” Phua said, encouraging more recreational players to take up poker. Zang said he is more comfortable playing cash games than tournaments, but may change his mind after this result.

When combined with Kenney’s characteristic excellence — his relentless aggression, perfect timing and shrewd calculations — it meant that Kenney drew right up on to Rajkumar’s shoulder, with Chidwick flailing toward the bottom of the pack.

But then the dam broke. It eventually has to. And wouldn’t you know, it all started flowing again in Rajkumar and Chidwick’s direction.

Adams, the Triton Jeju champion, hadn’t managed to stamp his authority on this final table as he had previously, and found that his most notable contribution to the early going was folding the best hand to DeCarolis’s fearless bluff shove. Adams managed to pull off one double-up of his own, when his pocket sixes stayed good against Chidwick’s fives, but when he picked up his first premium hand of the day, it proved to be his last.

Adams found in the hijack and his standard raise picked up a call from DeCarolis in the small blind. Rajkumar then moved all in, covering both opponents, and Adams called it off. (DeCarolis folded.)

Rajkumar’s needed help, but duly found it on the ace-high flop. He ended the hand with a straight and Adams was eliminated in eighth, for $1.4 million.

“I can’t complain,” Adams said. “Last night on the bubble I got it in and hit a one-outer. I came into today three out of eight, but stacks are so shallow…It’s a tournament, you have to win all ins, there’s not much you can do. You get used to it.”

He added: “There’s big tournaments coming up all the time. I’m going to be a more final tables, I’m going to win more tournaments. There’s going to be scenarios when it is your time, and when it’s not your time, it’s not your time. I’m OK. Yeah it sucks, but you keep things in perspective.”

Only a matter of minutes later, Chidwick was staring down the barrel of a gun when Rajkumar made a big move in a raised pot and shoved the river looking at a board of . Chidwick had and, after tossing all of his time-bank cards forward, called all-in for his tournament life. He backed his judgment to stay alive and was right. He scored the double up.

Moments after that he was further rewarded when he found pocket aces and DeCarolis raised then shoved all in ahead of him. DeCarolis was the man who had invited Chidwick to play this event, but even though DeCarolis was his meal ticket, Chidwick couldn’t fold the best hand in hold’em and stayed good against DeCarolis’s .

DeCarolis took £1.72 million for seventh place, a success for the man who was considered the rank outsider in the pre-tournament betting markets. As his bluff against Adams will go down as one of the best.

The eight-handed final table had three players more suited to the boardroom than the poker table, which represented an excellent showing for the supposed underdogs in this delicately balanced field. (Half the 54 players were recreational invitees; the other half their guests.) But after DeCarolis departed, the next man out–finally–was Perkins. His run of double ups had to end somewhere and it happened when he pushed with and Kenney woke up with aces. They held.

Perkins won £2.2 million, but had already pledged at least 10 percent of it to REG charity–and his philanthropic tendencies could easily persuade him to part with more.

“It was great,” Perkins said of his time in the tournament. “I so want to be up there still. I want to thank Paul Phua and Richard Yong for inviting me out here. They put on a fantastic show together. It was a lot of fun.”

As the chip fluctuations continued, Rajkumar’s bleeding started again. He lost a monster pot to Dan Smith when a gross run-out ensured all the money was going to go in.

Smith raised from under the gun with and Rajkumar called on the button with . Rajkumar flopped two pair on the flop, and there was no getting away for either of them. Smith was in trouble with his overpair but spiked the on the river to double up.

Rajkumar lost almost all flips he played today, and watched his chip-leading stack become the smallest six-handed. Then when he got it all in with , Kenney found another pair of aces, called and knocked Rajkumar out. Watched by his businessman invitee, Rick Salomon, Rajkumar wandered over to the tournament payout desk and picked up £3 million.

“Overall the tournament has been amazing,” Rajkumar said, highlighting his appreciation for the attention to detail on this tour. He even said it may tempt him away from the cash games, where he has been focused for the past few years. “I think I’m going to put a bit more of my money into Triton events in the future,” Rajkumar said.

It’s fair to say that by the time the tournament went four-handed, anybody could have won. The stacks, which had started so high, were now all short–and there’s no way that any of Smith, Kenney or Chidwick were going to put a foot wrong in this spot. They’re all too experienced and too darn good.

Even though the fourth man, Zang, was a comparative unknown quantity in this company, he quickly demonstrated that he too would be no pushover. He made the right moves at all the right times and managed to double up twice, through Kenney and then through Smith. It actually put him into the chip lead–albeit briefly. Because Kenney was about to enter boss mode.

With chips, and the bit between his teeth, there’s no player in the world game who is more brilliantly ruthless than Kenney. He was exemplary in picking the right moments to bet, putting the squeeze on each and every one of his opponents.

Chidwick moved back into second place as the tournament went on a 30-minute dinner break, but he became the next to depart when they returned. Chidwick, as is customary, barely put a foot wrong through three full days of play, and he was ahead with his pocket sevens when he and Kenney got it in pre-flop. Kenney had king-jack. Kenney flopped one of his overcards, however, and Chidwick had to take the walk.

His fourth-place prize of £4.41 million is the biggest single cash of his career, but he missed out on the chance to leap to the top of the global money list. After he shook hands with Kenney and hugged Smith, Zang performed a respectful, we’re-not-worthy-style bow towards Chidwick. He is an exceptional talent.

On that subject: this was now the Bryn Kenney show. He had all the chips and all the momentum, and he also quickly added the scalp of Smith. This one was a pretty tough spot for Smith, who lost with poker card=”ad”] to Kenney’s . The dealer put a queen and two hearts on the flop to send Kenney ahead in the hand, and then added another queen on the turn. Smith couldn’t hit any of his four outs on the river.

“The queen hurt,” Smith admitted. “But then I signed the piece of paper and saw that £7 million is a lot of money.” Smith had only got into the tournament at the last minute, thanks to the invitation from Perkins. He said that both businessman and pro had a piece of each other and, given they both made the final table, it’s been a very successful partnership.

There seemed to be absolutely no stopping Kenney at this point, but he was smart enough to know that no lead is entirely safe in poker. He and Zang decided to look at the numbers and lock up a deal, keeping £1.1 million on the table still to play for but securing a minimum £12.68 million Zang and for £16.9 million for Kenney. That was enough to sent him to the top of the all time money list, and was still the biggest poker prize of all time.

It was just as well too. As Kenney later said: “I got heads up with a four-to-one chip lead, but the thing about heads up is that you can run all over the table and lose two all-in flips and lose the tournament, and that’s exactly what happened.”

Those two flips were perfectly standard: the first was when Zang’s beat Kenney’s . The second was when Kenney had a world out outs with on a flop but whiffed, handing the victory to Zang and his .

“I think I played really well,” Kenney said. “Everything went well until the heads up. At least if something’s going to go wrong, it goes wrong in heads up after you make a deal, take the most money and the biggest prize.”

And so ended the biggest buy-in poker tournament ever held, which has galvanised Triton’s reputation as the leading brand for Super High Roller poker, and further benefited a host of the most deserving causes in the world.

“The tournament has been a great success, even more amazing than we could possibly have hoped,” said Triton co-founder Richard Yong. “Not only have we made headlines across the world, thanks to the record-breaking prize money, but we have also raised at least £2.7 million for some of the most deserving charities across the globe.”

He added: “Inside and outside the poker community, everyone has been watching the tournament this week and we’ve shown just what’s possible for this game we all love. Aaron is a very worthy winner. He’s a great player, a great guy, and we are delighted that he has become the champion of the biggest tournament in poker history.”

Triton Million for Charity
Dates: August 1-3, 2019
Buy-in: £1.05 million
Players: 54
Prize-pool: £54 million

1 – Aaron Zang, China, £13,779,491*
2 – Bryn Kenney, United States, £16,890,509*
3 – Dan Smith, United States, £7.2 million
4 – Stephen Chidwick, UK, £4.41 million
5 – Vivek Rajkumar, India, £3 million
6 – Bill Perkins, United States, £2.2 million
7 – Alfred DeCarolis, United States, £1.72 million
8 – Timothy Adams, Canada, £1.4 million

9 – Wai Leong Chan, China, £1.2 million
10 – Chin Wei Lim, China, £1.1 million
11 – Winfred Yu, Hong Kong, £1.1 million

*denotes heads-up deal

ABOUT OUR PARTNERS

Les Ambassadeurs is one of the most prestigious private clubs and casinos in London, with a history dating from the early 19th century. Situated in the heart of London’s exclusive Mayfair district, it is formerly the favoured gambling destination of Victorian aristocracy and diplomats and is still one of the most elegant and stylish casino floors in the world.

partypoker LIVE was created in January 2017 as a global poker tour, with the aim of bringing large field, high guarantee tournaments to players all over the world. Within just 12 months the partypoker LIVE tour has grown into the world’s largest ever poker tour and is guaranteeing over $70,000,000 in the 2018/2019 season.

Photography by Joe Giron/PokerPhotoArchive

The Triton Million – A Helping Hand for Charity is about much more than just the biggest buy-in and first prize in tournament poker history. In fact, in his introductory speech to the event earlier this week, Triton co-founder Paul Phua said the first priority when organising this spectacular tournament was its unique charitable aspect.

Don’t forget, the £50,000 entry fee appended to each £1 million buy-in goes directly to charity—that’s a helping hand worth at least £2.7 million.

This donation is in keeping with Triton’s guiding principle. The organisation has always been run as a not-for-profit entity, with any additional money earned being donated to charity, typically in south-east Asia where both Phua and Richard Yong, the Triton co-founders, grew up.

Three of the charities receiving donations from the Triton Million this week are based in Hong Kong: Caring for Children Foundation, Credit One World Charity and Healthy Hong Kong. Each organisation does sterling work in improving the lives of people who have fallen on rough times, either as a result of circumstance or poor health.

Credit One World Charity focuses on children aged between three and 15, whose families are unable to provide as much support as they would like. The charity organises activities, events and lessons to ensure every child is “loved and supported” is “understood” and has the chance to be “joyful and equally treated”. It teaches equal opportunities and helps children understand their responsibilities in the community. The charity’s mission statement says: “We believe every child is unique and special. Every child deserves opportunities to change the world.”

Caring For Children Foundation also aims to improve the lives of young people in particularly unfortunate circumstances. In addition to an educational programe, its rehabilitation program focuses on children with disabilities; its foster care program helps to offer crucial support for orphans; and its disaster relief program helps people affected by natural catastrophe to rebuild their homes.

The foundation’s many projects include such diverse endeavours as teaching photography to primary school children in Dongsheng; providing a monthly stipend (including living, study and medical allowances) to orphans in poverty-stricken rural areas in Yunnan, Shaanxi and Gansu provinces; funding a volunteer visitor program to hospital patients in Guangzhou; and providing disaster relief work following earthquakes in Sichuan and Yunnan.

“For more than 20 years, we have penetrated more than 160,000 people in the remote mountainous areas of 15 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions in China, and donated more than HK$120 million,” the charity says.

Healthy Hong Kong was founded in January 2015 and provides free Chinese medicine treatment and other services through its charity scheme “Kun Yan Chinese Medicine Service Centre”. The charity has helped more than 45,000 people, including people living in poverty or elderly members of the community who do not have families helping to support them.

Photography by Joe Giron/PokerPhotoArchive