The Triton Million – A Helping Hand for Charity poker tournament is being released as a 10-episode series on Triton Poker’s YouTube Channel.
The event, which took place in 2019 at the London Hilton on Park Lane, pitted some of the world’s best poker players against each other as well as a host of the planet’s most successful businessmen. The tournament’s buy-in of £1,050,000 ($1,283,324 according to exchange rates at the time) makes it the most expensive poker tournament in human history.
A total of 54 players stumped up the seven-figure entry fee with £50,000 of each buy-in going to benefit 15 different charities. As a result, this saw £2.7 million going to a plethora of good causes as well as generating a staggering £54 million ($73,993,800) pound prize pool.
The innovative structure saw each businessman, who was invited to play, nominate a professional poker player they wanted to play with. This meant the field was split 50/50 between recreational players and pros, some of the poker players who were invited to play included Tom Dwan, Jason Koon and Justin Bonomo. They managed to get a seat at the prestigious event after being extended an invitation by Paul Phua, Bobby Baldwin and Ferdinand Putra respectively.
Some interesting caveats that were included in the tournament were:
- No late registration
- No re-entry
- Players were not allowed to cover any part of their body from the neck up
- No hoodies allowed
- Final table participants required to wear suits
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Triton Million – A Helping Hand for Charity Poker Tournament – Episode 1
The inaugural episode sees all entries start with 1 million chips, with the recreational players and professionals split into separate groups. This meant that on Day 1 recreational players would only compete amongst themselves with pros only playing against other pros. It would be on Day 2 where the player pools merged together.
Tom Dwan would be one of the first players that was sent to the rail in the first instalment of this series. Dwan with ace-jack of spades opened to 9,000 and had two callers before Timofey Kuznetsov, with ace-queen, three-bet to thin out the field.
Only Dwan called and ended up all in and at risk on the queen-high flop that included two spades. The turn and river bricked out for the high-stakes cash game player, who plenty of fans wanted to see make a deep run in the event.
Triton Million – A Helping Hand for Charity Poker Tournament – Episode 2
Episode 2 focuses on the recreational players involved in the tournament and one of the key hands from the day saw Haralabos Voulgaris and Chin Wei Lim tango in a massive hand. Voulgaris, who recently left the Dallas Mavericks opened the action with ace-king and then called the preflop three-bet from his opponent who had ace-jack.
Both players made top pair on the ace-high flop but Lim sailed into the lead pairing his jack on the turn for two pair. Lim then got in the last of his chips after making jacks full of aces on the river. A reluctant Voulgaris called and thus doubled Lim up.
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Triton Million – A Helping Hand for Charity Poker Tournament Schedule
The next set of episodes will be released a week apart from each other with the next double-bill of poker action being released on September 30.
| Date | Time (PDT) | Episodes |
|---|---|---|
| September 30 | 8 p.m. | Episodes 3-4 |
| October 7 | 8 p.m. | Episodes 5-6 |
| October 14 | 8 p.m. | Episodes 7-8 |
| October 21 | 8 p.m. | Episodes 9-10 |