64-year-old Bedell beats Phil Ivey & Erik Seidel to Triton trophy and $709K

The Triton Jeju Main Event ended on Sunday, with Huang Wenjie winning the trophy and $5,555,000, but the action continues with four cards instead of two. On Monday night, the first of the PLO events finished in a flurry of action, with 64-year-old Norwegian Tom Bedell becoming the third-oldest player behind the tour’s co-founder Richard Yong (65) and Vladimir 'Gambledore' Korzinin (69) to win a Triton title.

The $25K PLO drew a field of 117 entries, generating a prize pool of $2,925,000 with 19 players getting paid and $709,000 for the eventual winner. In the early stages of play, the chips flew about the room as players battled to build big stacks. As the money bubble grew ever-closer, however, the pace of play slowed to a crawl until Gavin Andrenoff had his aces cracked to become the unlucky bubble boy.

With the money bubble burst, the 19 remaining players adjourned for the night before returning the following day to play down to a winner. Bedell managed to carry the chip lead into the final table, with a decent lead on second place Richard Gryko. In the middle of the pack, Lin Wei, Phil Ivey, and Shi Ning Dan were clustered together – each holding a little more than 30 big blinds to start the final table proceedings – while Eelis Parssinen and Erik Seidel had their work cut out for them as the clear short stacks.

Event #13 final table finishers Triton Jeju

The final table finishers in Event #13: $25,000 PLO. (Clockwise from top left: Lin Wei, Shi Ning Dan, Erik Seidel, Phil Ivey, Eelis Parssinen, Richard Gryko, Tom Bedell.)

Seidel and Wei bow out; stacks grow shallow

On the first hand off the deck at the final table, Seidel took his shot at a spin-up but fell short when his fell to Ivey's on a runout. As the stacks grew shallower, each pot held serious implications for the chip distribution, and Bedell found himself trading places several times with Gryko at the top.

After slipping down to just 8 big blinds, Wei broke the deadlock when he squared off against Ivey. In a single-raise pot, Ivey had defended his big blind with against an open from Wei. On the flop, the two players got the chips in the middle and Ivey was way out in front of Wei's . As the turn and river improved Ivey to a full house, Wei's day came to an end in sixth place.

At this point of the final table, the average stack fell below 20 big blinds and the chip counts shifted massively with each hand dealt. Parssinen, after starting the final table with just 6 big blinds, notched another double through Bedell to surge into the chip lead and send the Norwegian to the bottom of the counts. In standard fashion for this final table, Bedell then doubled through Ivey to hand off the short stack duties to the American.

Phil Ivey ran pocket kings into Shi Ning Dan's pocket aces and couldn't improve to stick around.

When the players returned from a break, Ivey picked up and moved all-in over the top of a raise from Parssinen – only to see the bad news as Dan committed his chips with . The runout offered no improvement to Ivey and his run came to an end in fifth place.

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Bedell pulls away

After reclaiming his start-of-day chip lead, Bedell took aim at Parssinen. From the button, he raised with and Parssinen defended his big blind with . On the flop, the action went check-check to bring in the turn and Parssinen pounced, committing the rest of his chips to the pot. Bedell called it off with his massive draw and the on the river completed his flush to send Parssinen to the rail in fourth place.

With more chips in his stack than both of his opponents combined, Bedell had one hand on the trophy and a new target in his sights: Gryko. In a blind versus blind confrontation, Bedell raised from the small blind with and called it off when Gryko moved all-in over the top with . On the flop, Gryko picked up a myriad of outs, but the turn and river improved Bedell to a straight, putting an end to Gryko's run.

Richard Gryko endured wild swings at the final table and finished in third place.

When the heads-up match began, Bedell held a commanding lead with 37 big blinds to his opponent's 10. While Dan managed to hang around for a while, Bedell's momentum was at full bore and he couldn't be stopped. The final hand of the tournament saw Bedell make a straight with on a runout to down Dan's and lay claim to his first Triton title.