78-year-old Jean-Noel Thorel cracks aces, eyes first Triton title

The elder statesman on the Triton Poker Super High Roller Series, France's own Jean-Noel Thorel, will return to the final table of the $25K NLH Jupiter Event as one of six remaining players in the hunt for the title. While Thorel, 78, has come close to a Triton SHRS title several times before, a maiden victory continues to elude him – but that could change tomorrow. 

Thorel will start the final frame of play in Jeju, South Korea sitting third in the chip counts – behind chip leader Ander Vallinas and Wu Kuisong, but ahead of Jamil Wakil, Kelvin Kerber, and Zhou Quan. 

In Thorel's position, many players on the tour might weigh the potential pay ladders more heavily than any attempt to seize control of the chip lead. Thorel is unlikely to exhibit such caution. 

As a highly successful entrepreneur outside of the poker world, he won't be handcuffed by the strictures of ICM or the fear of leaving money on the table. 

Thorel only cares about the win – and his play style reflects it. 

Cracking aces helps

Thorel's run in the $25K NLH Jupiter Event should have ended well before the final table – but the poker gods had other plans in mind. With 17 players remaining, Thorel spiked a fortunate river card to win a key pot against Tony 'Ren' Lin. Both players had decent stacks at the time, Thorel on 3.5M and Lin on 4.2M, but that didn't stop the Frenchman from putting it all on the line in a fairly marginal spot. 

After Thorel opened to 300K with , Lin looked down at next to act and three-bet to 800K. When the action folded around, Thorel made the call to see the flop. 

Lin continued for 500K when checked to and Thorel opted to raise to 1.3M with his underpair and gutshot straight draw. Lin stuck the rest of the chips in the middle and Thorel obliged. With 7.9M in the middle (more than 50 big blinds at the time), the changed nothing for either player, but the river kept Thorel alive and decimated Lin's stack. 

Tony 'Ren' Lin had a big stack with less than twenty players remaining – until he ran into Jean-Noel Thorel.

Thorel is no stranger to making deep runs in the hyper-competitive fields on the Triton SHRS. In 2023, he finished runner-up in the $125K NLH Main Event in London for $2,830,000 and then followed up with a fourth-place finish in the $200K NLH Invitational in Monte Carlo later that year. In 2024, at the stop in Jeju, South Korea, Thorel notched another runner-up finish in the $100K NLH Main Event for $2,875,000. 

Thorel has also proven his skills in large-field events. The Frenchman navigated a record-breaking field in the 2025 WSOP Paradise Super Main Event to claim the $6,000,000 second-place prize. 

Will he improve on those past finishes tomorrow? Stay tuned. 

$25K NLH Jupiter Event final table chip counts

^{Images courtesy of Triton Poker}