The second incarnation of the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Paradise festival features the largest ever guaranteed prize pool for a live event. $50 million - at a minimum - will be divided between the winners of the $26K Super Main Event, and with 15 bracelets awarded before Christmas players are already competing after the first cards hit the felt here in The Bahamas yesterday.
The schedule includes PLO, Dealer’s Choice and Mystery Bounty events, but today, December 7, sees the beginning of the biggest buy-in tournament of the series. The Triton Million gets underway in just a few hours, and every one of the world’s top 5 tournament earners is taking part.
Triton Millionaires assemble
The event’s name implies it costs a million bucks to enter, which is not quite true, but it does give a clue as to the unique nature of this tournament. The million in the title refers to the combined buy-in for each duo of players taking part, with one half of each pair a non-professional who is able to invite a pro to join them. Once they’re in, there’s no team play, although the field will be split for starting flights with pros grouped together.
The 74-strong list of participants features many of the world’s best players, including every one of the top five on the all-time money list. If half the field is (rich) recreationals, the other half is a veritable rogue’s gallery of some of the most fearsome and successful competitors poker has ever seen… as you might expect, at a buy-in of half a million dollars each.
Tournament poker’s all-time top 5 of Bryn Kenney ($73M+), Justin Bonomo ($64M+), Stephen Chidwick ($60M+), Jason Koon ($58M+) and Mikita Badziakouski ($57M+) are fully paid-up and registered. Daniel Negreanu, Fedor Holz, Adrian Mateos, Phil Ivey, Artur Martirosian and Alex Foxen are in, and Shaun Deeb (pictured above) will be joining them for his first Triton ever event - and was last seen selling action via Twitter/X DMs:
With the apparent exception of Dan Smith, it seems that every one of the world's top 10 tournament earners will be playing this event. We're expecting sparks to fly.
Play begins at noon local time (ET), and PokerOrg is here tableside to bring you the chipcounts, highlights and behind-the-scenes action from this unique event, alongside all the others at WSOP Paradise.
The action will be streamed - with a delay - and you can watch along right on our homepage, where you'll also find up-to-the-minute news in our Instant feed.
Mini Main underway with three starting flights per day
The $2,750 Mini Main Event, with $5M GTD, opened festivities yesterday with a Day 1a and 1a Turbo. Saturday, Sunday and Monday will each offer regular, Turbo and Hyper-Turbo starting flights, giving everyone plenty of time and opportunity to qualify for Day 2 on Tuesday, December 10.
Friday’s regular Day 1a advanced 41 players, with China’s Zhen Chen - recent winner of the Merit Poker Series High Roller - in pole position, bringing 1,290,000 chips into Day 2. The Turbo Day 1a advanced 11 more, led by Drew O’Connell with 805,000 chips.
Also making it through to Tuesday’s Day 2 were Frank and Nick Funaro, Felipe Ramos, Jim Collopy, Ole Schemion, Jesse Lonis, Hossein Ensan, Chris Hunichen and Erik Seidel.
Keep it locked to PokerOrg for all the updates from The Bahamas, today and through the entire series.
Additional image courtesy of PokerGO
