Triton Super High Roller Series Kicks Off in Manila

While the Poker Central offices are buzzing with the 2017 Super High Roller Bowl after expanding the field, many players in the field are gathered in Manila for the Triton Super High Roller Series which kicked off Friday with a HK$250,000 ($32,210) Six Max event.

The Day 1 field drew 41 entries with 24 surviving the day. Timofey Kuznetsov bagged up four times the chip average with 342,200 for the lead with Sergio Aido in second place with 139,100. 2016 SHRB Champion Rainer Kempe finished in the top ten alongside confirmed 2017 SHRB players David Peters and Pratyush Buddiga.

Erik Seidel, Dan Colman, Dan Cates and Adam Sanders are the four other remaining American players. Macau mainstays Paul Phua and Winfred Yu return as the two shortest stacks remaining.

Phil Ivey made his first public poker appearance of 2017, firing two bullets, but did not survive the day. He busted first holding ace nine offsuit to Stanley Choi’s pocket kings. Then he busted his second bullet in a three-way pot with Kuznetsov holding nine six offsuit after getting short stacked.

The HK$1,000,000 ($128,840) Main Event with unlimited re-entries kicks off Sunday, February 19 and runs through Tuesday’s scheduled final table.

Yu, the President of Poker King Club, announced another Triton Super High Roller Series taking place in Macau in the Spring of 2017 along with the Summer event in Montenegro. He also revealed that Hublot was a sponsor of the event as the official timekeeper and tournament clock.

Notably absent from the event is Tom Dwan, who many believed would play with so many players from Macau making the trip. Dwan has kept a low public profile the past couple of years but recently recorded a couple videos for Phua’s poker YouTube page.

Top Ten Chip Counts

1. Timofey Kuznetsov – 342,200
2. Sergio Aido – 139,100
3. Mikita Badziakouski – 134,800
4. Dario Sammartino – 129,200
5. Yu Liang – 117,000
6. Rainer Kempe – 116,500
7. Koray Aldemir – 93,900
8. Devan Tang – 85,500
9. David Peters – 83,400
10. Pratyush Buddiga – 77,800