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The 2018 World Series of Poker (WSOP), Player of the Year Leaderboard, has a new mug sitting at the top of the rogue’s gallery.
“Shaun Deeb”.
The mixed-game specialist overtook fellow mixed-game supremo, John Hennigan, as the favourite to replace Chris “Please Forgive Me” Ferguson as the most consistent player at the most iconic festival in poker, after taking down Event #42: $25,000 Pot-Limit Omaha 8-Handed High Roller.
The event goes down as the most significant $25,000 buy-in Pot-Limit Omaha (PLO) event in history, but the introduction of a single re-entry clause for the first time in the game’s short four-year history gave it a bunky over that particular wall.
Day 1 attracted 192 entrants.
101 remained, parachute intact, at the end of ten hours of play.
The man of the moment, Michael ‘The Grinder’ Mizrachi was one star that ran out of nuclear fuel on Day #1. Joining him was the three-time World Poker Tour (WPT) Champ, Anthony Zinno, and the man who last year won more live tournament dollars than anyone alive, Bryn Kenney.
Konstantin Beylin was the overnight leader.
Daniel Negreanu was third.

Day 2 Belongs to Ben Yu
By the end of registration, the total field size had increased to a record 230 entrants. 49 players bought-in twice, meaning the actual picture was 181 entrants, making it the second lowest unique field size in history, down 12% on last year’s record field size of 205 entrants.
After 14 levels of play, it was Ben Yu leading the way. The man who set the Triton Poker Tournament alight in Montenegro, Jason Koon, sat in second and Deeb was in third. Other contenders included the former WSOP Main Event Champion, Scotty Nguyen, Jason Mercier, Erik Seidel, and the defending champ, James Calderaro.

Day 3
Here is how the final table looked heading into the last day.

Scotty Nguyen – 7,010,000
James Calderaro – 6,445,000
Shaun Deeb – 6,305,000
Ben Yu – 4,775,000
Jason Koon – 2,905,000
Ryan Tosoc – 1,300,000

It was interesting to see Nguyen make the final table. This year, the former champ must have hired a publicist, because he landed two very public sponsorship deals: an online cryptocurrency poker room, and a company that creates shit that you smoke to get high.
Last year, Calderaro outlasted 205 entrants to win the $1.3m first prize, so it was a stunning success for him to make back-to-back final tables. Koon once again showed that if you give him a game, any game, he will beat it.
But neither Calderaro, Koon or a spliff smoking Nguyen could get within touching distance of the bracelet. The only two players to cast eyes on the sliver of gold were Ben Yu and Shaun Deeb.
Interestingly, the pair clashed in last year’s $10,000 Limit 2-7 Lowball Triple Ball final, which Yu won.
But Deeb was unperturbed.
“I made a joke to him at the unofficial final table,” Deeb would later tell PokerNews. “I said we both missed the $10K 2-7, the event we got heads-up in last year. I go, ‘We might be able to do it again, another game I’m a favourite on you heads-up.’ Ben’s a great poker player, but I have so much experience playing mixed games longer.”

There wasn’t much separating these two concerning form.
Deeb was making money in his tenth event of the summer, appearing in his second final table. Yu had cashed in nine games and was also appearing in his second final table.
There was a degree of separation in the chip counts.
Once Yu had eliminated Nguyen in third place, he took an 18.1m v 10.6m chip lead into his heads-up clash with Deeb. Two hands into their little tete-a-tete and Deeb had evened things up. One hand later he took the lead. Another hand and he was a 21.3m v 7.4m leader, and then before he had a chance to create a few Leaning Towers of Pisa he had won.
Yu opened up with a pot-sized raise to 900,000, Deeb three-bet pot to 2.7m; Yu called. The dealer placed the lowly looking 5h4c2h onto the flop, Deeb bet pot to put Yu all-in, and Yu made the call.
On your backs gentlemen.
Deeb: AsAh9s8c
Yu: Jh6h6d5d
Deeb’s pocket aces were ahead, but Yu had plenty of outs, hoping for either a flush or straight draw. Neither came. Deeb had revenge, $1.4m and his third bracelet.

A dominating final table performance wins @shaundeeb his 3rd @WSOP bracelet! Beats @benyupoker for the $25K PLO High Roller title and $1.4 million!
▶ https://t.co/wtwTU6NmGw pic.twitter.com/gorc8xqt9g

— PokerGO (@PokerGO) June 24, 2018

Here are the final table results:
Final Table Results

Shaun Deeb – $1,402,683
Ben Yu – $866,924
Scotty Nguyen – $592,924
James Calderaro – $414,134
Jason Koon – $295,606
Ryan Tosoc – $215,718

35 players made enough money to buy a medieval torture rack in this one including David Benjamin (7^th), Jason Mercier (12^th), Robert Mizrachi (15^th), Craig Varnell (16^th), Sam Soverel (24^th), Mike Leah (25^th), Erik Seidel (26^th), Tom Marchese (29^th) and Paul Volpe (32^nd).
Deeb has now earned more than $5.5m playing live tournaments. It was his tenth career title. His previous best score was a million bucks, collected in a controversial $25,300 Mega Satellite for the 2012 Big One For One Drop when Deeb dumped his stack to Gus Hansen during heads-up because the Dane wanted the seat, and Deeb wanted to see if he could build a house out of one million tournament Lammers.

The History of the $25k Pot Limit Omaha High Roller
In 2015, 175 players created a $4,156,250 prize pool, and Anthony Zinno capped off an excellent summer with the win for $1,122,196.
In 2016, the field rose to 184 entrants, and the Finnish high stakes player, Jens Kyllönen took $1,127,035 from the $4,370,000 prize pool after an excellent win.
Then last year, James Calderaro earned $1,289,074 for besting a record field of 2015 entrants. The prize pool was $4,868,750.

Remaining WSOP High Roller Events
July 13-15 $50,000 No-Limit Hold’em High Roller.
July 15-18 The Big One For One Drop $1,000,000 No-Limit Hold’em.
So far, 30 players have paid a non-refundable deposit to appear in the 48-player cap event. Here are the names of the ones that aren’t shy at letting you know about it.

Daniel Negreanu
Antonio Esfandiari
Christoph Vogelsang
Bryn Kenney
Nick Petrangelo
Rainer Kempe
Dominik Nitsche
Steffen Sontheimer
Jason Koon
Phil Ivey
Adrian Mateos
Phil Hellmuth
Rick Salomon
Talal Shakerchi
Leon Tsoukernik

If poker was dance, the European Poker Tour (EPT), partypoker MILLIONS and Triton Poker would be crazy street dance style, body popping and head spinning.
The World Series of Poker (WSOP)?
Ballroom dancing.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s the most iconic poker festival in the world. Christmas Day, your birthday, your first visit from the tooth fairy, your first Easter egg and orgasm all rolled into one.
But they are a little behind the times.
More reactionary than visionary.
But like a hemorrhoid slowly making it’s way down to the anus after too hard a squeeze, they are getting there.
This year, the High Rollers will have five reasons to leave the cash tables to descend onto the tournament tables, and the first of the famous five is already in the bag.
The $100,000 No-Limit Hold’em High Roller (Single Re-Entry) has passed been and gone, handing out over $10m in prize money, including three seven-figure scores.
Day 1 saw a total of 97 entrants each pony up $100,000 (Daniel Negreanu coughed up $200,000), and the most recent bracelet winner Elio Fox led the way with 180 big blinds. Fox won the first bracelet of the series, his second all time, when he beat 243 entrants to capture the $393,693 first prize in the $10,000 No-Limit Hold’em Turbo Bounty event, beating Adam Adler, heads-up.
Players could still enter until the end of registration on Day 2. For the longest time it seemed the number would be 104, when at the last minute a certain Phil Ivey threw his hoodie into the ring to make it 105. All told that was $10,185,000 to dish out to 16 players with the top prize of $2,910,227 looking as appetising as lamb chops to a starving beaten down dog.
It would be a long day, with Nick Petrangelo emerging with the most significant stack of the final ten players. The Day 1 chip leader, Fox, was a bushy tail width away from Petrangelo; the Global Poker Index (GPI) #1 Stephen Chidwick was third, and the super-duper in-form Jason Koon was in fourth.
The officials took a chainsaw to Day 3 to carve another four players away from the field. Chris Moore fell in tenth spot when his 98hh button jam ran into the pocket aces of Andreas Eiler. Fedor Holz joined Moore in ninth spot when his pocket fives lost the battle of the middling pairs when Fox turned up with sixes. Adrian Mateos exited stage left in eighth place when his QJo lost out to the KT of Fox, and the final table came into existence when Koon’s K5o failed to beat the QJo of Bryn Kenney.
This is what the final table looked like:
Final Table
Seat 1: Andreas Eiler – 8,490,000 (42 bb)
Seat 2: Bryn Kenney – 10,200,000 (51 bb)
Seat 3: Nick Petrangelo – 12,200,000 (61 bb)
Seat 4: Elio Fox – 8,620,000 (43 bb)
Seat 5: Stephen Chidwick – 5,740,000 (29 bb)
Seat 6: Aymon Hata – 7,280,000 (36 bb)
Petrangelo began the day as the chip leader, and he quickly extended that lead when turning a flush in a pot against Fox who was determined to try his utmost to push Petrangelo off the pot after missing an open-ended straight draw. It didn’t work. Petrangelp didn’t budge and he moved over the 17m mark. Fox dropped down to 6.4m and Andreas Eiler became Petrangelo’s main threat with 11m.
The first player to lose his marbles was Chidwick. The World #1 opened to 2m on the button, Aymon Hata put him all-in from the small blind and Chidwick called. The UK-pro showed Q6ss, and Hata turned over the dominating AQo. Chidwick did turn a pair of sixes to give him hope, but Hate spiked an ace on the river to send the boy wonder home with $484,551 in his pocket.
Bryn Kenney was the next player to see his stack dwindle to a stick or shove size. The GGPoker pro put it in after Fox had raised from the cutoff, and two-time bracelet winner made the call. Kenney turned over pocket fours, and had the lead against Fox’s KJo until the king turned up on the river, crown and all, to send Kenney to the cash desk to pick up $646,927.
After Kenney’s departure the chip stacks looked a little like this:
Nick Petrangelo – 19.4m
Elio Fox 13m
Andreas Einer 11.7m
Aymon Hata 8.4m
Six hands after Fox killed Kenney, Andreas Eiler and Petrangelo tangled in a substantial pot that saw one of them take a chokehold on the competition, and the other left with thoughts of what might have been.
Petrangelo opened to 500,000 in position and Eiler defended the large. The dealer put out a JsJc6s flop, Eiler checked, Petrangelo made a 400,000 c-bet, and Eiler check-raised to 1.3m; Petrangelo called. The turn was the 4c and Eiler continued his aggression with a 2.2m bet and Petrangelo called once more. The river was the 7h, and this time Eiler applied the handbrake. Petrangelo had no such thought and moved all-in, Eiler took his hand off the brake and went tumbling over the cliff.
Petrangelo: 6d6c for a boat.
Eiler: KsJh for trip jacks.
Petrangelo moved up to 31.9m chips, three-times more than Fox and Hata.
It took one more hand to get to heads-up.
Hata opened to 550,000 from the button, and Petrangelo called from the big blind. The flop was Kc8c5d and both players checked. The turn was the 6s, Petrangelo bet 1.9m, and Hata called. The 9s appeared in fifth street and Petrangelo put Hata all-in. The call was made, and Petrangelo showed K7dd for the straight. Hata had top pair K3, and departed with $1,247,230 easily the best score of the German’s career.

Heads Up
Petrangelo – 39,660,000
Fox – 12,845,000
Fox started the faster of the two, picking up cards when he needed them, and it wasn’t long before the pair were neck and neck. Then Fox took the lead, and seemed to have Petrangelo rattled when he five-bet jammed holding J3dd, and Fox called with pocket fives, but a Jack on the flop and a they on the turn gave Petrangelo a vital double up because it was all over in the very next hand.
Petrangelp raised to 600,000, Fox three-bet to 900,000, Petrangelo four-bet to 1.8m, and Fox called. The flop rained down AsAh2c, and Fox check-raised to 3m after Petrangelo had made it 1.2m to play, and the call was made.
The turn was the 8d, Fox checked to Petrangelo who bet 4m, and Fox called. The river was the 3c, Fox checked for the second time, Petrangelo moved all-in and Fox called before turning over 5c2d for aces and deuces, and Petrangelo showed Q8o for aces and eights.
It was Petrangelo’s title, his second bracelet, and his most significant score to date, coming a week after finishing sixth in the Super High Roller Bowl (SHRB), a week that Petrangelo told PokerNews was ‘super intense’.
The win moves Petrangelo over the $14.6m mark in live tournament earnings. Fox had the consolation prize of $1.8m, and a place at the top of the WSOP Player of the Year (POY) leaderboard after his bracelet victory in Event #2.
Here are the final table results:
Final Table Results

Nick Petrangelo – $2,910,227
Elio Fox – $1,798,658
Aymon Hata – $1,247,230
Andreas Eiler – $886,793
Bryn Kenney – $646,927
Stephen Chidwick – $484,551

The Remaining High Roller Events
$50,000 Poker Player’s Championship.
$25,000 Pot-Limit Omaha 8-Handed High Roller.
$50,000 No-Limit Hold’em High Roller.
$1,000,000 No-Limit Hold’em The Big One for One Drop.

Paul Phua Poker picks five more terrific quotes about poker, and explains how they can improve your game

Read part one of 10 useful poker sayings

“Texas Hold ’Em: the game that takes five minutes to learn and a lifetime to master”

Perhaps the most famous poker saying of all was coined by Mike Sexton, the former gymnast, US paratrooper and ballroom dancing instructor who became a highly respected poker pro and commentator. Like so many simple sayings, it holds a profound truth. When climbing a mountain, what appears to be the peak above you often turns out to be just the top of a foothill, with a long climb still ahead. In the same way, whenever you think you have perfected poker you always discover there is more to learn.

It is striking how many of the top poker pros interviewed by the Paul Phua Poker School say they are still learning from their peers. For instance, watch Dan Colman’s video interview in which he says: “The guys that are very math based, game theory orientated, I always want to pay attention to what they are doing and try and understand the reasoning behind it.”

“The smarter you play, the luckier you’ll be”

This is a favourite poker saying of Mark Pilarski, the casino industry insider turned lecturer and author. It even adorns his website banner. Really it’s a variant on pro golfer Gary Player’s maxim, “The more I practise, the luckier I get.”

You may suffer some bad beats in poker, but over a long period of time you will get as many lucky breaks as unlucky ones. Pilarski is saying that the players who appear to be lucky, and winning all the time, are the ones playing smarter. Just as a brilliant golfer who practises hard is more likely to hit a seemingly lucky hole-in-one, so too is the smart poker player more likely to end up with the winning hand.

“Money is simply the way of keeping score”

The full saying by the British journalist Anthony Holden, author of the classic poker memoir Big Deal, is as follows: “Poker may be a branch of psychological warfare, an art form or indeed a way of life – but it is also merely a game, in which money is simply the means of keeping score.”

It’s the final part of the quote that resonates. Poker players necessarily have a bizarre relationship with money. Players who would not normally spend money on fancy restaurants or other luxuries do not hesitate to shove hundreds or thousands of dollars into a poker pot. But they must strike the right balance. Players who are entirely contemptuous of money may end up losing it on quixotic bets and long-odds draws. Players who care too much become “scared money”, folding the best hand rather than risking their cash. In the end, the best way to look at money in poker is as chips: a way of keeping score, and the only way to really know if you are a winning or a losing player.

This thought is also eloquently expressed in the classic poker movie The Cincinnati Kid: “To the true gambler, money is never an end in itself, it’s simply a tool, as a language is to thought.”

“Hold ’Em is less a card game played by people, than a game about people that happens to be played with cards”

Phil Hellmuth is unquestionably one of the greatest poker players of all time. He won the World Series of Poker Main Event aged just 24 (read more), and has since amassed a record 14 WSOP bracelets. One of his strengths is a skill at reading people that is so uncanny he calls it “White Magic”.

It’s for this reason that Hellmuth says Texas Hold ’Em is “a game about people”. Most hands, after all, do not even reach showdown: what really dictates who folds and who rakes in the pot is what they think your hand is, and what you think their hand is, based on your respective reads.

“Poker is a hard way to earn an easy living”

This is such a long-established saying that it’s hard to work out who first said it. But again, it contains a profound truth. You look at the poker pros sitting at a card table or computer screen all day, raking in the cash, and it doesn’t exactly seem like hard labour.

But pros will tell you they studied hard, sacrificed social and family time, weathered hard times in which they lost everything and built it all back up again. Though you need some natural talent to become a poker pro, it’s more craft and graft than art. But if you can master it… then, yes, it can be the best living in the world!

There are so many great quotes about poker, and all of them will help you be a better player. Paul Phua Poker picks 10 of the best

“You’ve got to know when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em”

This saying was popularised by the country singer Kenny Rogers in his 1978 version of The Gambler, though the song was written and first recorded by 23-year-old Don Schlitz two years before. It’s one of the simplest and yet most profound lessons in poker.

Too many people hang on to their hand when it’s obvious they are beaten. How many times have you heard a player sigh and say, “I know you’ve got me beat, but I’ll call?” Like many things in poker, it’s a lesson with wide applications in life and love.

“As long as you’ve got ‘a chip and a chair’, there’s still hope”

This means that in tournaments, you should never give up until you’ve lost your very last chip. Many are the times when someone has fought back from near-obliteration to double up, then double up again, then go on to cash or even win the tournament. The saying originated with Jack “Treetop Straus”, and his extraordinary comeback from a single chip to win the WSOP Main Event. Read more

“If you can’t spot the sucker in your first half hour at the table, then you ARE the sucker”

This quote is from Rounders, the greatest of all poker movies. It’s a film that cares so much about authenticity that its climactic hand is copied from Johnny Chan’s famous winning hand at the World Series of Poker Main Event in 1988.

It is famously good advice. When you sit down at a new table, observe the other players. Are they betting too big, too often? Conversely, are they calling stations who don’t raise to protect their hands and allow you cheap draws to a winner? In short, can you spot players worse than you, the “suckers” whose money you will be raking in by the end of the session? If not, move tables if it’s a cash game; and if it’s a tournament, where you can’t move, sit tight and wait for a premium starting hand.

“Don’t tap on the glass”

You know how the bad poker players who are likely to be donating their money to the rest of the table are called “fish”? And you know that in an aquarium you are told not to tap on the glass as it scares the fish? This saying is a kind of code from one poker shark to another.

Let’s say one is berating a fish for sucking out on him with a bad play that got lucky. “Don’t tap on the glass” would be said as a reminder to keep the fish happy instead – at least for long enough to lose the money back again! This saying is also included in the Paul Phua Poker School Dos and Don’ts of Poker Etiquette.

“You call, it’s gonna be all over baby!”

So famous it’s printed on T-shirts, this is what the irrepressible Scotty Nguyen said to Kevin McBride in the final hand of the World Series of Poker in 1998, when he bet out on a board showing 89988.

The taunt was well judged: McBride made the call, saying “I play the board”. Nguyen held a 9 to make a bigger full house, and it was indeed all over baby. Read 10 more memorable events in WSOP history

Look out for five more great quotes in part 2

**The world’s top poker pros battled for the coveted Triton SHR Series Main Event title. Paul Phua was in the thick of the action**

The Triton Super High Roller Series in beautiful Montenegro ended in a heads-up battle between German poker pro Manig Loeser and my good friend, Richard Yong. After an hour of ups and downs, Richard’s stack was crippled when he ran his pocket sevens into Manig’s flopped two pair. The very next hand sealed Richard’s fate: with A-4 against Manig’s J-2, the Jack came on the flop to give Manig the first prize of HK$16,877,600 (US$2.16m).

What a poker tournament this was! The high buy-ins, and the attractions of the recently reopened Maestral Resort and Casino, brought in some of the world’s top poker pros – as you can see from my photograph!

The $100m poker selfie

In the top row, left to right, are Andrew Robl, Fedor Holz, Dan “Jungleman” Cates and Wai Kin Yong.

In the middle row, left to right, are Sam Trickett, Steve O’Dwyer, Koray Aldemir, Timofey “Trueteller” Kuznetsov.

In the bottom row, left to right, are Winfred Yu, myself and Richard Yong.

Someone added up the combined live tournament earnings of the players in the picture. They told me it came to about $100 million.

The only pity is that my good friend Tom Dwan came just a few minutes too late to join the group shot!

Tom Dwan, Jungleman and Sam Trickett

I don’t believe you would find such a high concentration of poker pros anywhere in the world as we had at the Triton SHR Series. At one stage Tom Dwan was seated directly across the table from Jungleman, with England’s No 1 poker player, Sam Trickett, in between them!

I myself had the US pro Steve O’Dwyer on my left at the beginning of the tournament; then I had John Juanda, who ended up in fourth place; and then the chip leader at the time, “Shanghai Wang” Qiang. I had to rebuy twice, but still did not manage to make the final table against such stiff competition!

The good thing about poker is that there are always cash games when you bust out of tournament, and those were going strong well into the night.

And there is always another tournament, too! Another Triton SHR Series is being planned for Macau this October, and I know it will not be long before it returns to Montenegro.

Interviews for Paul Phua Poker

I hope you have enjoyed the tournament photos and updates on my Twitter feed, @PaulPhuaPoker. My video crew have also been shooting some fascinating strategy interviews with the poker pros here. Some of them, like Jungleman and Tom Dwan, have featured in previous Paul Phua Poker School videos. Many more will be new to my website, including some very famous players. I can’t wait to share them with you, once the hours of film have been edited.

But for now, this is goodbye from the Maestral Resort and Casino in Montenegro, with its wonderful beaches, glorious sunsets and warm, shimmering sea. Plenty of fish in there – not so many in the Triton SHR Series poker tournaments!

**Sam Trickett is among the top pros sitting pretty after Day One of the Triton SHR Series Main Event. Others have had to rebuy. The Paul Phua Poker team reports**

Day One of the Triton Super High Roller Series Montenegro Main Event has just gone, and what a day it was! Some of the biggest names in poker were among the 47 (including re-entries) so far who have stumped up the HK$1m (US$128k) entry fee, making for some exciting poker tournament action and some very difficult tables.

At one point Paul Phua found himself seated in the most unfortunate position of all: with the young internet legend Timofey “Trueteller” Kuznetsov to his left, and veteran five-time WSOP bracelet winner John Juanda to the left of that! Perhaps it’s not surprising that Paul Phua was knocked out twice during the day. Undaunted, he has bought in a third and final time for Day Two!

Top pros who suffered an early knock-out, and then bought in again, include Steve O’Dwyer, Wai Kin Yong and David Peters. Even the recent Triton SHR Series 6-Max Montenegro champion, Fedor Holz, busted out and rebought. And despite the tournament experience born of two bracelets and more than 33 cashes at the WSOP, Dominik Nitsche was forced to buy in three times just as Paul Phua was.

Qiang Wang, the million-chip man

There is just one million-chip man going into Day Two: Qiang Wang. Top pros with significantly bigger stacks than the 250k they began with include Mikita Badziakouski (825k), Sam Trickett (715k) and Steffen Sontheimer (600k). Montenegrin local hero Predrag Lekovic, who came third in the Triton SHR Series 6-Max warm-up event, is sitting in tenth place with 357k. Lekovic busted Timofey “Trueteller” Kuznetsoz out of the tournament on the very last hand of the day!

Registration remains open until the beginning of Day Two. The big question is, will Tom Dwan make a last-minute appearance? Or is he too caught up in the exciting side action of high-stakes cash games at the Maestral Resort and Casino?

Interviews for the Paul Phua Poker School

Once the tournament broke up for the night, the Paul Phua Poker team filmed even more video interviews with the top pros. We’re really excited by the great strategy advice they have given us, as well as their insights into the life of a professional high-stakes poker player. We can’t wait to get all the footage edited so we can share it with you in the Paul Phua Poker School.

In the meantime, follow @PaulPhuaPoker on Twitter for updates on the Triton SHR Series Main Event.
No one can tell the future, least of all in poker. But there is one thing we can say for sure: with some of the world’s top poker pros competing, it’s going to be a thriller.

**Fedor Holz, Dan “Jungleman” Cates and Sam Trickett are just some of the poker pros playing in the exclusive Triton Super High Roller Series in Montenegro. The Paul Phua Poker team reports**

Is it really just a year and a half since the first Triton Super High Roller Series took place? Already it has become a key fixture in the top poker pros’ calendars, and Day One of the Triton SHR Series in Montenegro shows why.

The Main Event, starting on July 18, is expected to bring out the very brightest stars in poker. We’re now only just on the warm-up tournament: the 6-Max Texas Hold ’Em, with an entry fee of “only” HK$250,000 (US$32,000). And yet some of the world’s finest poker pros are playing already.

The great, late Fedor Holz

Fedor Holz, the likeable German poker prodigy who at 23 has already amassed $23m in live tournament earnings, arrived fashionably late – by three hours! Even so, true to form, he wasted no time in building a commanding stack. He finishes Day One in sixth place, with more than double his starting stack of 50,000.

Three places above him, with 129,000, is Steve O’Dwyer. The US high-stakes specialist, who has $18.5m in live tournament earnings, is now poised to notch up another big win. Pity the Canadian pro Lucas Greenwood, who started the day with the fearsome Steve O’Dwyer to his left – and then, having busted out and rebought, drew the legendary Dan “Jungleman” Cates to his left instead!
Greenwood has a comfortable 64,600 as he enters Day Two. He’s not sitting pretty, however. Who’s that two places to his left? It’s Steve O’Dwyer, yet again!
Other huge poker names who have survived to Day Two include John Juanda, Sam Trickett, Richard Yong, Winfred Yu and Mikita Badziakouski.

Paul Phua Poker interviews the poker pros

The Paul Phua Poker team was at the Triton SHR series too, with cameras at the ready, to bring you live action on Facebook and Twitter (follow @PaulPhuaPoker). We also conducted exclusive interviews with Fedor Holz, Dan “Jungleman” Cates and the British No 1 Sam Trickett – we’ll add those videos to the Paul Phua Poker School in due course – and there will be many more to come as the Triton SHR Series unfolds.

Wish you were here? You can have the next best thing: tweet your question for the Triton poker pros to #PhuaTriton, and Paul Phua will do his best to get them answered.

Maestral, Montenegro, magnificent

Another reason to love this particular Triton SHR Series is the idyllic location. The five-star Maestral Resort and Casino where the tournaments are being held has been comprehensively refurbished over the last few months, and the Montenegrin Prime Minister himself cut the ribbon on its reopening last week. The Maestral now has 183 rooms and 22 suites, all finished to the highest design specifications, with superb cuisine and a Wellness & Spa Centre that already in 2016 had been named Montenegro’s best. It also offers a private beach and an expansive terrace bar overlooking the sea.

Montenegro has some of the most beautiful coastline in Europe, with dramatic hills rising above perfect sandy beaches in tranquil coves. But even by Montenegrin standards this particular stretch is prized as one of the best. In the immediate vicinity of the unique island resort of Sveti Stefan, near Budva with its Old Town and modern nightlife, it is well worth visiting – even without Fedor Holz enjoying a post-tournament dinner on the Maestral’s sea-view terrace a few tables to your right!

For more Triton SHR Series action, follow @PaulPhuaPoker on Twitter, like and follow Paul Phua Poker on Facebook, and tweet your questions for the Triton pros to #PhuaTriton

**The Paul Phua Poker team will be filming interviews with top pros at the Triton Super High Roller Series in Montenegro on July 16-20. Paul Phua explains how you can be part of the action**

Some of the world’s top poker pros will be travelling to Montenegro on July 16-20 for the Triton Super High Roller Series, and Paul Phua Poker will be bringing you tournament news and interviews from this key event.
At the Triton SHR Series Manila in February, the Paul Phua Poker School secured video interviews on poker strategy with Phil Ivey, Dan Colman, Dan Cates, Wai Kin Yong and Rui Cao.
The Paul Phua Poker team will again be filming at the Triton SHR Series Montenegro. And this time, we are giving you the chance to put your own questions to the pros!
Would you ask Phil Ivey about his stone-cold bluffs? Would you ask Tom “Durrrr” Dwan about heads-up strategy? Or have you a general question about poker strategy to ask the experts?

You tell us!

Follow me on Twitter at @PaulPhuaPoker to keep up with the action, and join in with our Twitter chat at #PhuaTriton. To ask questions of the pros, Tweet your question with the hashtag #PhuaTriton. We don’t yet know exactly who will be playing, but availability permitting, I’ll make sure some of the best get answered.

Top pros play the Triton Poker Series

This is one of the pros’ favourite tournaments – mine, too. Whereas the Main Event of the World Series of Poker has become so crowded that some wonder if any top player can win it again, the Triton Series has high buy-ins that give the pros a chance to shine. For instance:

Fedor Holz won the Triton SHR Series Cali Cup in 2006 for $3m.
Daniel Colman won the Triton SHR Series Paranaque 6-Max Event in 2017 for $3.6m, after a heads-up battle with Erik Seidel.
Koray Aldemir won the Triton SHR Series Paranaque Main Event in 2017 for $1.3m, with Dan “Jugleman” Cates coming third.
Phil Ivey placed fifth in the Triton SHR Series Paranaque $200k NLH in 2016 for $656,000.
Wai Kin Yong has taken down two titles and a sixth place finish in different Triton tournaments for more than $3m.
And I myself, Paul Phua, have cashed in three Triton SHR Series tournaments for more than $800,000.

About the Triton Super High Roller Series

The Triton poker series started in January 2016 with the Triton SHR Cali Cup. The Main Event broke WPT records as its highest ever buy-in, with 52 players buying in for £200,000 each.
Ever since, the high buy-ins to the Triton poker series have attracted some of the top pros, as well as high-rolling businessmen who want to measure themselves against the world’s finest. At these high levels of poker, most of the players know each other. The recently revamped Maestral Resort & Casino, on the shores of the Adriatic Sea in Montenegro, will be full of animated conversation and lively cash side-games.
In addition, the Triton SHR Series raises a lot of money for worthy causes. All proceeds from the tournaments, after expenses (many of which are defrayed by sponsors), go to a named charity. Past beneficiaries have included The Red Cross and Project Pink.
We know that most poker players can only dream of affording the buy-in for these tournaments. Joining in with the Twitter chat at #PhuaTriton is the next best thing.

Over nearly 50 years, the Main Event at the World Series of Poker has witnessed extraordinary dramas and created huge stars. The Paul Phua Poker School picks the top 10 events you really need to know

How did the poker tournament expression “a chip and a chair” come about? Why is 10-2 known as “the Doyle Brunson”? Where did the poker movie Rounders get its final hand? How did Phil Hellmuth become famous at 24? In what way did the WSOP’s 2003 live tournament change the face of internet poker? All is revealed below. If only history lessons at school had been this fun…

1970-1: The World Series of Poker is born

The very first World Series of Poker was not even a tournament: the pros were simply asked to elect the man they thought was the best player. Legend has it that at first they all voted for themselves, so a winner was only announced after they were told to name the second best player! That man was Johnny Moss, and the very next year, when a tournament structure was introduced to the WSOP, Moss proved the vote right by winning fair and square. He went on to be known as “The Grand Old Man of Poker”. Read more

1976-1977: How the “Doyle Brunson hand” got its name

There are lucky hands, and then there is the “Doyle Brunson hand” – a hand so ridiculously lucky that it forever more bears the name of the man who played it. Aged 83, Doyle “Texas Dolly” Brunson has now won 10 WSOP bracelets, but none more spectacularly than his two back-to-back Main Event wins. Holding just 10-2, he made a house to knock out his heads-up opponent Jesse Alto in 1976. Incredibly, the very next year he again made a house with 10-2 to knock out Gary “Bones” Berland. Read more

1982: Jack Straus and the original “chip and a chair”

You may have heard the poker expression, “as long as you’ve got a chip and a chair…” It means that no matter how few chips you are left with in a poker tournament, you always have a chance. But you may not know that this saying was born at the World Series of Poker in 1982. The story of how Jack “Treetop” Straus recovered from a single chip to win the Main Event and $520,000 is not just the greatest underdog story in poker, but possibly in any sport. Read more

1988: Johnny Chan retains his WSOP title with the “Rounders” hand

Johnny Chan, nicknamed “The Orient Express” for the speed with which he demolished his opponents, was one of the finest players of the 1980s. Not content with winning the World Series of Poker Main Event in 1987, he repeated the feat with a back-to-back championship title in 1988. And he did it with a trap so well laid that this final hand against Erik Seidel was immortalised in the poker movie Rounders… Read more

1989: Phil Hellmuth becomes the youngest ever WSOP champion

Johnny Chan nearly pulled off the historic feat of a WSOP Main Event hat-trick. For a third year in a row, he found himself heads-up after defeating all comers. Even better, he was up against some inexperienced young kid of 24. Unluckily for him, that young man just happened to be Phil Hellmuth, and he was so focused on winning that he’d left a message on his answerphone saying, “You’re talking to the 1989 world champion of poker”. This was the WSOP that propelled “the Poker Brat” to fame. Read more

1995: Barbara Enright is the first woman to reach the WSOP final table

When asked to name a female poker pro, you might immediately think of Annie Duke, Vanessa Selbst, or Liv Boeree. But to players of an older generation, Barbara Enright’s name would roll first off the tongue. As the first (and still only) woman to reach the final table of the WSOP, she paved the way for future female players in what is still a very male-dominated environment. And she would have done better than fifth place, too, if it wasn’t for a painful bad beat… Read more

1997: Stu Ungar wins a historic third WSOP Main Event

Ask any poker player who was the greatest of all time, and there’s a good chance they’ll say Stu Ungar. With a photographic memory that got him banned from blackjack tables, and poker reads so acute he once won a $50,000 WSOP heads-up event by calling with 10-high, Stu “The Kid” Ungar was one of the greatest natural talents ever. But after winning the world championship in 1980 and 1981, he fell prey to drug addiction. His extraordinary story was to have a triumphant conclusion at the 1997 World Series of Poker… Read more

2003: Chris Moneymaker launches the internet poker boom

Was there ever a poker player more aptly named than Chris Moneymaker? In 2003, the accountant and amateur poker player turned a $39 entry to an online satellite tournament into $2.5 million when he won the WSOP Main Event. His victory was the personification of the American Dream that anyone can make it big, and inspired a whole generation of online poker players. Over the next three years, entries to the WSOP Main Event increased tenfold. Read more

2007: Annette Obrestadt becomes the youngest WSOP bracelet winner

Annette Obrestadt was a few days short of her 19^th birthday when she won the World Series of Poker Europe, in the WSOP’s first official bracelet tournament outside America. She was young; she was a woman; she was part of a new breed of aggressive online players who would change the face of poker strategy. Annette Obrestadt once won an online poker tournament playing “blind”, with her cards covered up – but she would need all her resources to triumph over the WSOPE Main Event… Read more

2012: Antonio Esfandiari wins $18m in the Big One for One Drop

The Main Event of the World Series of Poker has traditionally awarded the biggest first prize of all poker tournaments. But a side-event of the WSOP, first held in 2012, dwarfed even these sums. This was the Big One for One Drop, in aid of the water charity set up by the founder of Cirque du Soleil, and the first prize was a record $18 million. Antonio Esfandiari, a former magician, pulled off the greatest trick of his career: making a final table that included Phil Hellmuth, Brian Rast and Sam Trickett disappear. Read more

**In the final part of our series on the World Series of Poker, the Paul Phua Poker School revisits the Big One for One Drop of 2012, where a former magician won the biggest prize in poker**

The Main Event of the World Series of Poker (WSOP) has traditionally awarded the largest first prize of any poker tournament, peaking at $12m in 2006 and standing at just over $8m in 2016. But a side event, first held in 2012, dwarfed even those sums. Up for grabs was the biggest tournament prize in poker history: $18,346,673.
The event was the Big One for One Drop, a charity dedicated to providing access to clean water for all, set up by Cirque du Soleil founder and keen poker player Guy Laliberté. The buy-in was a record $1m per person, with the WSOP waiving its usual 10% rake and $111,111 from each entry going directly to the charity.
The final table was a Who’s Who of poker, including Phil Hellmuth, Brian Rast, Sam Trickett and Richard Yong. But it was a former magician, Antonio Esfandiari, who emerged the victor.

Who is Antonio Esfandiari?

Antonio Esfandiari is one of the most colourful figures in poker. Born in Tehran, Iran, he moved to California with his family when he was nine. While many magicians develop their interest in childhood, Esfandiari’s curiosity was sparked when working as a waiter, aged 17. He saw a bartender perform a trick, went to a magic shop to find out how it was done, and began to perform his own for extra tips. Soon the tips outgrew his pay check, and he switched to performing magic full-time.
Esfandiari discovered poker at around the same time. His new-found earnings from magic allowed him to play, and the reading skills he learned as a magician allowed him to win. Soon poker became the job, with magic merely a hobby for entertaining players at the poker table – he became best friends with Phil “Unabomber” Laak as a result of their shared fascination for tricks, before either was a famous player.
In 2004 Esfandiari became the youngest ever winner of a WPT event, taking down $1.4 million in the L.A. Poker Classic. His first WSOP bracelet followed a few months later. He was still just 24 years old.

Esfandiari wins the Big One for One Drop

By the time of the Big One for One Drop in 2012, Antonio Esfandiari was an experienced poker pro. He needed to be: as the biggest prize in poker history, with a platinum rather than gold bracelet to match, the Big One for One Drop attracted some of the biggest names in poker.
Coming into the final table, Esfandiari and Sam Trickett both held the largest stacks, and they maintained their lead throughout until just the two of them were left. By this stage, Esfandiari had three times as many chips as the British pro.
Their heads-up battle lasted just 16 hands. On a J-5-5 flop, multiple re-raises took both men all-in: Esfandiari held trips, Trickett a flush draw. Few real diamonds are as valuable as the one Trickett was praying for: the difference between first and second place was more than $8 million. But the magician’s luck held, and it was Trickett’s turn to do a disappearing act.
“From day one I just believed I was going to win this tournament,” Esfandiari said in a post-game interview. “I just saw it. I saw me winning the bracelet.”

Who is Antonio Esfandiari? Poker player profile

Antonio Esfandiari was born Amir Esfandiary in Tehran, Iran, in 1978. His family emigrated to California when he was nine.
He is nicknamed “The Magician”, after his profession before he took up poker.
He is famed for his outlandish prop bets and desire to have fun at the poker table.
He has more than $27 million in live poker tournament earnings
At the 2012 WSOP Antonio Esfandiari won the biggest single prize in poker history: more than $18 million in the Big One for One Drop poker tournament.