There’s nothing fake cheese and nacho about Justin Bonomo. In 2018, the 33-year-old won an unprecedented $25.4m playing live tournaments. I bet he’s still pinching, each night before his head hits satin.
The way we track time means nothing to poker. Years, months, days, hours, minutes, seconds – it’s all one big game, and so there is no gap in the rail. Bonomo’s train keeps chugging.
In January, Bonomo headed to the Bahamas for the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA), and he took fourth in the $50,000 and won a 32-entrant $25,000 for $383,650.
The streak.
Continues.
So when he turned up in Jeju for the Triton Poker Series, had the theme park not been closed, I am confident that’s where everyone would have ended up.
The tour de force of high stakes poker events began with a two-day Event #1: HKD 250,000 (USD 32,000) No-Limit Hold’em Short-Deck. 65-entrants (including 28 re-entries) created an HKD 15,275,000 (USD 1,946,281) prize pool, and this is what the final table looked like.
Final Table Standings
Seat 1: Yeu Wei Hsiang – 6,970,000
Seat 2: Justin Bonomo – 4,230,000
Seat 3: Sergey Lebedev – 2,280,000
Seat 4: Tong Siow Choon – 1,875,000
Seat 5: Chua Ying Lin – 1,425,000
Seat 6: Ben Lamb – 1,405,000
Seat 7: David Benefield – 1,110,000
The Action
Yeu Wei Hsiang and Justin Bonomo sat on top of the chip counts, and the pair dominated the executions. First Ben Lamb fell to Hsiang when T9o failed to out pop AA. Then Hsiang flipped Chua Ying Lin over the rail when AK beat QQ.
Bonomo took over from this point when TT beat the A6o of Tong Siow Choon and the man with all the money hoovered up David Benefield’s chip dust after the Raptor suffered a cooler against Hsiang when bottom set lost to top pair after the perfect runner-runner combo. Sergey Lebedev would leave in third when Bonomo’s AJ outdrew TT, taking him into a 2:1 chip lead against Hsiang for all the peanuts.
The final fight didn’t last long.
Bonomo’s ATcc beat the AhQc of Hsiang, and the American had won his first Short-Deck and Triton Poker Series title.
There will be more, of that I am sure.
Final Table Results
1. Justin Bonomo – $586,114
2. Yue Wei Hsiang – $420,473
3. Sergey Lebedev – $272,671
4. David Benefield – $206,414
5. Tong Siow Choon – $159,270
6. Chua Ying Lin – $124,231
7. Ben Lamb – $99,385
