With the festive season upon us and poker writers scraping the bottom of the barrel in search of something to write about, Lee Davy, releases his first poker prediction of 2019, that the Triton Poker Series will replace the Super High Roller Bowl as the Super Bowl of poker.
2018 was an incredible year for the High Roller stratum of the poker industry. I don’t have the time or the patience to crunch the numbers, but I will sit in a car filled with exhaust fumes if it wasn’t a record year for High Roller prize pools.
The highlight of the year for me was the emergence of the Triton Poker Series as a real force in the High Roller niche. It’s different from the European Poker Tour (EPT), partypoker MILLIONS, World Poker Tour (WPT) and World Series of Poker (WSOP) as it only caters for High Rollers allowing the organisers to take care of their customers every need.
Before Triton held successful tours in Montenegro and Jeju, Poker Central dominated the High Roller niche with the ARIA High Rollers and the Triple Crown of US Poker Open, Poker Masters and the Super High Roller Bowl, with most players agreeing that the latter was THE premier poker tournament for high stakes players, globally.
I think that will change in 2019.
The most recent iteration of the SHRB ended this week with Isaac Haxton overcoming 36-entrants to win the $3.67m first prize, making it the least successful event in the brand’s short history on all counts, but the one that’s the most concerning is their lack of non-professionals.
Of the 36-strong field, only Talal Shakerchi, Bill Klein, Cary Katz, Rick Salomon and Giuseppe Iadisernia identify with the title ‘non-professional.’ I’m not experienced enough to tell you how many of those are good spots for the pros, but Salomon has made three One Drop Final Tables, Shakerchi is always at the deep end of these things, and Katz is the most consistent ITM finisher in ARIA High Rollers.
Compare that to the Triton Poker Series fields.
Richard Yong and Paul Phua have developed a travelling circus of high rolling non-professionals who love nothing more than to gamble with a smile on their face.
Speaking to some of the pros on the circuit, not only do they love the quality of the fields, but every need is taken care of from the moment they land in the airport to the moment they leave the hotel, and they all seem to have a lot of fun winning or losing millions of dollars.
With the Triton Poker Series announcing a tournament series every two months beginning with Jeju in March, and promising to host the biggest buy-in ever, and with the biggest cash games in the world, I think by the end of 2019, the title of the Super Bowl of High Stakes Poker Tournaments will shift from the SHRB to Triton Poker Series.
