Adrian Mateos has won Event #7 – $50,000 – 8-Handed NL Hold’em at Triton Montenegro. The Spanish crusher banked $1,761,000 while picking up his second title at the series.
From the minute Mateos arrived in Montenegro, he had been on a charge. Two final tables in the first four events showed clear intent.
And it took a pair of horrific bad beats to halt his run in both of those tournaments.
In Event #7, life didn’t look as if it would be any easier; top-tier talent was stacked all the way through the final table line-up. Phil Ivey, Ben Tollerene, Nick Petrangelo, and Dan Smith all stood in the way of the Spaniard.
But the action was down to the final nine players out of a field of 159 who built a prize pool of almost $8 million.
Former professional footballer Mario Mosboeck was the first to leave. The Austrian has himself been making waves in the Triton Super High Roller Series but today wasn’t to be his day.
Then there was an hour of cautious play with very few chips moving around the table.
But the tension was bound to break sooner or later and Dan Smith kicked it off by losing with ace-queen against the ace-nine of Justin Saliba.
Mikalai Vaskaboinikau followed Smith to the rail soon after chancing his ace-ten against the pocket twos held by Ivey who himself was next to face the exit.
Ben Tollerene is best known for his exploits as a PLO cash game player but does fare reasonably well against the best in a tournament setting.
He even reached the final table as chip leader but a couple of standard hands crippled his stack to show just how brutal tournaments can be.
And then there were only four. Mateos now had the lead with 49bb but Saliba and Petrangelo were holding steady with 28bb and 23bb respectively. China’s Joe Zou only had 6bb but he managed a quick double-up soon after returning for Day 3.
It was Nick Petrangelo who next ran out of luck. A confrontation in the blinds with Mateos saw a dominated ace situation with neither hand hitting the board.
Zou then ran out of luck when his pocket kings were not good enough against a rivered two pair of Saliba. He shoved his last 5bb in right after and got no help from the poker gods.
The heads-up battle was non-existent. With Mateos holding 37bb to Saliba’s 16 we expected more but it was all over on the first hand.
Ace-ten up against ace-seven saw the dominated hand turn a straight only for Mateos to reply in kind by rivering a flush.
Event #7: $50,000 NLHE – 8-Handed Final Table Results
| Place | Player | Country | Prize |
| 1 | Adrian Mateos | Spain | $1,761,000 |
| 2 | Justin Saliba | United States | $1,188,000 |
| 3 | Joe Zou | China | $818,000 |
| 4 | Nick Petrangelo | United States | $667,000 |
| 5 | Ben Tollerene | United States | $532,000 |
| 6 | Phil Ivey | United States | $408,000 |
| 7 | Mikalai Vaskaboinikau | Belarus | $297,000 |
| 8 | Dan Smith | United States | $215,000 |
| 9 | Mario Mosboeck | Austria | $178,100 |
Alex Kulev Wins Event #8 $100K NL
Adrian Mateos wasn’t the only big winner of the weekend, because Bulgaria’s Alex Kulev continued his great run by taking down the first $100,000 buy-in event of this Triton series.
This is a guy who wasn’t really racking up any serious live scores until covid, and didn’t even make a six-figure cash until November 2021.
Kulev now has more than $13 million in live tournament earnings!
The Bulgarian national makes his home in Ireland where he is one of the better known online MTT players but he is fitting into live events just nicely, we’d say.
He defeated a final table that included Bryn Kenney, Dylan Linde, Daniel Dvoress, and Danny Tang.
Not only that, but he also pulled off this amazing win in front of his family. We look forward to seeing more of this young man in the future.
Triton Event #8 – $100,000 – 8-Handed Final Table Results
| Place | Player | Country | Prize |
| 1 | Alex Kulev | Bulgaria | $2,566,000 |
| 2 | Thomas Santerne | France | $1,735,000 |
| 3 | Xu Liang | China | $1,127,000 |
| 4 | Maher Nouira | Tunisia | $933,000 |
| 5 | Danny Tang | Hong Kong | $752,000 |
| 6 | Daniel Dvoress | Canada | $594,000 |
| 7 | Dylan Linde | United States | $454,000 |
| 8 | Aleksejs Ponakovs | Latvia | $342,000 |
| 9 | Bryn Kenney | United States | $255,000 |
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