The biggest buy-in tournament of the year got underway yesterday in the Bahamas, the Triton Million at WSOP Paradise matching big-name pros and mega-wealthy amateurs, each player paying $500,000 for the privilege.
As you can see from the image above, the pros and rich recs were kept separate on day 1, although a few of the names may have you scratching your head.
Orpen “Orp the Turk” Kisacikoglu isn’t a pro? Doesn’t Santosh Suvarna crush highstakes full time? What about Jared Bleznick? Well, the lines are sometimes blurred.
In Bleznick’s case, he gave up full time play claiming “it doesn’t do it for me anymore”, moving into the realm of sports card collecting and opening his own shop, Legacy Sports Cards, in Las Vegas, along with fellow former poker pro, Tom Marchese.
Bleznick’s tilt at the Triton Million started with the following crazy battle on the very first hand of the tournament…
💥FIRST Triton MILLIONS Bust Out! 🚨
David Einhorn 6-bet All in with A♣️K♦️, and Jared Bleznick snap called. Einhorn was shown the bad news running into Jared's A♠️ A♦️.
The board ran out clean A♠️ A♦️> A♣️K♦️for the first Triton Millions player felled.
— Triton Poker (@tritonpoker) December 7, 2024
Einhorn, the president of investment firm Greenlight Capital, simply bought back in for another $500k, chickenfeed for a man worth more than $1.5billion.
With 37 “couples”, the 74 initial entries had somehow swollen to 95 buy-ins by the end of day one, the prizepool sitting at $47,000,000 and a who’s who of the poker world chasing the money.
The match-ups between elite amateur and top pro were as follows:
Triton Million Pairings
| Invitee | Poker Pro |
| Ossi Ketola | Patrik Antonius |
| David Einhorn | Taylor von Kriegenbergh |
| Santhosh Suvarna | Nick Petrangelo |
| Chad Deberry | Sean Winter |
| Paul Phua | Phil Ivey |
| Kannapong Thanarattrakul | Punnat Punsri |
| Brandon Steven | Chance Kornuth |
| Alfred Decarolis | Stephen Chidwick |
| Saya Ono | Kayhan Mokri |
| Charlie Hook | Seth Davies |
| Wai Kin Yong | Aleksejs Ponakovs |
| Vinny Lingham | Jason Koon |
| Andrew Pantling | Sam Greenwood |
| Jessica Teusl | Fedor Holz |
| Jared Bleznick | Alex Kulev |
| Ryan Feldman | Daniel Negreanu |
| Jusso Koskela | Elias Talvitie |
| Ferdinand Putra | Danny Tang |
| Raul Manzanares | Kiat Lee |
| Wayne Heung | Juan Pardo |
| Eric Wasserson | Nick Schulman |
| Konstantin Maslak | Artur Martirosian |
| Sinan Unlu | Matthias Eibinger |
| Rob Yong | Mikita Badziakouski |
| Phil Nagy | Nacho Barbero |
| Ding Biao | David Yan |
| Orpen Kisacikoglu | Daniel Dvoress |
| Sirzat Hissou | Bryn Kenney |
| Sosia Jiang | Isaac Haxton |
| Alejandro Lococo | Joao Vieira |
| Yoshiaki Nagaki | Michael Addamo |
| James Hopkins | Alex Foxen |
| Michael Moncek | Shaun Deeb |
| Elton Tsang | Justin Bonomo |
| Esti Wang | Adrian Mateos |
| Philip Sternheimer | Ben Heath |
Ivey’s $Million Day
Phil Ivey, invited by Triton Poker head honcho and long-time friend, Paul Phu, was among those who had to rebuy, as did Aleksejs Ponakovs, both looking forward to the prospect of some amateurs at their table on day 2.
Ivey fell at the hands of Alex Kulev, the Bulgarian pro paired with Bleznick…
Phil Ivey: K♦ J♥
Alex Kulev: Q♠ Q♣
Flop: 6♣ J♣ Q♦
Turn: K♥
Kulev had bet pre- and both streets, snap-calling Ivey’s turn re-raise shove. The river didn’t help the 11-time WSOP brace let winner…
River: 7♣
…and Ivey was off to the cage to rebuy.
Negreanu not fazed by monster buy-in
Daniel Negreanu, partnered with HCL founder Ryan Feldman, revealed that the $500k buy-in isn’t his biggest ever outlay for a poker event…
The secret to @RealKidPoker success is? 💰
Find out with @abbypoker_ 🤫 #wsopPARADISE pic.twitter.com/z54vU7cYst— WSOP – World Series of Poker (@WSOP) December 8, 2024
By the end of level 10, the day’s play closed with 67 players still in contention, the top 10 a mix of pros and amateurs, the top 10 chip counts below.
End of Day 1 Chip Counts
| Rank | Player | Chip Count |
| 1 | Michael Moncek | 3,815,000 |
| 2 | Sinan Unlu | 3,200,000 |
| 3 | Paul Phua | 2,750,000 |
| 4 | Sosia Jiang | 2,665,000 |
| 5 | Fedor Holz | 2,625,000 |
| 6 | Patrik Antonius | 2,570,000 |
| 7 | Jared Bleznick | 2,535,000 |
| 8 | Konstantin Maslak | 2,150,000 |
| 9 | Chance Kornuth | 2,140,000 |
| 10 | Taylor von Kriegenbergh | 2,140,000 |
We’ll be back again with all the best of the day 2 action so be sure to check in regularly for the latest news!
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