Tan Xuan Wins Back-to-Back $50,000 Short Deck Event at Triton Jeju

Tan Xuan has made it two in a row after taking down Event #19 – $50,000 Short Deck for the second year running.

Short Deck NL Hold’em has become an obsession in the high-stakes community in Asia. A proper action game to rival PLO. At Triton stops these are always a tournament to watch.

Following his epic win, Tan talked about how much he likes this game and how exciting it is in the way he has to think.

“I like this game. It’s very exciting, it makes me think. The Triton schedule is the best of any high stakes festival in the world. The best players come and I like to play with them.”

The field was a modest 45 entries but that was still $2,250,000 to play for with $708,000 up top for the winner.

Code: VGVANG

200% up to $1,200
$388 in Missions

$50,000 in Free Rewards

New Customers Only | 18+ | T&C Apply

Join VangPoker to receive a 200% bonus of up to $1,200 with your first deposit and access to other VangPoker promotions.

Action Recap

We already mentioned that this short deck variant is all about action, but there are another couple of changes from the usual NL format.

First up, this is an ante game where each player puts in one ante every hand. Secondly, the starting stacks of 300,000 are handed out in three bullets of 100,000 each to be used as desired. Interesting but we’re unsure if this will catch on.

Tan decided to put all of his bullets on the table from the first hand in keeping with his big stack bullying style. And of course it worked well.

Tan had a massive lead when the final table was set, right after second placed Michael Zhang knocked out Artur Martirosian in eighth to burst the bubble and set yet another monster final table line-up at Triton Jeju 2025.

Wai Leong Chan, the guy who finished runner-up to Bryn Kenney in the 2024 Monte Carlo Main Event, has been a Triton reg since it all began eight years ago. Today, though, it wasn’t to be as Esti Wang sent the Malaysian home when his pocket queens won the day after a queen came on the flop and Wai’s A♣ Q♦ was no good.

Daniel Dvoress had a good tournament but towards the end there was very little he could seemingly do given the run of cards. It was all over when he risked the last few antes with Q♠ 10♠ on a board of 8♣ 8♦ 9♠ and Wang’s 10♣ 9♣ rivered a boat to lock it up. The Canadian took home $146,000.

Wang was now able to press Tan with those two nice pots but a long way to go.

Tan then hit back by knocking out Danny Tang. Tang opened J♦ 10♦ with his last 20 antes and the flop ran out 7♣ K♣ Q♣. Tan had Q♠ 8♠ and called a shove from Tang who got help on the turn and river.

Phil Ivey has been playing in Jeju and with four of his last five Triton titles coming in short deck events it was no surprise to see him running deep in this one.

Ivey had just won a huge pot from Tan when it all came tumbling down around him. A couple of orbits later, he handed the chips back with the rest of his stack for a fourth place finish and a $248,000 prize.

All of these recent fireworks ended up with Wang taking over the lead and pulling away significantly. Zhang and Tan were left to fight over who would move on to heads-up.

Even though Zhang is a notable short deck expert, it was to be Tan’s day. With few chips to play with, they were all in the middle soon enough. Zhang needed a draw to come in while Tan scooped the pot with a wonky two pair.

As heads-up began, it was pointed out that Tan and Wang are both Triton veterans who have played cash game pots together that amount to more than the entire prize pool in this event. But at this level, it’s all about the title and trophy.

Given all of that, we expected this to be a titanic battle, but instead it was a chess match that took more than an hour to see the first player get his chips all-in. Wang got a nice double-up to continue his challenge but after that it was all one-way traffic and Tan was soon holding yet another Triton trophy for his cabinet.

Triton Jeju Event #19 – $50,000 Short Deck Final Table Results