The Triton Super High Roller Series is returning to London for the first time since 2019. It was four years ago that the series put on the biggest buy-in tournament of all time, the £1,000,000 Helping Hand for Charity tournament and adopted the idea of it being an invitational in which professional players needed to be invited by VIPs in order to participate.
Now, the invitational has become a staple of the Triton High Roller Series. Anchoring the 15-event series in the UK that starts on July 27 is the $262,500 Triton Poker Luxon Invitational, which gets underway on August 3. It’s essentially a high-roller hybrid in which, on Day One, VIPs and professional players are segmented playing in separate player pools. This has resulted in final tables that feature players from both ends of the spectrum and previous winners from each.
For what we’re doing here, well, we’ll be sticking mainly to the pros for our First Rounder Invitational picks. Indeed, there are qualified VIPs who have what it takes to win it all. Paul Phua, Andrew Pantling, Rob Yong, and Scott Ball – all labeled as VIPs – have impressive poker resumes. In fact, at the last invitational, it was VIP Ramin Hajiyev that took home the trophy and top prize of more than $4.1 million.
However, when shooting your shot on who you think is going to win with only a number of picks to get it right, you might best stick with pulling from pros who have been there before. So let’s get into it yet again – here are the First Rounders for the Triton Poker London Luxon Pay Invitational.
Chris Brewer
Gone are the days of Chris Brewer being thought about as that hard-luck bubble boy of some of the biggest tournaments. Nowadays, all Brewer does is win and we think he’s bringing this winning attitude to London as the guest of Scott Ball. Take a look at Brewer’s summer: 12 cashes at the World Series of Poker that include five final tables, four cashes of six figures or more, and two bracelet wins including the $250,000 Super High Roller for a career-high cash of nearly $5.3 million.
Brewer cashed in his first live high roller in 2020 and in three short years has amassed nearly $16 million in career earnings. And plenty of that success has taken place in Triton Poker events. In May, he won the $25,000 Pot Limit Omaha in Cyrpus for $292,449. This past March at Triton Vietnam, he scored a pair of third-place finishes for a combined score of just under $700,000. Brewer is comfortable, confident, and riding a wave of summer success that we expect to carry over into the upcoming London series.
Doug Polk
Picking Doug Polk so high might seem like a bit of a misclick, but honestly, after the year Polk has had, you simply can’t put anything – including showing up big-time for his first Triton Invitational event – past him. Polk is in the midst of a poker renaissance of sorts. There was a time, not that long ago, that Polk, burdened by anxiety while at the poker table, declared that he was done with competitive poker. But now, that time feels so long ago after his star performances in Hustler Casino Live’s Million Dollar Game, PokerGO’s live edition of High Stakes Poker, and even his recent appearance on Bally’s Big Bet Poker in which he cleaned up for more than $600,000. Polk is loving the poker spotlight and it’s due to these appearances, and playing alongside Rob Yong, that he received an invite to this game.
But enjoying high-stakes cash games and competing in tournament poker at the highest level are two very different things. Yet Polk has more than proved that he’s got what it takes to do both. Polk boasts more than $10 million in career tournament earnings, which includes a very high-profile victory in the 2017 $111,111 High Roller for One Drop at the WSOP for more than $3.6 million. This year, in limited tournament action, he has a six-figure score in the $25,000 High Roller at The Lodge ( the Austin cardroom he’s a co-owner of) as well as his runner-up finish in the 2023 WSOP Heads-Up Championship for $313,362. If there’s one thing Polk has shown this year that when he’s called upon to show up and show out, he delivers.
Danny Tang
When it comes to performing on the Triton Poker stage, Danny Tang is right there among the best in the world. Tang had been on the tournament circuit for years before making an impact in the 2019 Triton Super High Roller Series in Montenegro where he scored his first career seven-figure score with a runner-up finish in that series’ Main Event. Since that time, Tang has upped his aggression when it comes to attending nosebleed tournaments, becoming a regular fixture of the Triton stops. According to Hendon Mob, Tang is currently tied for 8th for total number of Triton cashes, and has amassed more than $6 million of his $15.7 million career earnings from Triton events.
While Tang had what appears to be a fine summer in Las Vegas, he was really on fire at 2023 Triton Cyprus in May. During that series, he cashed in five events for roughly $1.6 million including two victories – the first in the $50,000 NLHE Turbo for $545,000 and then right after in the $50,000 NL Short Deck Main Event for another $750,000. That was on the heels of his victory in the $25,000 NL Short Deck Ante Only at 2023 Triton Vietnam. Now he’s invited to play by France’s Karl Chappe-Gatien, who himself finished third in the 2022 Triton Cyprus Coin Rivet Invitational, and he’s going to be a front-runner to adding another title to his ever-growing Triton Poker resume.
Phil Ivey
If you have the opportunity to pick Phil Ivey in any event – you do. Therefore, we oblige. Everyone knows, Ivey is goated. Therefore not too much explanation is needed as to why we’d pick him but let’s take a look anyway.
This summer may not have been particularly kind to Ivey, soft-bubbling a couple of high-profile tournaments including the 2023 WSOP $250,000 Super High Roller and the WPT EveryOne for One Drop. But even so, Ivey picked up a pair of six-figure cashes while in Las Vegas including a sixth-place finish in the WSOP $50K Poker Players Championship for $228,793 and another final table finish in the WSOP $10K Super Turbo Bounty for an additional $133,461.
The only question about Ivey is how motivated will he be. Recent history shows that when Ivey shows up to Triton Poker events, he’s making the most of it. He scored a victory at Triton Cyprus in September 2022 in the $30,000 NL Short Deck for $387,000. That was just months after he took down the Triton $75,000 NL Short Deck in Cyprus for a $1.1 million score. With 10 Triton cashes, nearly $5 million of Ivey’s career $38.6 million in earnings have come from Triton High Rollers. Now he has the opportunity to soar to over $40 million in earnings, which would jettison him back into the All-Time Money List Top 10, thanks to his invite from Triton Poker founder Paul Phua.
Linus Loeliger
For our final pick, we’re going with online poker legend turned live high roller crusher Linus ‘LLinusLLove’ Loeliger. Unlike many high-stakes tournament grinders, Loeliger is a bit of a rarity in that he doesn’t really get out of bed for a live tournament unless it’s a Triton Poker event.
Since 2015, Loeliger has just 16 live results with all but three of them coming from Triton Poker High Roller Series. That alone makes his career earnings of $7.5 million a staggering number. This year alone, he’s cashed in five Triton events for nearly $900,000. But specifically, he has done especially well in the Invitationals. Earlier this year, in Cyprus he finished in 13th place for $350,000. In the 2022 edition in Cyprus, he finished as the runner-up for $3.9 million.
Loeliger is one of the most well-respected online players of all time and thanks to an invite from Wai Kin Yong, we’ll have the opportunity to once again see him work in the live arena.