It started with the first women winning a Triton Poker Super High Roller Event, and the series in Montenegro ended with the man who has more Triton titles than anyone else winning his second — in four days.
Yes, Jason Koon won his record-leading 11th and 12th Triton titles at Maestral Resort and Casino, while Xuan Liu become the first woman to win a Triton event, beating the fantastic Kristen Foxen, who made three final tables in this series, to the historical punch.
Jesse Lonis also had an incredible few weeks, making four final tables and winning two Triton Super High Roller Events himself.
A dozen for Koon
Koon has been stuck on 10 Triton titles since 2023, the year he racked-up a whopping six Triton trophies. It’s not that 2024 wasn’t another great year in Koon’s stellar tournament poker career, he just didn’t win one. It’s funny how it changes so fast, even for the best players in the world.
Koon won his 11th Triton event in the $150,000 (+$7,500) contest that attracted 63 players (45 reentries) who built a prize pool of $16.2 million. Koon took $3,393,656 of that after beating his friend and mentor Benjamin Tollerene heads-up for the trophy after the two made a deal.
Tollerene won $3,437,344 for second, but added another $2,390,000 to his tournament poker pile that will soon hit $30 million by winning the $100,000 (+$4,000) PLO championship only two days later.
Koon only had to wait until the finale event of the Series to win Triton trophy number 12 in the $20,000 + $1,200 + $10,000 Quattro Bounty Turbo event that attracted 31 (21 rebuys). He took $305,176 by beating Seth Davies heads-up after making another deal. Koon now has more than $64 million in tournament cashes.
Davies won $296,824, which he added to the $4,190,000 he won for another runner-up finish in the $200,000 (+$12,000) Triton Invitational, which is his best lifetime cash and brings his lifetime tournament total to $40 million.
Amateur Aleksa Pavicevic was the winner of that event, taking home a whopping $6,180,000. Not bad for a man who has never cashed more than $18,000.
Lonis also double-dips
Jesse Lonis also won two titles at the 17-event series, pushing his lifetime total into the $20 million neighborhood.
After cashing in the first event for finishing 26th, he went on to make four final tables, finishing fourth in two of them, and winning the others.
His first title in Montenegro came in the $20,000 + $2,400 + $20,000 7-Handed Mystery Bounty event that brought in 82 entries (47 rebuys) that built the prize pool to $2.58 million. Lonis won $619,000 of that after beating Barak Wisbrod heads-up ($422,000). Widbrod also had a ninth, seventh, and a fifth-place finishes in this series.
But his biggest score not only of the series — but of Lonis’ life — came in the $100,000 (+$6,000) Main Event that brought in 101 players (79 rebuys). The $3,446,298 Lonis won for taking down the whole thing beats his previous lifetime best of $2,303,017 he got by winning the $50,000 Pot Limit Omaha High Roller event at the 2023 World Series of Poker.
Mikalai Vaskaboinikau, who scored a career-best $4,737,000 by winning this headliner last year, couldn’t go back-to-back and was the runner-up, which was good for his second-best cash of $2,927,702.
