Katz and Yong Challenge Kee for HK$1,000,000 Triton Hold'em Title and $2.86 Million First Prize
Triton Super High Roller Series Jeju will crown the fourth champion today at the Landing Casino. He is set to walk away with the largest prize ever awarded on the South Korean soil with a juicy $2.86 million first-place prize up for grabs in the HK$1,000,000 Triton Hold'em event.
The field has been narrowed to only three players who can still eye the whopping top-prize. Kenneth Kee, Richard Yong and Cary Katz will battle it out today at 4 p.m. local time. They're already guaranteed a solid profit, navigating their way through a 60-entry field to lock up a seven-figure payday. But the final two steps towards the pedestal come with huge leaps in terms of prizes. The silver medal is worth $600,000 more than the bronze while the winner will be more than $1 million richer than the runner-up.
| Seat | Player | Country | Chips | Button-Antes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kenneth Kee | Singapore | 8,245,000 | 69 |
| 2 | Cary Katz | United States | 2,940,000 | 25 |
| 3 | Richard Yong | Malaysia | 6,815,000 | 57 |
The pay jumps create an environment with a heavy ICM pressure but it's hard to estimate how big will be the chip leader's leverage. Kee takes on two wealthy businessmen so it's questionable whether Kee could rely deeply on his chip-advantage.
Katz is by far the shortest stack with 2,940,000 in his bag. That's less than a half of what second-placed Yong possesses (6,815,000). Kee might hold the biggest stack of 8,245,000 but he can't expect an easy competition. Triton Hold'em tournaments are never a walk in the park. High stakes crusher Jason Koon utilized a brilliant short-stack strategy in the HK$500k event and his way of grinding a shallow stack could provide an excellent manual for Katz who will return to 25 button-antes.
However, Kee has been among the best-performing Triton Hold'em players we've seen in Jeju, mainly thanks to his impressive style of play he's presented here. Short deck poker is generally a high-variance game but if there has been a player who was able to cut the swings to a minimum, it has to be Kee whose finest tool seems to be to steadily guard his stack.
That was the way he showed in the opening HK$100k event where he finished second to Nick Schulman. During most of the final table stretch, Kee stayed outside of major pots but he still worked his way to heads-up.
Now Kee's in a different role, pacing the last three players in battles for millions. It will be interesting to see if he'll try to set the tone or if he'll stick to the gameplan that suited him last week. It's only a matter of hours until we'll find out who will rise to the summit, whether Kee will prevail or if Yong and Katz will be able to twist the plot. Come back to PokerNews at 4 p.m. local time to follow the final battles of the highest buy-in Triton Hold'em event in Jeju.
Final table payouts:
| Place | Player | Country | Prize (HKD) | Prize (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | 22,500,000 | 2,866,838 | ||
| 2nd | 13,920,000 | 1,773,617 | ||
| 3rd | 9,120,000 | 1,162,025 | ||
| 4th | Peter Jetten | Canada | 6,300,000 | 802,715 |
| 5th | Mikita Badziakouski | Belarus | 4,620,000 | 588,657 |
| 6th | Ivan Leow | Malaysia | 3,540,000 | 451,049 |