Aleks Ponakovs wins Triton 10th Anniversary Special

A second Triton title for the Latvian all-time money leader in the event that celebrates a decade of the nosebleed stakes tour.

It's hard to believe we've been watching six- and seven-figure buy-in tournaments for a decade on the Triton tour, but we have. This week, Triton celebrated its 10-year anniversary with a $150,000 Anniversary Special event. 

The tournament attracted 76 entries in total and the final table featured Jonathan Jaffe, Matthias Eibinger, Punnat Punsri, Jason Koon, and Kiat Lee, as well as one of the best recreational players in the world, Jean-Noel Thorel. There were 32 Triton titles among the final table. 

All of whom had to make way for Aleks Ponakovs, who took the event down for $3,027,000, as well as his second Triton title, having previously won a Triton Poker Main Event. 

As is often the case, when a Triton regular is from a smaller country, they are inevitably that country's all-time money leader. Ponakovs now has over $40 million in career earnings, which is 13 times his nearest rival in Latvia. 

"I was almost broke in 2017"

Ponakovs is also a CoinPoker ambassador, and after the tournament he reflected on how far he has come as a player:

"I wouldn't have expected I would be here playing high stakes in 2017, when I was basically almost broke," he said. "So I'm pretty happy to be here, playing the highest events, with smartest people in the world."

Next up in Montenegro is the final table of the $30,000 No Limit/PLO Mix event, where Mike Watson will be attempting to win his third title (8th overall) of the trip.