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The first public invitational poker tournament I remember was 10 years ago. Elton Tsang won the Big One for One Drop Extravaganza in Monte Carlo; it was a small-field tournament that raised money for One Drop and did not allow poker pros to play. The next one I remember was the Triton Million, which segregated the field for most of day 1 between “VIPs” and “Pros.” There has always been a bit of category fraud that has led players and spectators to question “Who really is a pro?” In the Triton Million, I remember some people questioned whether Andrew Pantling, a former poker pro with a long list of cashes on Hendon Mob, should qualify as a VIP. Some players such as Chin Wei Lim have played as both a pro and a VIP. The lines have always been blurry, but as invitationals have become a frequent part of the poker calendar, the standards are becoming a little cleaner.
For one, Triton is no longer calling VIPs “VIPs,” but “Invitees”: They qualify and get to invite a pro of their choice. Second, the standards have gotten a bit more relaxed, and I would say the “Invitee” side tends to be more someone who would get invited to play a private live cash game vs. people who would not. I think this is for the best— instead of adjudicating each player’s individual poker skill or their edge in the tournament, the operators are asking a question they’re better equipped to answer: Do the existing invitees like playing with new invitees?
In the olden days of the invitational tourneys, the category fraud was good for the pros side of the bracket, because there were teams of two “in-betweeners”— players who weren’t quite good enough to play with the super pros, but much better than the business people who qualified as VIPs. In the current iterations of invitationals, in-betweeners often qualify as Invitees, which means the remaining players on the pro side of the bracket are often the best of the best. The first invitationals were freezeouts, and this led to overly cautious play. Pros were incentivized to keep pots small and wait for the fields to combine, but now that the tournaments are re-entry, pros have a second or third life, and they’re encouraged to play the best cEV poker they can so they can build as big a stack as possible for when the fields merge. This has made day 1 of invitationals some of the best poker you’ll see on tour. Tables full of the best pros playing deep-stacked poker with no incentives to play nitty or slow for a full day. My starting table had three Alexes— Kulev, Ponakovs and Theologis— Danny Rezaei, Kiat Lee, and the player many think is the best in the world, Adrian Mateos Diaz. I navigated a long hard day of poker at that table, then I was moved to a new table, this one with Isaac Haxton, Patrik Antonius, Artur Martirosian and others. I bluff caught the river vs. Ike and was knocked out of the tournament, and after a long hard day of battling and surviving, I had to make the sad, long (three minute) walk back to my hotel room. The saving grace for me was the hope that when I looked up my bustout hand, I did not punt. Read on to see if I did.
$200K NLH Triton Invitational – Event #10 | Triton SHRS Jeju II 2026
(3k/6k/6k) (SB/BB/BBA) 300k Starting Stack
It folds to Isaac Haxton (833k/138bb) in the CO who makes it 14k, it folds to me (270K/45bbs) in the BB with Q♦️9♦️ I call.
Flop (36k) Q♥️T♥️3♦️: I check, Ike bets 9k, I call
Turn (54k) 8♠️: I check, Ike bets 40k, I call
River (134k) 9♣️: I check, Ike shoves for my final 213k, I call and lose to K♦️J♦️
