Timothy Adams came to Landing Casino in Jeju, Korea as a World Series of Poker bracelet winner with eight figures worth of live tournament earnings. Although he has won several high roller tournaments in recent years, Adams had yet to capture a signature win in a six-figure buy-in event before coming to the 2019 Triton Poker Super High Roller Series Jeju. That all changed when the Canadian poker pro outlasted a field of 38 entries to win the $2,000,000 HKD ($254,779 USD) buy-in Triton Jeju no-limit hold’em main event, securing the title and the massive top prize of $27,760,500 HKD ($3,608,865 USD).
This was by far the largest score of Adams’ career, blowing away the $1,009,965 he earned as the third-place finisher in a super high roller at the Asia Championship of Poker in 2017. With this victory, his live tournament earnings soared to more than $14.1 million. Adams now sits in 39th place on poker’s all-time money list. He climbed to fourth place on Canada’s earnings leaderboard, behind only Daniel Negreanu ($38.6 million), Jonathan Duhamel ($17.9 million), and Samuel Greenwood ($15.8 million).
In addition to the money, Adams also took home 600 Card Player Player of the Year points for the win. This was his second final table and second title of the year, having taken down a $50,000 high roller at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in January. He now sits in 67th place in the overall rankings.
Adams was hardly the only player to make big moves in the POY race standings as a result of this event. Runner-up Bryn Kenney was awarded 500 points and $3,125,135 USD after striking a deal with Adams that locked up over $3 million USD for each based on their chip counts at the time and left the title and over $500,000 USD to play for. Kenney has had a red-hot start to 2019, which began with him taking down the Aussie Millions $10,000 AUD main event for $916,271 USD and 2,208 points. He captured his second title in a $25,000 event at the U.S. Poker Open, adding another $450,000 USD and 504 points. Kenney then placed fourth in the $500,000 HKD no-limit hold’em six-max event earlier in this series for an additional $509,730 USD and 408 points.
The upside of all of these huge scores is that Kenney has surged into the outright lead in the 2019 POY race, with 3,620 points accumulated so far and $5,001,136 in year-to-date earnings.
David Peters finished fifth in the event for $1,059,500 USD and 250 points. The 2019 U.S. Poker Open champion has already made six final tables this year. He currently sits in 13th place in the overall POY rankings.
Peters now has $32,755,512 in career earnings, enough to put him in fifth place on poker’s all-time earnings list. Kenney is hot on his heels, moving into sixth place with $30,770,801 as a result of his deep run in this event.
Here is a look at the complete payouts and POY points awarded in this event:
Place | Player | Earnings (USD) | POY Points |
1 | Tim Adams | $3,608,865 | 600 |
2 | Bryn Kenney | $3,125,135 | 500 |
3 | Dan Smith | $1,768,000 | 400 |
4 | Peter Jetten | $1,350,700 | 300 |
5 | David Peters | $1,059,500 | 250 |
6 | Isaac Haxton | $819,000 | 200 |
Source: cardplayer.com