button in SafariThree Blind All-Ins Hand Petrangelo Title in Triton $150k 10th Anniversary Special
After coming close several times at the Triton Poker Series Jeju II, Nick Petrangelo finally got his moment. Following nearly two weeks of deep runs, the American finally broke through on the one of the festival’s premeire events, "defeating" longtime friend Joao Simao after a heads-up deal to win the $150k 10th Anniversary Special for $2,212,910 at LES A Casino.
The final table featured some of the biggest names in the game, including Adrian Mateos, Thomas Boivin, Danny Tang, Dan Dvoress and Seth Davies.
For Simao, the runner-up finish was hardly a disappointment after a spectacular showing of his own. The Brazilian collected $2,517,090 from the heads-up deal, but had already secured the biggest payday of the series by winning the $200,000 Invitational for a career-best $7,250,000.
$150k Anniversary Special Final Table Results
| Place | Player | Country | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nick Petrangelo | United States | $2,212,910* |
| 2 | Joao Simao | Brazil | $2,517,090* |
| 3 | Adrian Mateos | Spain | $1,286,000 |
| 4 | Miroslav Atanasov | Bulgaria | $990,000 |
| 5 | Thomas Boivin | Belgium | $783,000 |
| 6 | Murly Manokharan | Malaysia | $613,000 |
| 7 | Danny Tang | Hong Kong | $483,000 |
| 8 | Seth Davies | United States | $377,000 |
| 9 | Dan Dvoress | Canada | $286,000 |
*denotes heads-up deal
Winner's Reaction
The victory capped a remarkable series for Petrangelo, who recorded five cashes during the festival and added another major title to an already decorated career. After reaching heads-up against longtime friend Simao, the pair agreed to a deal before ultimately deciding to settle the title with a series of blind all-ins.
"You can finish ninth in a bunch of these, or you can get lucky and get three-handed or heads-up, and I'm happy it worked out"
“Yeah, we chopped heads up. In these big ones, it's always great to have a good result because they're really tough fields and they can go any direction. You can finish ninth in a bunch of these, or you can get lucky and get three-handed or heads-up, and I'm happy it worked out.”
Petrangelo said the strength of the field made the victory particularly satisfying.
"You got to be sharp with your final-table stuff and everything, the edges are really tiny these days, so you got to be dialed. You know, it feels good to execute on one of those and feel like I played pretty well for the most part.”
There was an added layer to the heads-up "battle" given Petrangelo and Simao's long history together. The two have been competing against each other since the online poker boom of the late 2000s.
“Yeah, we just played against each other forever. I mean, like you were saying, back to playing, grinding online against each other in 2008, we've been playing forever. He's a great guy. You know, out here there's a lot of groups of different people, and he's kind of a lone wolf crushing. I really respect that about him.”
Day 2 Action
Nine additional players joined the returning 26 from Day 1, bringing the total number of entrants to 67 and setting up what would be a marathon battle for the title.
With only 20 big blinds to work with, nearly all of the Day 2 entrants were eliminated within the first few levels. Among the late registrants, Punnat Punsri, Jesse Lonis, Jamil Wakil, Ding Biao, Samuel Mullur, Michael Watson, and Phil Ivey all busted before the first break of the day.
Isaac Haxton was able to score a rare double knockout early in the day after turning a flush against Stephen Chidwick and Brandon Wilson. But just a short while later, Haxton was outdone when Daniel Dvoress landed an even rarer triple knockout against Sam Greenwood, Matthias Eibinger, and Patrik Antonius to shoot up the leaderboard.
The money bubble was a brief affair, with Wai Kiat Lee landing on the wrong end of a preflop cooler that saw him shove ace-queen into Tang's ace-king. The runout gave Lee a sweat with a flush draw, but he ultimately bricked out to fall one spot short of the money. Regardless of the painful elimination, Lee had an excellent series overall after winning the $40k Mystery Bounty Event and cashing in three others for a nearly $2 million boost to his lifetime earnings.
Despite finding a double-up immediately following the money bubble, Alex Foxen was the first to fall in the money after getting outlflopped by Seth Davies.
Boivin then surged into the chip lead, first by doubling up through Ben Tollerene and then by making a straight and getting paid off by the American pro. Things only got worse for Tollerene from there, with Murly Manokharan doubling through him and then losing a race against Manokharan to be eliminated one spot shy of the final table.
Dvoress was the first to fall at the final table after doubling Manokharan up and then getting his queens cracked by Miroslav Atanasov.
Davies, who started Day 2 with the chip lead, followed Dvoress out the door in eighth after making a stack-committing raise with ace-eight and failing to improve against Petrangelo, who had Davies dominated with ace-queen.
The biggest pot of the tournament to that point followed, with Tang and Atanasov getting into a preflop raising war that ended with Tang all in with Big Slick against Atanasov's pocket jacks. The flip went in favor of Atanasov, who held nearly a third of the chips in play following the massive clash.
Following Manokharan's exit in sixth place, Simao picked up aces to leave Boivin with crumbs. Amazingly, Boivin managed to double up multiple times, growing his stack from just 15,000 all the way to 695,000 in what was looking to become a comeback story for the ages. Unfortunatley for Boivin, his momentum was halted after losing a flip against Mateos to bow out in fifth.
Four-handed play saw Petrangelo surge up the counts after both bluffing Mateos off the best hand and then picking off a big bluff by Atanasov.
Forced all in from the big blind, Atanasov then watched as Simao and Mateos played a monster side pot wherein Mateos made a gutsy bluff that ultimately failed — sending Simao's stack soaring and eliminating Atanasov in fourth. Left short from his bluff attempt, Mateos was quick to take a stand against Simao with ace-ten, but lost a race against Simao's threes to get down to heads-up.
The long-time friends were quick to make a deal, with Simao securing the lion's share of the prize pool. With seemingly little interesting in battling, the duo agreed to go all in blind until the winner was decided. It only took three hands for Petrangelo to double twice and then claim the rest of Simao's stack — putting an end to the tournament and crowning Petrangelo as the official champion.
