Since 2016, the best poker players in the world have wagered hundreds of millions in poker tournaments at the Triton Poker Series. With buy-ins of up to $1 million, this field is naturally packed with elite poker pros and deep-pocketed poker enthusiasts.
The big question is who are the biggest winners over the long term?
With nearly a decade of Triton Poker Series results in the books, now would seem to be a good time to analyze who the biggest net winners are and who among them gets the best return on investment over a meaningful tournament sample. All the data comes directly from the Triton Poker Series results.
Triton Poker Series Net Profit: Who is up the most?
The chart below shows the top 10 Triton Poker Series players by total net profit. These players have either run hot in the biggest spots or been very consistently profitable over many individual events.
Bryn Kenney is by far the most profitable player in Triton Poker Series history, with almost $40 million in estimated profit since 2016. His biggest payday came in London in 2019 for £16.9 million after making an ICM deal with two players left. Coincidentally, the player he made a deal with, Aaron Zang, is the second-biggest winner.
Notably, Bryn Kenney has also got other big scores at the Triton Poker Series, including:
- $250k London 2023: $6.86 million
- $125k Monte Carlo Main Event 2024: $4.41 million
Triton Poker Series ROI: Who is the Most Efficient?
In poker, it is not only about how much money you win. We also look at the Return on Investment (ROI) in order to analyze how much someone has spent in order to achieve their results. Many players fire multiple bullets into the same event, so the buy-in amount does not tell the whole story, and rake is a real cost. With no data publicly available, we cannot know for sure exactly how many times any particular player has bought in to any tournament. Thus, we must estimate based on data we do have available. Here is how I estimated total spend vs. cashes for a single $100k buy-in tournament at the Triton Poker Series:
Base Buy-in: $100k
Rebuy Estimate: 50%, so $50k
Rake: $7585 (5.66% on first bullet, 3.85% re-entry)
Total Buy-in spent: $157,585
Cash: $200k
Profit: $42,415
ROI: 26.9%
The below chart uses this methodology to estimate who the top 10 players are at the Triton Poker Series based on their (likely) return on investment.
If we look at players with 50 or more events to reduce the variance a bit, Bryn Kenney still comes out on top. Dan Smith also has a very impressive ROI and seems to be an underrated player in general.
Coinpoker ambassador Mario Mosböck is a notable name that stood out. While he’s not in the top 10 profit list, his ROI is a very impressive 108%. He shipped a $25k for $1.19M and came in 2nd in a $20k for $856k. That made for a very nice ROI of 4,180% and 4,660% in those two events.
Triton Poker Series: Biggest Winners in PLO and Short Deck
Even if you’ve never player in a Triton Poker Series event, if you’ve ever watched what they stream on their YouTube channel or have followed live reporting from one of their events, you’ll know that they don’t just hold No Limit Hold’em tournaments. In fact, they’re very well known for their first class PLO tournaments and for being the only marquee tournament series that still spreads Short Deck.
Below are the 10 most profitable PLO players in the history of the Triton Poker Series.
Pot Limit Omaha has not been the main format at the Triton Poker Series, with only 27 events. Most of the buy-ins are below $50k and they tend to have smaller fields (usually 50-100 players vs. 200-400 players for NLH).
What is surprising, however, is how low the profits are in PLO events, even for top 10 winners. That could be due to:
- Fewer whales
- More competent pros
- More variance
- Smaller fields
Eelis Parssinen from Finland leads the pack with $2.78 estimated net profit. He first played in a Triton Poker Series event in Monte Carlo in 2023 and proceeded to take down the PLO main event in Monte Carlo 2024 for $2.27 million.
The Short Deck graph below features some bigger winners.
When you filter the Triton Poker Series results to just display Short Deck, we see that there are two clear frontrunners, as far as the winners go.
It’s worth pointing out that Short Deck is a wild game. Its high variance, fast-paced and it wouldn’t be surprising to learn if some players are rebuying 5+ times in a single event. The 50% flat rebuy rate we used in our calculations is probably conservative when considering Short Deck on its own.
Still it is clear that some players are up millions of dollars playing Short Deck. Some edges certainly seem possible, and Short Deck fields might have more whales who like to gamble versus PLO.
Triton Poker Series: Swings & Comebacks
Tournament variance is no joke. Even the best players in the world go through long stretches of break-even or losses.
Two of the players who have put in high volume are Stephen Chidwick and Mikita Badziakouski, both of whom sit comfortably in the top five of the all-time tournament winnings list. As illustrated by the graph below, we can see that both have a healthy profit after about 150 events.
Chidwick, widely considered one of the top tournament players in the world and among the toughest opponents to face, has had a breakeven stretch for about 140 events.
Meanwhile, Badziakouski was up $8 million after 20 events and then went on a $5 million downswing and has subsequently grinded his way back. His is currently sitting at about $7 million profit.
Triton Poker Series: Full of Winners or Losers?
Mathematically speaking, poker is a negative sum game. The Triton Poker Series presents a high skill, high variance and high rake environment. For example, if 100 players buy in for $105,660 it will create a total prize pool of $10 million with $566,000 set aside as the rake. That’s the hurdle every player — no matter their skill level — has to beat before being dealt a card.
Over time the data indicates that most players are losing players at the Triton Poker Series.
Over a meaningful sample size, we see that the top 10 ROI players are all professional poker players. Some will content that 100 tournaments are not a large enough sample size, and I would agree.
With that said, if I had to bet on who the biggest winner would be at the next Triton Poker Series stop, it would most likely be a poker pro who is down millions lifetime at Triton stops, but who still shows up to compete with true grit and who will benefit from variance being on their side the next time around.
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