Phil Ivey Takes Down the First $75k Short Deck Event in Cyprus

This week almost all the big poker action is in Cyprus where the Triton High Roller Week attracts many of the most well known poker pros. The regular hold’em tournaments are over and now it’s time for the Short Deck events. Yesterday it was none other than veteran Phil Ivey who secured victory in the first $75k short-deck event with a strong performance and some help by Fortuna.

With a buy-in of $75,000, the event was one of the most expensive short-deck tournaments in history and thanks to 51 entries, a prize pool of over $3.7 million was played for.

The first day of the short-deck event in Cyprus saw 51 entries and only 11 of them made it to Day 2. Re-entries were no longer possible at that point and the tournament was already on the brink of the bubble. Seven places were paid.

Mike Watson with a furious start

Phil Ivey started the second day of play in third position in the chip count behind Jason Koon and Elton Tsang. The first orbits, however, belonged to Mike Watson. The Canadian started with the fewest chips, but quickly cleared the field from behind.

With a good portion of luck, Watson eliminated the American Daniel Cates. First Watson doubled up with QJ > A6 against Cates, shortly afterwards both were all-in again preflop. This time Cates held AKo and Watson had the worse kicker to his ace with AJo. But the board gave the Canadian a flush and sealed Cates’ bust in 19th place.

The next bust, Chris Brewer happened also on Watson’s account and again the Canadian actually had the worse hand. Preflop Brewer was already all-in with KK, Watson called with AKs and an ace on the turn decided the run-out in favour of the Canadian.

Phil Ivey breaks the bubble and can’t lose

The money bubble was broken by Phil Ivey. He was all-in with KQ against Wai Kin Yong’s QJ and this time the better hand held. After that, the remaining seven players were placed at the final table and had almost $200,000 in prize money secured.

At the final table, Mike Watson had a clear lead with twice as many chips as the second-placed player. But now it was Phil Ivey who was blessed with lots of luck. He eliminated Ivan Leow (AA > QQ) and Richard Yong (lucky with JT > AK) in 7th and 6th place and moved to the top of the count.

All the action was exclusively preflop at this point as the entire table was raising very aggressively and raises were often answered with 3-bets and all-ins.

Two of the next three busts also were administered by Phil Ivey. Once more he had the weaker hand when the chips went into the middle (before the flop). First he took Jason Koon out of the tournament in 5th place with A6 > AK thanks to a six on the flop. A little later he eliminated the now almost card-dead Mike Watson with KK > TT.

The heads-up against Wai Kiat Lee was only a formality. Ivey had a 3:1 lead and in the very first hand all the chips went into the middle. Lee had the weaker hand with A 10 against Ivey’s A K . The board brought Q 7 6 A 9 and with that Ivey was the champion.

Final Result Triton $75k Short Deck

#	Player	Country	Prize Money
1	Phil Ivey	United States	$1,170,000
2	Wai Kiat Lee	Malaysia	$840,000
3	Mike Watson	Canada	$538,000
4	Elton Tsang	Hong Kong	$408,000
5	Jason Koon	United States	$315,000
6	Richard Yong	Malaysia	$241,000
7	Ivan Leow	Malaysia	$194,500

Phil Ivey does it again (and again)

It wasn’t the first time Ivey won a short-deck high-roller tournament. Ivey already managed to win such a tournament in 2018, ’20 and ’21. These are Ivey’s victories in short-deck high-roller events in recent years:

Date	Buy-In	Event	Preize Money
12/05/2018	$32,000	Triton Budva Short Deck High Roller	$604,992
12/03/2020	$50,000	Partypoker live Sotchi Short Deck	$856,050
23/08/2021	$25,000	Merit Poker SHRB Short Deck	$408,000
05/04/2022	$75,000	Triton Cyprus Short Deck High Roller	$1,170,000

Ivey’s recent successes have seen him move back up to 10th place in the Hendon Mob’s all-time money list displacing German high roller Fedor Holz in the process.