The Triton Invitational, the $200,000 pro-am that has become the tour’s signature event, will be played in Asia for the first time when it runs September 12-14 at Les A Casino inside Jeju Shinhwa World in South Korea. Phil Ivey, Bryn Kenney and Ethan “Rampage” Yau are among the professionals already locked into pairings, with Triton confirming 18 pro-invitee duos before the series has even started.
Triton has run the Invitational in Europe and the Caribbean since launching the format, but never on the continent where the tour was founded. The Jeju edition closes that gap, and it lands inside the biggest Triton stop of the year: Super High Roller Series Jeju II, a 14-day festival running September 4-17.
Who is already paired up
The confirmed side of the bracket reads like a Hendon Mob leaderboard. Alongside Ivey, Kenney and Yau, Triton has named Isaac Haxton, Artur Martirosian, Seth Davies, Ben Heath, Kayhan Mokri, Aleks Ponakovs, Samuel Mullur, Christoph Vogelsang, Teun Mulder, Mikita Badziakouski, Justin Saliba and Eelis Parssinen.
Two names carry extra weight for the room it is being played in. Hong Kong’s Danny Tang is one of the few players who has won a Triton title on home soil, and Taiwan’s Tony “Ren” Lin has been a fixture of the Jeju high-roller cycle. Their presence turns what could have been an imported showcase into something closer to a regional homecoming. Triton says more pairings will be revealed on its social channels in the weeks before cards are in the air.
The format keeps pros and recreationals apart — at first
The Invitational is not a standard open buy-in. Each entry is a pairing: a professional and an invited recreational player, typically a businessman or a poker enthusiast from outside the circuit. On Day 1 the two groups are kept in separate fields, which spares invitees a full session against the toughest lineup in poker. Day 2 merges everyone into a single field, and from there it plays out as one tournament to a single winner.
That structure is the whole commercial logic of the event, and Triton CEO Andy Wong framed the Asian debut as “a significant milestone,” pointing to the split-field design as the way the tour delivers “a balanced experience” for the enthusiasts writing the $200,000 cheques.
A field record is genuinely in play
The benchmark is Montenegro in May 2026, where the Invitational drew 137 runners. Organizers have floated the possibility of clearing 50 pairs in Jeju — a number that, at $200,000 a seat, would build a prize pool most Asian festivals never see in a single tournament.
Whether it gets there depends on the region’s recreational money showing up in September rather than waiting for the next European stop. Jeju has the infrastructure argument on its side: the island is visa-free for most Asian passports, Les A has hosted Triton repeatedly, and the surrounding two weeks give travelling players a reason to book more than a long weekend.
Jeju II also gives the tour a second full stop on the island in one calendar year, after the March run that opened Triton’s 10th-anniversary season with Triton ONE and a 17-event Super High Roller schedule. Doing it twice in twelve months is a reasonable signal about where Triton thinks its next decade of players is coming from.
Play begins September 12, with Day 2 and the finish on September 14.