Ben Tollerene shipped the $100,000 Triton Main Event in Jeju, beating the 178-entry field to earn nearly $3.8 million on Thursday. This win gave him his fourth Triton title and a new career-high score, pipping his second-place finish in the 2024 WSOP $250,000 Super High Roller ($3.5M).
With the win, Tollerene moves up from 30th to 25th on poker’s all-time money list, pushing past the $36,000,000 mark and legends like Punnat Punsri, Paul Phua, Aleksejs Ponakovs, Ben Heath, and Michael Watson – all players very familiar to the Triton Poker scene.
Triton Main Event postgame reaction
After Tollerene shipped the Triton Main Event, he was very stoic and grateful to perform his very best on the world’s biggest stage.
“I’m obviously very pleased,” Tollerene said during the trophy ceremony.
“I had no cashes going into today on this trip, so I was feeling not so great about how everything was going. And then everything aligned today and yesterday, and I somehow did it again.”
Tollerene had suffered a massive cooler against eventual runner-up Philip Sternheimer, which left him with under ten big blinds. However, the American was undeterred and eventually fought back to win the biggest title of his career.
“I just did my best the whole tournament when something was happening to me. After that hand, I thought, okay, I have nine big blinds now, how do we play nine big blinds?
“Try to just reset and stay focused because it’s not going to do me any good to do anything else.
“These are the biggest tournaments in the world. I also think just having all the best players in the world here, it kind of lifts me up. I want to show them I’m on that level and that I can compete against them. That motivates me.”
Tollerene now moves into the top-10 in the Triton Poker Season 5 Player of the Year race.
Triton Main Event final table action
At 2am in South Korea, Eelis Parssinen bubbled the final table and the final nine players bagged for Day 3. Here’s how the chip counts looked going into the final day:
| Postion | Player | Chips (Big Blinds) |
| 1st | Ben Tollerene | 10,875,000 (73bbs) |
| 2nd | Xu Yang | 6,625,000 (44bbs) |
| 3rd | Elton Tsang | 5,400,000 (36bbs) |
| 4th | Punnat Punsri | 5,150,000 (34bbs) |
| 5th | Sean Winter | 4,175,000 (28bbs) |
| 6th | Kristen Foxen | 3,825,000 (26bbs) |
| 7th | Philip Sternheimer | 3,775,000 (25bbs) |
| 8th | Tom Fuchs | 3,550,000 (24bbs) |
| 9th | Felipe Ketzer | 1,150,000 (8bbs) |
Kristen Foxen folds kings preflop
With nine players left in the Triton Main Event, five-time Female GPI Player of the Year Kristen Foxen incorrectly folded kings in a hand that will be replayed for years to come.
Felipe Ketzer jammed for just under eight big blinds from under the gun. Elton Tsang, off a stack of roughly 35 big blinds, called from UTG+1.
Philip Sternheimer then looked down at from UTG+3 and went all in for about 25 big blinds
Action folded to Kristen Foxen in the cutoff, who peeled . Foxen, who was sitting in eighth place at the time with under 20 big blinds, surprisingly went into the tank for about two minutes. To the shock of the commentators and the poker world alike, she would eventually make a stunning fold.
After Tsang folded, Ketzer found himself in a glorious position with 36% equity to nearly quadruple up. However, he got no help as the board ran out , which would have given Foxen the nut full house and more than a triple up to over 60 big blinds. This would have put the Canadian firmly in second place.
Ketzer took home $385,000 for his ninth-place finish.
Coolers left and right
Foxen then got it in badly against Tollerene, when she three-bet jammed pocket nines, and Sternheimer woke up with pocket queens in the small blind. However, Foxen would flop a set and river quads to stay alive. This also put Sternheimer firmly in front.
Sternheimer continued to climb when he woke up with pocket aces against the pocket kings of Tom Fuchs. While this would have gone in at virtually any stack depth, it was for Fuchs’ last 12 big blinds. Fuchs wouldn’t improve and took home $464,000 for his eighth-place run.
Tollerene would be the next beneficiary of a cooler, finding pocket kings against the pocket queens of Xu Yang. Despite starting the final table in second, the Chinese player would finish in seventh place for $635,000 after his queens went unimproved.
From six to four
The field was reduced from six players to four in a matter of two hands. Sean Winter got in with against Tollerene’s and couldn’t beat the lone other American. Winter was eliminated in sixth for $870,000.
The following hand, Punsri jammed for 12 bigs from the small blind, and Sternheimer called with .
Unbelievably, Punsri flopped a set on a flop. But in one of the most disgusting runouts ever televised, Sternheimer turned a and rivered the to give him runner-runner quads and ended Punsri’s run in fifth place.
No record win for Foxen
With four left, Foxen was one ladder away from the largest Triton cash by a woman, while a win or a heads-up deal could have given her the largest cash ever in any event by a woman.
However, it wasn’t to be, as she was dispatched in fourth place. Tollerene opened from the cutoff as the chip leader. Foxen jammed for 17 bigs from the big blind and got caught bluffing. She wouldn’t improve and took home $1,449,000.
Tollerene, meanwhile, moved well out in front with 98 blinds, compared to Sternheimer’s 33 and Tsang’s 18.
Closing out the win in style
A couple of hands later, Tollerene jammed into Tsang with and Tsang called his last 15 bigs off with . Tollerene flopped a six and got heads-up with Sternheimer with a 91-20 big blind advantage.
While Sternheimer closed the gap to roughly two-to-one, Sternheimer bluffed it off into Tollerene’s full house to give the American the deserved win.
In a limped pot, Sternheimer held and check-called a small bet from Tollerene on the flop. He check-called again when the turn gave him the nut-flush draw.
The river saw Tollerene bet 5.5 million into a 6.5 million pot. Sternheimer bluffed all-in for 12 million, and Tollerene snapped him off, turning over for the win and a healthy $3,766,000 top prize.
Triton Main Event Jeju final table payouts
| Place | Player | Country | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ben Tollerene | United States | $3,766,000 |
| 2 | Philip Sternheimer | United Kingdom | $2,535,000 |
| 3 | Elton Tsang | Hong Kong | $1,787,000 |
| 4 | Kristen Foxen | Canada | $1,449,000 |
| 5 | Punnat Punsri | Thailand | $1,146,000 |
| 6 | Sean Winter | United States | $870,000 |
| 7 | Xu Yang | China | $635,000 |
| 8 | Tom Fuchs | Germany | $464,000 |
| 9 | Felipe Ketzer | Brazil | $385,000 |
