Champion Alejandro Lococo!

It’s long been true of tournament poker that absolutely anybody on their day can win. But if you’d predicted at the beginning of the year that an Argentinian rapper whose name translates as “Crazy” would win the biggest event on the industry-leading Triton Super High Roller Series, you’d probably have been laughed out the room.

But that is precisely what happened tonight at the Atlantis Resort, on Paradise Island in the Bahamas, where Alejandro “Papo MC” Lococo took down the Triton Million Paradise title. Lococo, or just Papo to his friends, earned $12.07 million, his first Triton title, a WSOP bracelet, and added thousands of poker fans to the millions who adore him already for his music.

Coming hot on the heels of Vladimir Korzinin’s show-stopping performance in Monte Carlo last month, Lococo’s spectacular victory adds a second remarkable chapter to Triton’s ongoing story of brilliance.

“It feels amazing for sure,” a clearly overwhelmed Lococo said. “Really happy, really glad to be here.”

Lococo’s performance today lived up to all the hype. Though he is far from a poker rookie, and has indeed been at the final table of the World Series of Poker Main Event, Lococo is still best known as a rapper. He accepted an invitation from Triton to join this unique event, in which an official invitee pairs up with a poker pro and the duo pay $500,000 apiece for a seat.

The trophy and the bracelet are both going to Lococo

Lococo represented the less experienced side of his partnership with Portugal’s Joao Vieira, but with the pro long departed, Papo did his thing. He was the most unpredictable entity on a final day when nothing quite went as expected. He ended the tournament heads-up with British pro Ben Heath, who had been down to half a big blind at one point, but built back to land an $8.1 million consolation prize.

Lococo enjoyed the run of the deck when he needed it, but was also completely unfazed by the situation and seemed to relish applying the maximum pressure on all his opponents, with everything dialled up so high thanks to the enormous buy-in.

Even the final hand upended expectations. Heath was in a dominant position with AK against Lococo’s K. But Lococo flopped the deuce and snaffled Heath’s final 10 blinds at the same time.

With that, the title was his.

“It’s amazing. I’m very lucky to be here with my family and my friends,” Lococo said, singling out the Spanish player Adrian Mateos who had persuaded him to come to the Bahamas. “I’m very lucky to have Adrian as my friend. He’s a really humble person; he helps everybody including myself. He is a big, big part responsible for my wining.”

Lococo added how much he enjoyed his first experience of the Triton Series. “It’s amazing. Everything is perfect. The organisation is incredible. It’s perfect.”

Lococo begins his celebrations

Among the numerous ways this tournament was unusual was the fact that we essentially knew the number of players before it started. There were only so many invites and only so many RSVPs. We were expecting, and got, a field of 74 players.

The number of re-entries was only confirmed by the time Day 2 resumed, however, and with 22 players opting to fire again, the field swelled to 96 entries.

Even by Triton Series standards, the $48 million prize pool was enormous. The $12.07 million on offer to the winner would be the second-biggest winner’s prize ever offered on the tour.

The style of play had been established right from the very opening hand on Day 1. Short version, nobody was playing scared. In that hand, which quickly went viral, Jared Bleznick and David Einhorn got their whole stacks in — more than 300 big blinds — pre-flop, with Bleznick’s aces holding against Einhorn’s big slick. Bleznick took a very early chip lead, while Einhorn took the day off and only returned to fire his second bullet at the start of Day 2.

As always needs to be the case, players were ousted unceremoniously from the tournament from that point on. Daniel Negreanu’s Triton debut ended the wrong side of the money line. Five-time winner Phil Ivey and 10-time champ Jason Koon also hit the rail.

BUBBLE TROUBLE

Only 17 players were due to be paid and conventional wisdom would suggest a tightening of play with around 25 left, followed by virtual gridlock from 20 onwards. It couldn’t be further from what actually played out.

After Alex Kulev was knocked out in 21st, one of the most dramatic hands of the tournament played out between Nick Petrangelo, Artur Martirosian and Dan Dvoress. Petrangelo had five blinds and shoved with A10 from under the gun.

Artur Martirosian hit the rail after rivering two pair

Dvoress had 28 BBs and looked at pocket jacks on the button. He called. And that persuaded Martirosian to call the extra from the big blind, holding 109. Petrangelo could do no more, but the other two were still betting.

Dvoress took a virtual lock on the hand after the 3J5 flop. Martirosian checked and Dvoress checked behind. The Ts turn now gave both Petrangelo and Martirosian a pair as well, even though it was hopeless. Martirosian bet 900,000 and Dvoress still just called.

The 9 river must have looked good to Martirosian, who had now made two pair. He check-called Dvoress’ shove. It was, however, disaster for the Russian, who had run into Dvoress’ monster. He and Petrangelo both made their way from the table, just a whisker short of the money.

The drama was not done, however. Those two eliminations brought the tournament to its stone bubble, but a hand was still playing out on another table that had the potential to take the tournament all the way into the money. Ryan Feldman had locked horns with Alejandro Lococo in which players had reached a flop of AQ for a single raise.

Bubble heartbreak for Ryan Feldman

Feldman had a combo draw with 107, while Lococo, with by far the bigger stack, had middle pair and a draw of his own, holding K. Crucially, Feldman did not know of the double knockout on the other table. He wasn’t aware that they were now on the stone bubble. He took a shot, shoving his last six blinds in the middle.

Lococo called, putting Feldman in real peril. The 8 turn gave Feldman more outs, but still kept Lococo ahead. And the 5 river was a miss, sending Feldman spiralling out of the tournament. He later lamented that he was “sick to my stomach” and admitted he didn’t know the tournament situation. The bubble always hurts but this, in Feldman’s words, was “Max pain”.

It also meant that although Mikita Badziakouski, Punnat Punsri and Phil Nagy were also quickly knocked out, they took $755,000 (Badziakouski/Punsri) and $792,000 (Nagy) instead of nothing.

That also ended Day 2, with Dvoress having rocketed up the leader board into second place overall, with Lococo now in third. They were both still behind the dominant Mike Moncek, who led the field at the end of Day 1 and was still there as Day 2 came to its conclusion.

Michael Moncek led at the end of both opening days

Leading pros Adrian Mateos and Stephen Chidwick rounded out the top five, with a beautifully balanced final 14 heading to the last day.

final day fireworks

Many commentators would probably have expected those seasoned pros to come roaring to the top of the counts when the final day got under way. But this was not a predictable tournament at all. The day was barely out of its infancy before Chidwick bust, followed quickly by David Einhorn (he lasted longer on his second bullet than he had on his first), Esti Wang and then Mateos.

Dvoress held firm, but it was the otherwise relatively unheralded Turkish player Sinan Ünlü who was causing most of the damage. The 34-year-old from Istanbul had accepted an invitation to play the $200K event in Monte Carlo last month, where he finished 10th. He was back for more and rocketed up the counts as they closed in on a final here. He made it to the final all but neck-and-neck with Dvoress.

Moncek, however, has shown that he was mortal and had hit a tournament low point of 19 big blinds.

The last nine sat down to the following stacks:

FINAL TABLE LINE-UP

Dan Dvoress – 19,450,000 (65 BBs)

Sinan Ünlü – 19,100,000 (64 BBs)

Sosia Jiang – 13,100,000 (44 BBs)

Alejandro Lococo – 11,650,000 (39 BBs)

Ben Heath – 8,200,000 (27 BBs)

Aleksejs Ponakovs – 8,050,000 (27 BBs)

Elias Talvitie – 6,125,000 (20 BBs)

Michael Moncek – 5,725,000 (19 BBs)

Alex Foxen – 4,625,000 (15 BBs)

Triton Million Paradise final table (clockwise from back left): Dan Dvoress, Sinan Unlu, Alekejs Ponakovs, Sosia Jiang, Alex Foxen, Ben Heath, Elias Talvitie, Alejandro Lococo, Michael Moncek

At the start of the event, Moncek would likely have accepted an offer of a ninth-placed finish. But after leading the event for so long, busting first from the final may have felt like an underachievement.

That, however, was his fate. The first major pot he played at the final was his last: he ran A7 into Ben Heath’s pocket jacks. Dvoress opened with A, Moncek jammed and Heath found the big pocket pair in the big blind. Dvoress folded and Heath’s hand held.

Moncek cashed for $1.2 million, the first seven-figure score of the tournament and the biggest of a career in which he has already won two WSOP bracelets.

No more Texas Mike

Dvoress, as chip leader, was raising a lot of pots and though he raise-folded in the pot that eliminated Moncek, he raise-called in a skirmish that soon accounted for Sosia Jiang. This time Dvoress found AK under the gun and made a standard raise. Sinan Ünlü called on the button with a suited ace, but Jiang considered worth a shove.

Jiang had 32 blinds and put them all in. Dvoress only didn’t snap-call because he was trying to coax in Ünlü as well. Eventually, Dvoress called, Ünlü folded and the board was full of blanks. Jiang picked up her seventh cash on the Triton Series and finished in eighth on her second Invitational final table. Previously, seventh place in Cyprus was worth $820,000. This time, she landed a $1.605 million payday.

What had seemed a great spot to jam turned sour for Sosia Jiang

Almost precisely one orbit later, Dvoress was at it again. And this time, Aleksejs Ponakovs was on the wrong end of the typhoon.

Ponakovs has 19 cashes on the Triton Series, and has picked up more than $12 million in earnings. He was at three final tables in Monte Carlo earlier this year, and has been to Invitational finals before as well. But what Ponakovs does not have is a title, and the hunt goes on.

Action folded to Ponakovs in the small blind and he considered 98 definitely worth shipping it in. But Dvoress had found A and called once more. After another blank board, Dvoress was looking at an even more monstrous chip lead, while Ponakovs took $2,140,000 for seventh.

Aleksejs Ponakovs became Dvoress’ latest victim

The extraordinary pace of eliminations, with big stacks clashing against one another, had been very good news for the likes of Elias Talvitie and Alex Foxen, who had come to the final near the bottom of the counts. Both had already laddered up significantly, but knew they would soon have to put their own heads on the chopping block and hope the axe-swinger missed if they wanted to get back into the contest.

Talvitie went first. And he was the fortunate recipient of a shadow falling temporarily across Dvoress’ sun-run. Talvitie shoved for his last 4 million chips, 10 big blinds, with A7. Dvoress called with A but three hearts on the board (the last on the river) gave Talvitie a double.

That left Foxen with the shortest stack, and while he got it in in much better shape against Dvoress again — Foxen’s pocket sevens up against Dvoress’ A8 — this was not to be Foxen’s day.

Foxen, who returned from a five-year Triton exile to win his first title in Monaco, watched Dvoress flop an ace. The remainder of the chips went in at this point, and Foxen couldn’t find a seven to survive. Foxen banked $2,795,000 for sixth place.

The end of a brilliant comeback year for Alex Foxen

There were now three pros and two invitees among the final five, but Dvoress remained firmly in the driving seat. Meanwhile having prospered during the early stages of the final, Heath’s tournament took a decided turn for the worse.

Heath lost a succession of small pots, before shipping about 85 percent of his stack to Lococo when the latter’s Q9 rivered trips. Two more small cuts took Heath down to less than one big blind, but crucially he was still not out. He tripled with pocket sixes. Then he doubled with making a boat. Then he doubled again with and all of a sudden had a workable stack once more.

Ben Heath somehow recovered from half a blind

At the other end of the leader board, Lococo’s victory in the big pot against Heath put his stack to more than 50 blinds and, amazingly, he had more than Dvoress too. At least he did until he slammed J10 into Talvitie’s aces and the Finn vaulted to the top of the counts.

Lococo, however, put that loss behind him immediately and won another succession of pots to reclaim the lead. “This has been the most insane final table to commentate on in recent memory,” Henry Kilbane said in the commentary booth. It was largely thanks to Lococo, but when Heath then doubled up once more, this time through Dvoress, it was Dvoress who now had the short stack having had one hand on the trophy only about an hour before.

The average stack was now 24 big blinds and the tournament was still somehow five handed. What’s more, four of the five remaining players had been chip leader at some point during the day.

Dvoress and Heath were the short stacks now, but true to the unpredictable nature of the event, it was Talvitie who perished next. The Finn was in the big blind and called Lococo’s small-blind raise holding KJ. The flop of added a flush draw to his over-cards and Talvitie called another bet from Lococo.

The K now gave Talvitie top pair and he called once again as Lococo piled more chips into the pot. The 9c river seemed innocuous. Lococo kept telling his story and jammed, and Talvitie, with only half the pot in his stack, made the call. He was soon to learn some very bad news.

Lococo had 107 which was nothing but an inside straight draw on both flop and turn. He drilled it on the river, though, and extracted the absolute maximum from his wild image. Talvitie was felted and took $3,542,000 for fifth.

A gross end for Elias Talvitie

Dvoress was now up against in and shoved on three consecutive hands. He got the first through, forcing a fold from Ünlü, and picked up blinds and antes uncontested on the second occasion. However when he found pocket deuces on the third deal and three-bet jammed over Lococo’s open, he found out that Lococo had pocket jacks.

The Argentinian flopped another jack and it was curtains for Dvoress. His roller coaster ride earned him $4.39 million and a fourth-placed finish.

Dan Dvoress had an enormous lead…until he didn’t

This was now all about Lococo. He had 93 big blinds to Heath’s 17 and Ünlü’s 11. And Ünlü couldn’t last much longer. He three-bet jammed over Lococo’s latest open, but Ünlü’s J5 was no good against Lococo’s K. Ünlü’s tournament ended with a $5,304,000 payout for third.

SinanUnluEliminated

The tournament paused to prepare for heads-up play, with Lococo sitting with 84 blinds to Heath’s 12.

Lococo won the first pot. But Heath then doubled back. Then they shared a few pots to keep stacks the same. Then Heath found what should have been the perfect spot to double once more, waking up with that big slick and seeing Lococo jamming. But the deuce was the killer; this was Lococo’s day.

He leapt to his feat in utter jubilation. This was a stunning, stunning success.

Alejandro Lococo adds a WSOP bracelet to his collection too