Champion Richard Gryko

The Triton Poker Super High Roller Series trip to Montenegro this week has been where the established stars have come out to shine. We've seen familiar faces adding to trophy hauls, the rich getting richer.

But with Pot Limit Omaha now on the stage, today offered the chance for someone new to step up to the plate.

Enter UK PLO specialist Richard Gryko to snag a maiden Triton Poker Series trophy and, with an $884,000 prize, the biggest tournament score of his career.

It would be a big mistake to characterise Gryko as a newbie, however. This 40-year-old has been playing poker for at least 20 years, first as an early online crusher, and latterly as a coach and PLO expert. Those roads tend to lead to the Triton Poker Series, and the past two years on the tour have been edging Gryko steadily closer to this moment.

This was his fourth Triton cash, all from PLO tournaments. And he had to draw on all his specialist knowledge to pick his way through a tricky final table, where the pace was hasty then very slow, then quick again. Gryko was chip leader and short stack, but brought great technical acumen to a game, he says, that can be wrongly characterised as just one for the gamblers.

"It is what you make of it," Gryko told Ali Nejad in his winner's interview, describing how his study regime has allowed him to make the most of his edges at the table. "The evolution of PLO over the last 20 years is that it's gone from a gambling game to a game where almost anyone who came to this table will have approached it through a studied, methodological lens."

He continued: "I've always thought of it as a very technical game...If you're going to spend thousands of hours studying it, then you're going to find a lot of incredibly interesting pathways to go down, study wise. If you view it as a game where you can get all of the money in pretty regularly, and not be doing too bad, that's how it's going to be for you as well."

Richard Gryko's patience paid off

Gryko was clearly tired but delighted to come through an exhausting, gritty final. "A battlefield is exactly how I'd put it," he said. "That was more or less how it felt."

He went on to describe how he was forced to rebuild from a short stack even after he spent long times ahead and was seemingly cruising to a title. "There are a lot of tournaments where the big stack systematically robs everyone else at the table. But no one else at the table was agreeable to that. They fought back."

It forced Gryko to dig deep, grind it out and make all the work pay handsomely in the end.

He ended up by defeating Martin Dam heads up, condemning Dam to a second runner-up finish of the trip. Triton Ambassador Danny Tang was third, with another PLO wizard Eelis Parssinen in fourth.

TOURNAMENT ACTION

Amid the drama going on in the PLO Main Event, it might have been easy for anyone in the room at the Maestral Resort & Casino to miss the $50K tournament happening right in front of them. But for those involved, their eyes will have been drawn to the 62 entries gradually visiting the buy-in desk and the prize pool creeping past $3 million.

That would mean a first prize of $884,000, and with Ben Tollerene, Laszlo Bujtas, Artur Martirosian and Dan Cates missing out because of their interest in the big one, everyone else's EV dramatically improved.

All the tournament mechanics were of course still unchanged. Which meant that when the 12th-placed player departed, the tournament was on the stone bubble. There were a lot of PLO beasts still deeply involved, but the crucial hand proved that someone as brilliant as Patrik Antonius isn't immune to this game's hazards.

Martin Dam, right, and Santhosh Suvarna crane their necks to see Patrik Antonius bubble

Antonius three-bet over Richard Gryko's open, and was then happy to call off his remaining scraps after Gryko put in the fourth bet, for four more blinds. Antonius had AA76, but Gryko also had aces. His hand was AAK10.

The equity calculator had this as an effective tie: they'd each win one quarter of the time and chop it up half the time. But PLO is a ruinous game. The flop of J93 left Gryko freerolling to the flush, and the 8 turn was the end of it. Antonius was out in 11th and the last 10 were in the money.

After Stephen Chidwick, Punnat Punsri and Santhosh Suvarna all collected their min-cashes, we were at a final table of seven. It looked like this:

Danny Tang - 2,545,000 (51 BBs)

Eelis Parssinen - 2,365,000 (47 BBs)

Martin Dam - 2,035,000 (41 BBs)

Dirk Gerritse - 1,625,000 (33 BBs)

Klemens Roiter - 1,590,000 (32 BBs)

Richard Gryko - 1,430,000 (29 BBs)

Paul Phua - 815,000 (16 BBs)

Event 16 final table (clockwise from back left): Dirk Gerritse, Martin Dam, Klemens Roiter, Richard Gryko, Paul Phua, Eelis Parssinen, Danny Tang

Seven players, seven nationalities. It was a lovely representation of the tour's global appeal and, central to it, the man they call "Boss" who invented the whole shebang. Paul Phua might have had the smallest stack among the final table players, but he attracted the biggest roar when he walked onto the stage.

Phua has 46 previous cashes on the Triton Poker Series, as well as one title earned in Madrid, so he has the skills to navigate a difficult final table. But this one wasn't to be for the Triton co-founder: he ran into Eelis Parssinen in unforgiving form. Phua opened AKJ3 and Parssinen called in the big blind with Q1076.

After the 6J4 flop, Parssinen bet his flush draw and Phua called with top pair. Parssinen also had middle pair, but whenthe Q came on the turn, he improved to two pair. Parssinen bet to put Phua all in, and Boss called for the last he had.

The 5 river did change anything, and Phua was out. He added another $150,000 to his ledger.

Another final table for Paul Phua

Dirk Gerritse had a seat at a PLO final table once again, the second time he'd managed it on this trip to Montenegro. But Gerritse's trophy cabinet remains bare after he once again couldn't convert. He got unlucky to bust, picking up single suited kings and getting the vast majority of his chips in pre-flop against Danny Tang, who had queens.

But a third queen came on the flop and the last couple of blinds went in. Gerritse couldn't find a redraw and Tang stacked up the chip lead. Gerritse, meanwhile, won $190,000.

Dirk Gerritse will surely get there soon

Austria's Klemens Roiter had eased into the money for the third time on this trip, and had taken his place at a first final. But he became the second player in succession to perish with a big pair in his hand, losing to a pair a pip lower.

Roiter had 12 blinds and raised then four-bet pushed after Martin Dam put in the three bet. Nothing out of line here: Roiter had AAQ8 and Dam had AKK9.

Knock, knock, Klemens Roiter is gone

Two black cards on the flop made flushes unlikely, but the K on the river turned out to be Roiter's downfall. Dam enjoyed a timely boost as Roiter departed in fifth for $245,000.

British PLO specialist Richard Gryko had managed to avoid most of the biggest confrontations to this point at the final, but he managed to leap into a big lead thanks to a big one against Parssinen. Gryko flopped top pair and rivered two pair with his AKQ9, beating Parssinen's Q653.

It was interesting to watch play out. Gryko raised pre-flop and Parssinen called. Then Parssinen check-called Gryko's continuation bet on the flop of K38. After the 2 turn, Parssinen checked again, but responded to Gryko's bet with a a huge check raise. After a long think, Gryko committed the last of his chips.

Gryko was already ahead and completed the victory with the Q river. The correct hero call gave him a stack bigger than his three opponents combined.

Parssinen doubled back. Then Tang too doubled up to cut Gryko's lead further. And then won another pot from Gryko to nose back ahead. Gryko was suddenly back in the pack and with the same sized stack as Dam and Parssinen as only Tang could feel comfortable.

That all changed when Dam doubled through Tang. Dam's 101087 flopped a 10 and a straight draw after the dealer put the 9710 on the table. The chips went in there, with Tang's AKKK drawing exceptionally thin.

The average stack reduced to 16 big blinds, and the chip leader had fewer than 20. But it was still essentially anyone's game. Gryko scored a big double through Parssinen with AA33 eventually holding against Parssinen's 10976. Parssinen went ahead on the 9102 flop, but the 2 turn put Gryko back ahead.

And with only three blinds, there was now no way back for Parssinen. His last chips went in with Q987 and Gryko's AJ64 stayed best. Parssinen, who had two final tables in hold'em, among three ITM finishes, picked up $310,000 on his return to the PLO streets.

The four-handed battle lasted 68 hands, but it was now over.

Eelis Parssinen's elimination finally broke the impasse

Gryko was well and truly back in the box seat, though 30 blinds is still not exactly enough to lock it up. Tang and Dam had only 10 each, however, and suddenly things were moving quickly again.

Tang busted next. Gryko opened A9J3 and Tang called form the big blind with AJ1010. The 549 flop gave Gryko a weak top pair and a gutshot, which was enough to call Tang's shove. The 2 turn filled the wheel for Gryko and rolled Tang out of contention.

Tang won $410,000 but the five-time Triton champion leaves Montenegro without adding to his title haul.

Danny Tang calls for the 10 that never came

Gryko and Dam now squared off for it. Dam had been here before, only a couple of days ago, but these were uncharted waters for Gryko. However, he had a 4-1 chip lead to make him feel comfortable, and he was even able to survive Dam drawing all but level through the opening heads-up exchanges.

That's because one more big one was coming. After a flop of 42Q, Dam found himself with a flush draw holding K1086. Gryko had enough to be happy too, holding Q1097.

Another second place for Martin Dam

The 9 turn only helped Gryko. And the 7 river made his win complete.

With that, Gryko's trips to the PLO sections of the Triton Series over the past couple of years all bore fruit, as he becomes the tour's latest champion.

"It's incredibly smooth, enjoyable, almost second-to-none experience playing-wise," Gryko said of the Triton Poker Series. "Everything that surrounds the playing of hands, it's incredibly enjoyable."

And the playing of hands seemed pretty enjoyable for Gryko too.

Gryko receives his first Triton trophy from Luca Vivaldi