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Rui Cao bags Triton Short Deck ME, largest career live cash

Over ten years since his first cash in a professional live poker tournament but until yesterday, Frenchman Rui Cao had never earned any major title till date. In fact, 90% of his career live cashes have come in the last one year and all of it comes from 5 cashes in different Triton Poker tournaments across the world.

He finished second in the Triton Montenegro 2018 Main Event for his then highest live cash of $1.6 million and also had a couple of other runner-up finishes in Jeju last year, only to finally move one step further and win a title yesterday. He won Triton Montenegro Event #11: HKD 1 Million Short Deck Main Event.

The 3-day tournament saw a total of 98 entries (including 51 re-entries) taking part and by the end of the registration period, the prizes were calculated and only 11 players were to be paid out. Quite a few regular names were in the money, but Rui Cao beat them all, claiming a career best cash of HKD 26,300,000 (~$3,350,725) and nearly doubling his career winnings till date.

This was the biggest prize given away so far at the Triton Montenegro series in Maestral Casino and Resort, Budva, Montenegro. In heads-up, he beat Triton Poker co-founder Paul Phua, who has also come close many times but hasn’t won a Triton title. He said, “After three years, I still haven’t got a title. If it goes on, I’ll be embarrassed.”

However, it wasn’t his night as Cao was destined to win his maiden title first. In the final hand, Cao had JJ and Phua had AQ. The flop saw a Queen and Phua was slightly ahead before Cao went on to improve to a straight and the Triton co-founder had to settle for the runner-up prize of HKD 17,100,000.

Final Table pay-outs:

1. Rui Cao – HKD 26,300,000 (~INR 23.6 Crore)
2. Paul Phua – HKD 17,100,000
3. Romain Arnaud – HKD 11,800,000
4. Daniel Dvoress – HKD 9,070,000
5. Kenneth Kee – HKD 7,200,000
6. Ming Zhong Liu – HKD 5,620,000
7. Tong Siow Choon – HKD 4,400,000

For more updates on what’s happening at the Triton Poker series in Montenegro, keep following GutshotMagazine.com.

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