John Juanda Wins Triton SHR Series Macau Main Event For Largest Career Score

1. Home
2. News
3. John Juanda Wins Triton Shr Series Macau Main Event For Largest Career Score

John Juanda has a storied career that dates all the way back to 1997. He is a 5 time WSOP bracelet winner, former WSOP Europe Main Event Champion, former EPT Champion and a member of the Poker Hall of Fame. On Friday, he added another accomplishment to his resume by winning the Triton Super High Roller Series Macau Main Event for the largest score of his live tournament career.

Final Table Stacked With Top High Rollers

The Main Event of the Triton Super High Roller Series Macau kicked off on Wednesday and commanded a steep buy-in of HK $1 million ($128,158 USD). There were 23 entries in the field with a combined prize pool of HK $22.41 million. Twelve players received a payday with the top 3 players walking away with over $1 million USD each.

The final table of this event was stacked with some of the top players in the world. Isaac Haxton, Stephen Chidwick, Dietrich Fast, Fedor Holz, Adrian Mateos and John Juanda were all vying for the HK $22.41 million ($2.87 million USD) top prize.

Holz vs. Juanda for the Title

Ultimately, fans were treated to a dream heads-up match between Poker Hall of Famer John Juanda and German superstar Fedor Holz. Heading into heads-up play, Juanda held the lead, holding 13.5 million chips to 7.25 million for Holz.

Juanda jumped out to early lead and at one point held an 8:1 chip lead. However, Holz came storming back and managed to pull into the chip lead when his Ac-Qc managed to outrun the Kh-9c for Juanda.

However, blinds were 200k-400k at this point, so stacks could change quickly and Juanda put together a string of wins to retake the chip lead. Holz tried to battle back but could not gain any significant traction against the crafty Juanda.

Finally, Holz put his tournament on the line with As-3h and Juanda made the call with Ah-5s. The flop fell 9c-10h-6d and the turn 6c to bring the chances of a chop. Prior to the river being dealt, Juanda called out for a five and the dealer filled his wish by turning over the 5h on the river.

With that five, John Juanda captured the Triton SHR Series Macau Main Event and HK $22.41 million ($2.87 million USD). This was his largest individual cash of his live tournament career.

Fedor Holz walked away with HK $16.39 million ($2.1 million USD) and while that wasn’t the largest score of his career, it did allow him to inch closer to Antonio Esfandiari on Poker’s All-Time Money List. Holz now has $26.54 million in lifetime earnings. At this rate,it is a matter of when and not if he will take over #1 on the list.

For Juanda, he has re-entered the top 10 of the All-Time Money List with this win. He now has $23.64 million in live earnings, good for 7th on the list. Juanda is also enjoying a career year at the tables in terms of cash won. He has won $4.83 million in live events in 2017. Juanda has enjoyed tremendous success internationally. Only $8.1 million of his $20.77 million in earnings has come in the United States. In fact, he hasn’t won more than $60k in the Americas since 2012. It can be argued that Juanda is more of an international poker superstar than an American one.

Photo courtesy – PokerNews