Aliaksei "Alex" Boika has won his first Triton Poker title, taking down Event #5, the $25,000 8-Handed No-Limit Hold'em at the Super High Roller Series Jeju II, for $761,000. The Belarusian beat Philip Sternheimer heads-up on September 8 at Les A Casino inside Jeju Shinhwa World, ending a 13-year wait for a trophy on poker's toughest circuit.
"This means a lot to me," Boika said afterwards. "I'm speechless."
The Numbers Behind the Win
The event drew 131 entries at $25,000 apiece, building a $3,275,000 prize pool with the top 23 finishers paid and a min-cash of $46,000. That is a strong turnout for a mid-tier Triton event and it produced a first prize larger than several $50,000 buy-in tournaments on the same tour have paid this year — a reminder that field size, not buy-in, is what makes a payout top-heavy.
The final table:
- Aliaksei Boika (Belarus) — $761,000
- Philip Sternheimer (UK) — $516,000
- Yu Lei (China) — $343,000
- Nevan Chang (Taiwan) — $282,000
- Seth Davies (USA) — $226,000
- Mingcong Chen (China) — $175,000
- Manuel Fritz (Austria) — $130,000
- Vladas Tamasauskas (Lithuania) — $95,000
Seth Davies's fifth-place finish was his 23rd Triton final table, pushing his career tournament earnings past $47.1 million. The consistency is remarkable even by high-roller standards, and it is worth noting that Davies got there without the volume of a full live-and-online schedule — his record is built almost entirely on the small, brutal fields of the super high roller circuit.
Several other well-known names ran deep without reaching the final eight. Artur Martirosian finished ninth, Brandon Wilson tenth, Jesse Lonis eleventh, Kiat Lee thirteenth, Matthias Eibinger fourteenth, Mike Watson sixteenth, Eelis Parssinen 21st and Ali Reza Fatehi Rezaei 22nd. In a 131-entry field with 23 paid, that is close to a clean sweep of the money places by professionals.
The Final Hand
Heads-up ended in a spot that will feel familiar to anyone who has played a long final table on short blinds. Sternheimer held 9♥7♥ against Boika's J♠6♦, and the board ran out 8♦5♥3♣-J♥-A♠. Boika turned top pair, and it held.
His own read on the moment was disarmingly honest: "I thought I had two pair and wanted to snap call, but I realized it was one pair."
That admission is more instructive than it looks. Even elite players misread their own holdings under pressure, and the discipline of pausing to re-read your hand before committing chips is a genuine skill rather than a beginner's crutch. The mental side of deep-run poker — fatigue, tunnel vision, misread boards — is covered in our guide to tilt and its cousins, and the mechanics of judging whether one pair is good in a shoving spot sit in our poker odds explainer.
Thirteen Years to a Trophy
Boika, 38, has been playing high-level tournaments since the mid-2010s. His first major result came at the 2016 EPT Malta Main Event, which he won for $390,772 — a career-defining score at the time and, for a long stretch afterwards, his headline.
His two biggest results before this week both came at the same Jeju venue: $1,313,000 for a runner-up finish in a $60,000 event in March 2026, and $1,288,000 for sixth in the $100,000 Main Event. Both were larger paydays than the $761,000 he has just collected. Neither came with a trophy.
That gap between money and silverware is one of the quiet frustrations of super high roller poker. In a 40-entry field, the difference between finishing second for $1.3 million and first for $2 million is often a single flip. Players can accumulate eight-figure lifetime earnings without ever having their name engraved on anything, and the circuit's informal hierarchy still runs on titles. Boika's win moves him past $9 million in career earnings, with more than half of that total earned on Triton alone.
A Week of Maiden Champions
Boika is the fourth first-time Triton champion in five days at Jeju II, which is an unusual concentration for a tour whose trophies have historically been shared among a narrow group.
Alex Theologis won Event #1, the $15,000. Klemens Roiter took Event #2, the $20,000, beating Alejandro Lococo heads-up. Ngo Khoa Anh won Event #3, the $25,000 Titi Poker, for $1,090,000 from a 210-entry, $5,250,000 field, beating Anatoly Filatov ($733,000) with Isaac Haxton third for $515,000, Artur Bezhanyan fourth for $417,000 and David Coleman fifth for $330,000.
Four maiden titles inside a week points to something real about how the high-roller field is evolving. The pool has widened. Ten years ago a Triton final table was a handful of familiar faces plus a businessman; now it routinely contains professionals from Belarus, Taiwan, Greece, Austria and Vietnam who have each built a bankroll through a mix of online volume and selective live shots. Depth in the field means titles get distributed more widely, and it also means the games are harder.
One entry in the money list makes that point vividly: Reda Achnit of Morocco, who qualified via a CoinPoker freeroll, finished 14th for $51,000 in what was his first live tournament. Online satellites remain the single most efficient way into events whose buy-ins are otherwise unreachable, and our tournaments guide covers how the qualifier ladders on the major rooms actually work.
What This Means for Players
Mid-tier buy-ins in high-roller series are where the value concentrates. The $25,000 events at Jeju II drew 131 and 210 entries. The $100,000 Main Event will draw a fraction of that. If you are ever in a position to take a shot at a high-roller series — through satellites or otherwise — the bottom rung of the buy-in ladder has both the softest field and, frequently, the largest absolute first prize.
Consistency and titles are different currencies. Davies has 23 Triton final tables and $47 million in earnings. Boika had two seven-figure near-misses before his first trophy. Judging your own results by wins alone will produce a distorted picture of how you are actually playing. Tracking ROI across a sample is the honest measure, and our bankroll management guide explains why variance in small fields is far higher than most players assume.
Re-read your hand before you commit. Boika almost snap-called believing he held two pair. He caught it. Building a deliberate pause into your decision process — reconfirm the board, reconfirm your holding, then act — costs nothing and prevents the single most avoidable category of mistake.
Satellites really do work. A Moroccan player in his first live tournament turned a freeroll into $51,000. That is not a typical outcome, but the structural point stands: qualifier paths compress the cost of entry into events with enormous prize pools, and they are available on most major rooms covered in our real money poker rankings.
Jeju II Still to Come
The festival runs September 4–17 across 14 events. Still ahead: the $200,000 Triton Invitational on September 12–14, making its Asian debut with its pro-and-recreational pairs format; the $100,000 Main Event on September 14–16; and the $150,000 10th Anniversary Special closing the series September 16–17.
For players following the high-stakes circuit from home, our high stakes hub tracks the tours and formats, while the cash games section covers the rooms where the same players spend their time between festivals.