Bulgaria’s Dimitar Danchev won the $40k Mystery Bounty at Triton Jeju today, but he's going to have to wait to see how much his six KOs are worth when the bounties are dished out on Tuesday. In the meantime, he can sleep easy knowing he's already locked up the $804,000 top prize.
Danchev was one of 124 unique entries into the tournament, with another 66 re-entries boosting the prize pool to $3,800,000. That meant 31 players would leave with at least the $33,500 min-cash.
$20k from each $40k buy-in was put into the bounty prize pool (creating bounty tokens worth a minimum of $40,000 and a jackpot of $500,000), and to be eligible to win these, players had to survive until level 15 (the start of day 2).
Fedor Holz bubbles the Bounty
Long gone by then were the likes of Phil Ivey, and the last player to miss out was Fedor Holz, falling on the money bubble to another Bulgarian, Alex Kulev.
Holz’s pocket queens were no good when Kulev’s A7s hit an ace on the flop, though the German – who scooped event 1 of the Jeju Series – managed to keep smiling.
The final table featured three Bulgarians – Kulev and Danchev were joined by Yulian Bogdanov – and it was Sean Winter who departed first, losing most of his chips in the very first hand.
He found himself all-in and at risk against Kulev, but with far the best of it. It was an aces versus kings confrontation that had the Bulgarian number one’s rail on the edge of their seats.
Kulev: K♦️️K♣
Winter: A❤️A♣
Flop: 6♦️️9❤️5♦️️
Turn: 9♦️️
River: 8♦️️
Winter fell shortly afterwards, and with the pay jumps starting to get huge, the bounties added an additional factor in the ICM calculations. Chris Brewer, who fell in sixth for $186,000, was unsure at one point what the correct play was due to the extra variable.
Run goods all around
The ever-aggressive Adrian Mateos looked unmoved by the monster payouts. Having just taken down Event #5 in Jeju, he found himself in a podium position and aiming for a second Triton trophy, but his deep run came to an end at the hands of a resurgent Jonathan Jaffe.
That left Jaffe and Danchev heads-up. Jaffe had a Triton title already under his belt, while Danchev was looking to break his duck. He'd come close on his debut last year in Monte Carlo, and recorded a runner-up finish in Jeju last week.
The Bulgarian doubled twice to fight back from a 3:1 chip deficit. A flopped set of jacks against AT gave him the lead before the final hand.
Danchev: A♣4♠
Jaffe: J♦️️T♦️️
Flop: 5♣A♦️️2❤️
Turn: A♠
River: 3♣
He flopped best and improved to a straight, and with that, Danchev’s Triton Poker dream had come true. The Bulgarian embraced Jaffe and admitted, “I ran pretty good,” to which his opponent replied, “I ran pretty well to get there!”
Triton Jeju $40k Mystery Bounty results
| Place | Player | Prize |
| 1 | Dimitar Danchev | $804,000 |
| 2 | Jonathan Jaffe | $541,000 |
| 3 | Adrian Mateos | $381,000 |
| 4 | Alex Kulev | $310,000 |
| 5 | Orpen Kisacikoglu | $244,800 |
| 6 | Chris Brewer | $186,000 |
| 7 | Yulian Bogdanov | $135,800 |
| 8 | Sean Winter | $99,400 |
Images courtesy of Triton Poker/Joe Giron
