Justin Bonomo made history in 2018 with his incredible tournament run and a staggering $25 million in earnings over the year. Within just six months he had topped the All-Time Money List on The Hendon Mob.
His victory in the $1 million buy-in Big One For One Drop for $10 million aided him to surpass Daniel Negreanu in the All-Time Money Rankings and also took the crown from the “Young Prince” – as Joey Ingram likes to call him – Fedor Holz in what had been the best tournament run in poker history.
Daniel Negreanu famously tweeted in response that he was both impressed and relieved about Bonomo pushing him off the top position on the leaderboard. Negreanu talked about being relieved of the pressure of keeping all these young high rollers off his back. And while he’s still second in the All-Time Money rankings, Bonomo keeps extending the difference, which is now at $5 million.
Is Bonomo starting 2019 as he finished 2018?
Bonomo took it slow in late 2018, a well earned rest from a successful year. That doesn’t mean that he didn’t pick up a few final table cashes here and there though.
However, 2019 did start with two major tournament wins already, manifesting his pole position in the money rankings with a mouth-watering $44 million in lifetime earnings.
First, he claimed the title and $383,650 of a $25k High Roller event at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in the Bahamas and now he excelled at the opening event of the Triton High Roller Series.
While we hadn’t seen much of Bonomo during the U.S. Poker Open recently, a mere 9th place finish in one of the events and no sight of him in the top 12 leaderboard, he made sure to remind us who he is in event #1, the HKD 250,000 Short Deck Ante-Only, in Jeju.
He managed to not just cash for the first time in a Short Deck tournament, but also take down the title for HKD 4.6 million (USD 586,000).
Bonomo posted on Social Media about his latest success, “Getting a warm welcome in Jeju! Got the trophy in the first event and I’m off to a good start in event #2”.
Triton High Roller Series- Event #1 Payouts
| Place | Player | Country | Prize (HKD) | Prize (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Justin Bonomo | United States | HKD 4,600,000 | $586,114 |
| 2 | Yue Wei Hsiang | Malaysia | HKD 3,300,000 | $420,473 |
| 3 | Sergey Lebedev | Russia | HKD 2,140,000 | $272,671 |
| 4 | David Benefield | United States | HKD 1,620,000 | $206,414 |
| 5 | Choon Siow | Malaysia | HKD 1,250,000 | $159,270 |
| 6 | Ying Lin Chua | Malyasia | HKD 975,000 | $124,231 |
| 7 | Ben Lamb | United States | HKD 780,000 | $99,385 |
| 8 | John Juanda | Indonesia | HKD 610,000 | $77,724 |
The Triton High Roller Series is still continuing until 8th March and if you want to follow Justin and the other high rollers battle it out, you can follow the action online on live streams on YouTube, Twitch with expert commentary from Lex Veldhuis and Randy Lew in English, and Celina Lin and Haoxiang Wang in Chinese.
Louis Hartwell
Graduated in Media Communication at the University of Lausanne, Louis Hartman is a co-founder of somuchpoker.com. He began his career in Cambodia as freelance journalist. In same time he was making his living by playing poker every night at that time. Intense learner, he read dozens of poker strategy books to improve his skills during many years. With a strong interest about poker "behind the scene" in Asia and his communication skills, Louis launched Somuchpoker in 2014.
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