James Mendoza Takes Down WPT Global Slam at Triton Jeju

This opening regular NL Hold’em event attracted 199 unique entries with another 112 re-entries on top to make a prize pool of $7,775,000.

James Mendoza has pulled off an incredible trick this week as he made his debut on the most prestigious poker tour in the world.

First he made the trip to Jeju to take part in the inaugural Triton ONE Series where he cashed in the Main Event. Then with almost $20,000 prize money in his pocket he thought he’d stick around and jump in with the big boys in the Triton proper.

Although not the most accomplished player at the series, the California-based Filipino still had a live tournament record of almost $3 million.

Now he’s come out on top of a Triton Super High Roller Series event final table that featured elite players Alex Foxen and Punnat Punsri.

“Coming here to Triton is already a win for me. I never expected to be playing the highest level of poker. I just started playing lower stakes in my little city in the Philippines. And now I’m here at the highest stage in poker.

“I came prepared. I knew I was going to battle against these guys. I didn’t come here to just have fun, or whatever. Before I came, I did a lot of studying and a lot of mental coaching, all the kind of stuff that could help me improve my game.

“Battling against those giants is obviously pretty hard, but I’m confident. I’ve been playing for quite a while now so I feel like I could battle. And here I am. I proved myself.”

Action Recap

It was no surprise to see an impressive 311 total entries for the first normal NL tournament of the Triton Jeju series after a couple of high roller Short Deck events that were won by Triton co-founder Richard Yong and Elton Tsang.

The slow structure played out over three days where the money bubble burst on Day 2 as Josh McCully exited the event in 48th place.

Aussie Mccully was the winner of the Triton ONE leaderboard and he exchanged his Player ONE prize for a buy-in in the WPT Global Slam. coming ever so close to making it pay.

Three-time Triton winner Alex Foxen led the way as the final table kicked off; not what the rest of the table wanted to see.

But to give some play after it took longer than expected to reach the final nine, the tournament organisers rolled the blinds back a little.

Punnat Punsri, a four-time Triton champion, was the first casualty, running into the top of Mendoza’s range blind vs. blind.

And then it was the tiny stacks of Dai Ming and Ho Bao Qiang who suffered next, leaving in seventh and eighth place.

Yan Jingyao must have been delighted to see those three leave the stage as he had sat for ages without getting much in the way of playable hands.

Sadly, when he was dealt K♦ J♠ under the gun and made a stand, Xue Song’s A♣ 4♥ knocked him out with a Triton-best score of $350,000 for sixth.

Viacheslav Goryachev, the sole Russian at the table, was playing his debut event in the Triton Super High Roller Series. Although no doubt happy to have made it this far, he was now running on fumes.

Down to his final six blinds, Goryachev called an open from Xue Song with pocket threes and saw a flop of 5♠ A♣ 2♣ from which he check-called down on a run out of K♥ Q♣ only for Xue to turn over A♥ 10♠. Fifth place for $460,000 was a good result, though.

Four-handed, the average stack was now only 16 big blinds and turning into a bit of a crapshoot. That said, there is still plenty of opportunity to showcase some skills this short.

So Mendoza did exactly that while getting the rub of the green, shall we say.

First he knocked out Emilien Pitavy, beating his A♠ K♥ with K♦ Q♠, and then he wiped out Alex Foxen when his K♣ 6♦ hit runner-runner trips to beat A♥ J♠ on an ace-high flop.

Mendoza now had a lead of 52 blinds against Xue’s 13 and although Xue did win a series of small pots, it was all over when Mendoza picked up queens and got Xue’s last nine blinds all-in with A♣ 8♠.

Triton Jeju $25,000 WPT Global Slam Final Table Results

Mark Patrickson

Professional Poker Journalist

Mark Patrickson is a poker journalist with over ten years of experience. He writes for VIP-Grinders.com, sharing his deep knowledge of poker. He creates interesting content about poker strategy, trends, and news for poker fans worldwide. [more]