Schulman Gets His Triton Main Event as Jeju Pays Out Millions

Nick Schulman did not arrive in Jeju needing another line on his résumé. Eight WSOP bracelets, two WPT titles and a place in the Poker Hall of Fame had already taken care of that.

There was still one prize missing, though, and Schulman found it at the end of Triton Poker Jeju. The 41-year-old won the $100,000 Main Event for $3,854,888, while João Simão produced a festival of his own with a record $7.25 million Invitational victory and another $2.5 million score before the series closed.

The Main Event attracted 196 entries and built a $19.6 million prize pool, with Schulman eventually facing Austria’s Bernhard Binder heads-up. Twelve players returned for the last day, and the route to the final table was anything but orderly, with Wesley Fei surging from the bottom of the counts and Danny Tang missing the final nine after his kings were cracked.

Binder made the quicker start once the official final table formed. He eliminated Roberto Perez, later sent Isaac Haxton out in sixth, and remained one of the major stacks while Xu Yang briefly took control of the tournament.

Binder and Schulman struck a heads-up deal, locking up $3,080,112 and $3,854,888 respectively before playing for the title. Binder fought back through a pair of successful bluffs, but Schulman regained control and eventually slow-played pocket kings on the final hand, allowing Binder to put the rest in on an ace-high board.

*Heads-up deal.

The $3.85 million payday was the largest single tournament score of Schulman’s career. It also gave him his second Triton title, but his first in the tour’s flagship Main Event.

João Simão’s $200,000 Triton Invitational run looked much less promising while the tournament was still on Day 2. The Brazilian was reduced to just two big blinds shortly after reaching the money, yet survived long enough to return for the final day with 25 blinds.

Biao Ding was the last line of resistance at that point. Their heads-up match ran for around two and a half hours, with Simão first stretching his advantage, then losing it through unsuccessful bluffs before rebuilding after a queen-high hero call. The Brazilian eventually won the last major confrontation with an overpair against Ding’s top pair.

The tournament drew 173 entries for a $34.6 million prize pool, setting new marks for the Triton Invitational. Simão’s $7.25 million payday was also the largest tournament score ever recorded by a Brazilian player at the time.

Simão was not even close to finished.

Three days after winning the Invitational, he found himself heads-up again in the $150,000 10th Anniversary Special, this time against Nick Petrangelo. The event drew 67 entries and generated another $10.05 million in prize money.

*Heads-up deal.

Simão finished Jeju with $9,874,090 from those two results alone. Petrangelo, meanwhile, finally converted one of several deep runs during the festival into his second Triton title.

This September’s Main Event grew from Triton’s March visit to Jeju, although it stopped short of the turnout recorded at the same autumn stop in 2025.

The field was 18 entries larger than it had been in March, adding $1.8 million to the prize pool. Compared with September 2025, however, the tournament was down 32 entries and $3.2 million in prize money.