The Triton Poker Series has started its 2025 campaign with a bang. The first event of the Tritoj Jeju tour attracted a record-breaking 379 players. Thanks to this turnout and the $15,000 buy-in, the prize pool reached a staggering $5,685,000.
Consequently, after three days of high-roller poker competition, 43-year-old Zhao Hongjun won the title and went home with the main prize of $818,000. This marked the first time a Chinese player won a recorded live poker tournament.
What is particularly interesting is that Zhao signed up for the poker tournament as a side quest, given that he decided to attend the Tritoj Jeju festival in order to play golf.
I’m very happy to have won this tournament. I actually came to Jeju Island mainly to play golf and joined the tournament on the side. My work keeps me quite busy, and although I’ve been playing poker for over a decade, I haven’t participated in many tournaments.
Prior to this groundbreaking win, Zhao had only three tournament participations, including playing in a final table at the PokerStars Championship Macau, where he played for a main prize of $162,630.
Together with Zhao, a total of 63 players earned a chunk of the prize money from the first event, with Triton Poker hosting a list of renowned poker players such as Steve O’Dwyer (28th), Espen Jorstad (27th), Danny Tang (22nd), Adrian Mateos (12th), and Jason Koon (10th), the all-time Triton titles leader.
Final Table Results
| Place | Player | Earnings | POY Points |
| 1 | Zhao Hongjun | $818,000 | 1800 |
| 2 | Yuzhu Wang | $975,000 | 1500 |
| 3 | Zhen Chen | $497,000 | 1200 |
| 4 | Paulius Plausinaitis | $395,000 | 900 |
| 5 | Weiran Pu | $309,000 | 750 |
| 6 | Michael Jozoff | $243,000 | 600 |
| 7 | Nikita Kuznetsov | $182,000 | 450 |
| 8 | Damir Zhugralin | $129,000 | 300 |
