Brazil has a new all-time money leader in tournament poker. Joao Simao won the $200,000 Triton Invitational at the Triton Poker Series Jeju II, topping a record 173-entry field to collect $7,250,000, the largest single-tournament score ever recorded by a Brazilian player.
A Record Field for the Triton Invitational
The $200,000 buy-in event, held at Les A Casino on Jeju Island, drew 173 entries built from 120 unique players and 53 re-entries, smashing the field size for this marquee Triton offering and pushing the prize pool to a staggering $34,600,000. The top 31 finishers were paid, with the money split steeply toward the final table to reward the players who survived the brutal short-handed stages of a super high roller this size.
Fields like this exist at the very top of the game, where the Triton Poker Series has built a reputation for assembling the strongest and richest lineups in the sport. Jeju II drew a mix of Triton regulars, WSOP bracelet winners, and online-turned-live crushers, all willing to fire $200,000 for a shot at a payday that dwarfs most players’ entire yearly results.
Simao’s Path Through a Brutal Field
Simao’s run to the title was not a straightforward chip-lead-and-coast story. At multiple points on Day 2, the 37-year-old Brazilian was down to just a couple of big blinds, forced to find double-ups against some of the toughest lineups in poker to stay alive. He steadied his stack, worked his way back into contention, and then burst the money bubble himself by eliminating Austria’s Matthias Eibinger in tenth place for $635,000.
From there Simao carried a chip lead into the nine-handed final table, a group that included Seth Davies of the United States, Frenchman Emilien Pitavy, Hong Kong’s Winfred Yu, and China’s Biao Ding and Yang Wang. Davies, who became the first player in Triton history to reach three separate Invitational final tables, eventually fell in third for $3,470,000, while Wang ($2,820,000), Pitavy ($2,245,000), Yu ($1,693,000), Germany’s Hannes Jeschka ($1,237,000), Belgium’s Thomas Boivin ($905,000), and Taiwan’s Eric Tsai ($749,000) rounded out the payouts behind him.
A Cooler Ends the Heads-Up Battle
Simao and Ding traded the chip lead for roughly two and a half hours of heads-up play with no deal discussed, before the tournament ended on a hand that will be replayed on highlight reels for years. Ding limped the button holding 10-9 offsuit, and Simao raised with pocket kings. The flop fell 9-5-5, giving Ding trip fives to go with his pair of nines while Simao still held the overpair. Simao bet, Ding raised, and Simao called. The turn was a blank 2, and Ding moved all-in for his last 5,600,000 in chips. Simao snap-called, and the river bricked out a 7, sending Simao into celebration and Ding to the runner-up prize of $4,940,000.
“I feel so, so lucky, so blessed,” Simao said afterward. “It’s the type of stuff that happens once in your life.” He added that the Invitational’s unique freezeout format made the tournament especially enjoyable to play, joking that he would happily play the same structure at a fraction of the buy-in.
Brazil’s New All-Time Leader
The win pushes Simao’s career earnings past $28.2 million, making him Brazil’s all-time leading tournament money winner. It is his second Triton title, following a $150,000 buy-in win at WSOP Paradise in 2025 that was worth just over $3 million, and it comes on top of four WSOP bracelets and a recent $1,368,700 score in a $50,000 Pot-Limit Omaha event on the Super High Roller Series. For readers newer to the game who want to understand how bracelet events and buy-in levels fit together, Poker Pro Academy’s WSOP guide breaks down how the World Series structures its biggest tournaments.
Simao’s win also lands in a week that has been extraordinary for Brazilian poker. Just two days before his victory, countryman Pedro Padilha had already become the fourth Brazilian to win a Triton title, banking $1.4 million at the same Jeju series. Together, the two results underline how deep the current generation of Brazilian professionals runs, with players now regularly competing for the largest prizes the tournament world has to offer rather than simply making up the numbers in massive fields.
What Comes Next for Triton and Brazilian Poker
The Triton Poker Series continues to expand its calendar, and Jeju II featured a packed schedule of high roller events beyond the Invitational, drawing some of the same names who competed for the $200,000 title. For Simao, the win instantly reshapes his profile heading into the winter stretch of high-stakes tournaments, where a fresh eight-figure bankroll and two Triton trophies will make him one of the most-watched floaters in any high roller field he enters.
For Brazilian poker more broadly, the timing could not be better. With bracelets, Triton titles, and now the outright national earnings record concentrated in the same golden stretch, Brazil’s poker community has fresh proof that its top players can go toe-to-toe with anyone in the game’s richest events. As always, tournament poker of this magnitude involves extreme variance and should be treated as entertainment rather than a reliable path to income, but for Simao and his supporters back home, this was a life-changing week at the table.
