The Triton Poker Series is constantly pushing the boundaries and, last week in Monte Carlo, we saw things taken to a completely different level with a $1 million UNO event.
The “first ever million dollar UNO event” was uploaded to Triton’s YouTube channel on November 4 and featured some of poker’s top talent, including Chris Brewer who, before the game, admitted he’s colorblind.
Also in the mix was Timothy Adams. He had almost as much of a disadvantage as Brewer, saying in his just-woken-up state that he didn’t know the rules. Despite that, his natural card-playing abilities saw him take an aggressive line in the early stages of the $1 million invitational.
Triton takes UNO to a new level
Triton Poker Series tournament director Luca Vivaldi was in charge of the action and had his work cut out as the game’s sharpest minds tried to offload their UNO cards. Eventually, after stacking the right colors, America’s Cardroom team pro Ryan Depaulo got the win (see video below).
The American might not have the best record in Triton events, but he bested five of poker’s top players in the UNO Invitational. Unfortunately for Depaulo, he didn’t win $1 million in cash. He did, however, win a 2019 double deck of UNO cards and a miniature Triton trophy.
What happened to the $1 million cash prize? Well, there wasn’t one. In case you haven’t already worked it out, the video was a spoof. There were plenty of prizes to be won during the recent Triton Poker Series in Monte Carlo, but the UNO Invitational was simply a skit.
Normally that wouldn’t be newsworthy, but the video signals an interesting milestone for the Triton Poker Series. What started out as a selection of one-off tournaments in 2016 has since blossomed into an international series that’s creating content on multiple levels.
Triton Poker Series enters new era
The evolution of Triton Poker Series has seen more tournaments added to each stop, prizepools increase, and different variants come to the fore. Now, with the tour’s popularity increasing, the media team is putting out auxiliary content to support Triton’s live streams.
We’ve seen this trajectory before. PokerStars’ European Poker Tour (EPT) started off with a handful of tournaments and slowly increased video output over time. From there, lifestyle and off-the-felt content were added to the broadcast schedule to accentuate the entertainment aspect not just of the EPT but poker in general.
The Triton Poker Series is now charting a similar course. The foundations have been laid. The tournaments deliver the quality players expect when they’re paying upwards of $10,000 to play poker. The locations are glamorous, and the titles are gaining more prestige.
Creating more content to support the tournaments is the mark of a series that’s established itself as a firm fixture on the calendar.
It might not yet be on the same level as the EPT or WPT, but the Triton Poker Series is emerging as the game’s tent-pole tours. That means we should expect to see more comedy skits and behind-the-scenes content from the Triton Poker Series, such as the UNO Invitational and the 1 vs. 7 chess match shown above.
