Dan Cates opened to 7,000 from the cutoff and picked up no fewer than three callers behind in Orpen Kisacikoglu on the button, Alan Sass in the small blind and Stephen Chidwick on the big blind. The flop fell and all four players checked.
After the turn, Cates bet 15,500 and Kisacikoglu raised it up to 44,000, which Sass called and Chidwick folded. Cates moved all in for around 220,000 and Kisacikoglu jammed over the top for 234,200 to force a fold from Sass.
Cates flipped over and was drawing dead against the of Kisacikoglu. Once the stacks were verified, Paul Phua asked "Finished? Re-entry now or tomorrow? to which Cates replied "now is a bad idea" before leaving the tournament area.
Xuan Tan made it 9,000 to go first to act and Koray Aldemir, who had just re-entered, called. Dominik Nitsche came along from the small blind and Chan Wai Leong three-bet to 44,500 in the big blind. Tan called and Aldemir moved all in for the starting stack minus the ante.
That forced out Nitsche, while Leong moved all in over the top, which also got rid of Tan.
Koray Aldemir:
Chan Wai Leong:
The same two players had clashed before the break with Aldemir losing a flip with ace-king versus queens, and he would do so again on a blank board of to join the rail for a second time.
Over on table four, Marius Torbergsen shot up the leader board while Bryn Kenney took a hit after coming back from the final break. And then, defending Triton Super High Roller Series Montenegro Main Event champion Manig Loeser opened to 9,000 out of a stack of 70,000 and Dominik Nitsche from one seat over on the button three-bet to 27,000.
Xuan Tan in the big blind simply four-bet all in for 278,000, and Loeser called after using one time bank extension and some confusion as to when his shot clock had been out. Nitsche folded and the cards were turned over.
Manig Loeser:
Xuan Tan:
The board came gave Tan two pair and Loeser left the table with a "nice hand." Tan joked "all in all in" while raking in the pot.
The Triton Super High Roller Montenegro casting team: Randy 'nanonoko' Lew and Kane Kalas
Watching televised or live streamed poker tournaments would not be anywhere near as exciting if there were not some entertaining and insightful commentary to accompany all the action.
Fortunately, the Triton Poker team have the skills of online poker professional Randy ‘nanonoko’ Lew and semi-professional player and professional poker commentator Kane Kalas to call upon to cast their highly entertaining live stream.
Streaming live poker is not your standard job, but then neither is playing professionally, but Lew and Kalas have some experience at doing both, and do a pretty good job of it too.
The 32-year-old Lew streams regularly on twitch when he is grinding tournaments for a living, and is not too bad at that either, with over $1.42-million in live tournament winnings and over $1-million in online tournament winnings.
Kalas is also no slouch. The 28-year-old former professional, now semi-professional poker player boasts over $1.25 million in live tournament winnings. Kalas also has broadcasting and commentating in the blood; the son of legendary Philadelphia Phillies Major League Baseball commentator Harry Kalas, Kane’s brother Todd also sportscasts professionally for the Houston Astros.
PokerNews presenter Laura Cornelius interviews Kane Kalas
PokerNews caught up with the pair on a break and grilled them about what it’s like behind the casting desk and on the end of a microphone.
Is it more fun playing or commentating?
Kane Kalas: “I enjoy both. I think it really depends on my mood. When I’ve been playing a whole lot then I really want to commentate, and when I’ve been commentating a whole lot without playing then I’m ready to get back to the tables and play.”
Randy Lew: “I enjoy playing more, just like because you can win chips and lose chips [chuckles]. But the good thing about commentary is that it’s relaxed so you’re still involved with poker but you don’t have the stress of putting up the buy-in and you can actually learn a lot during commentary. You’re not really learning while you’re playing, usually, you’re just trying to apply the things that you do and the learning is after you finish playing.”
How did the two of you get into the live commentary game?
Kane Kalas: “The first time I ever did a broadcast was part of a iPoker iPops event, where it was an online tournament, but then the final 12, or final 16 players came together and played live for the final two tables.”
“I busted before making the final table. But they were doing a live stream at the final table and I said ‘Hey! I’ll help out and do some color commentary for the broadcaster.’ Jesse May was broadcasting the tournament and so that was my first time doing it, I must have been 20-years-old, it was a lot of fun.”
Randy Lew: “So I’ve done some guest commentary for the EPT’s and things like that, but the time when I started to do a lot more commentary was during the Aussie Millions with Jason Somerville. He hosted that first one and I did a bunch of guest commentary for him. I was only planning on doing it the once, but he was like ‘Hey! Come back, everyone loved you,’ so I went back and we did the PCA commentary as well and then he invited me in to do Aussie Millions again, this previous one that just passed, so it just kinda fell into my hands I guess."
Which is the bigger challenge, remaining creative when commentating, or playing your best poker during long tournament days?
Kane Kalas: “Probably remaining creative while commentating I guess. Depending on the situation and depending on the tournaments I might not know the players that well so I’m always able to kinda commentate with a good fundamental game theory background. I’m always able to make good points about the hands, but I don’t necessarily always know inside stories and things that might be interesting to the audience. You have to do a little more field research there, and oftentimes you can’t really do that because the players are playing and they’re not going to be giving you that information all the time. “
Randy Lew: “Usually when I’m playing I like to think that I’m playing my best, but when you’re getting far in a tournament I don’t look at my phone anymore so I’m really tuned into all the bet sizes and maybe some live tells, or anything like that. Whereas commentary, it’s hard to really think of new things to say. But I know a lot of things to say so…[chuckles]. Once I get through all of that, maybe when I do this over and over again maybe I might run out of material, but, yeah, I think that it [commentary] is harder.”
What is the most hilarious chat box comment you have seen posted in the chat box when commentating?
Randy Lew: “That’s kinda hard actually, nothing that stands out… I mean I know there is some stupid stuff, maybe I get back to you on that one.”
Kane Kalas: “Something I like to always ask the chat is ‘what do you think these players would be doing if they weren’t professional poker players?’ You know, what you’d expect, just based on their look, what they would be doing for a living. I had one player one time, he was wearing sunglasses and he had his shirt unbuttoned a little bit and he looked like he went to the gym a lot and the whole chat just started calling him Johnny Cage from Mortal Kombat. I was like, oh yeah, that’s perfect, he’s totally Johnny Cage!”
After a delayed start to Day 1 of the 2018 Triton Super High Roller Series Montenegro HKD1,000,000 (~$127,390) Main Event, the tables started to fill slowly but surely and a field of 39 entries emerged after seven full levels of one hour each in the flagship event of the festival at the Maestral Resort & Casino in Budva, Montenegro.
The 39 entries include seven re-entries and Koray Aldemir was the only player to enter three times after busting two times with ace-king against the pocket queens and pocket jacks of Wai Leong Chan. As a result, the Malaysian claimed the top spot with a stack of 778,500 ahead of Stefan Schillhabel (668,500) and Marius Torbergsen (611,500).
Only 27 players advanced and the list of survivors reads like the who's who of the international High Roller poker scene. Other big stacks and notables in the overnight top 10 include Patrik Antonius (576,000), Mikita Badziakouski (569,000), Stephen Chidwick ( 526,500), Julian Thomas (505,000), Dietrich Fast (451,500), Rui Cao (420,000) and Steffen Sontheimer (387,000).
Defending champion Manig Loeser busted in his first attempt and subsequently re-entered to advance with a stack of 264,000. Bryn Kenney arrived straight from the airport and jumped right into the action to bag up 247,000, while Phil Ivey made it through to Day 2 with 186,500. Among those to bust and not re-enter just yet were 6-Max champion Richard Yong, Romain Arnaud, Gabe Patgorski, Mikhail Smirnov and Dan "Jungleman" Cates.
Richard Yong
Yong (pictured above) went from hero to zero in the span of half an hour over on the feature table when he first called a jam by Christian Christner with a double gutshot and failed to crack the trips fours of the German. The Triton founder then called off the shove by Julian Thomas with king-jack for top pair only to see Thomas turn over queen-ten for two pair. Cates' move with an open-ended straight draw came at the worst possible timing, as Orpen Kisacikoglu had turned the nut straight.
Both Yong and Cates are expected to re-enter the competition on Day 2. Since Day 1 was shortened by two levels, the registration period upon restart at 1 p.m. local time remains open for the first four levels and break. The penultimate tournament day is scheduled to play down to the final table and the action recommences in level eight with blinds of 2,500/5,000 and a running ante of 500, giving all new additions to the field 50 big blinds when the cards get back in the air.
Make sure to tune back in, as the PokerNews live reporting team will be on the floor to provide all the action of the high stakes festival until the very end!
![[user38873]](/img/avatars/avatar.svg){kind=avatar}
and all four players checked.
turn, Cates bet 15,500 and Kisacikoglu raised it up to 44,000, which Sass called and Chidwick folded. Cates moved all in for around 220,000 and Kisacikoglu jammed over the top for 234,200 to force a fold from Sass.
and was drawing dead against the 
of Kisacikoglu. Once the stacks were verified, Paul Phua asked "Finished? Re-entry now or tomorrow? to which Cates replied "now is a bad idea" before leaving the tournament area.
to join the rail for a second time.
gave Tan two pair and Loeser left the table with a "nice hand." Tan joked "all in all in" while raking in the pot.
