Aliaksei Boika Wins First Triton Trophy at $25K Jeju Event for $761,000
Aliaksei Boika finally has a Triton trophy to go with his decade of deep runs on the super high roller circuit. The 38-year-old Belarusian beat 131 entries in the $25,000 eight-max event at the 2026 Triton Poker Jeju II festival, banking $761,000 for the win, according to Card Player.
Boika has been grinding live tournaments for 13 years, with his first marquee title coming at the 2016 European Poker Tour Malta main event for $390,772. His Jeju win now ranks as the third-largest score of his career, with his top three results all coming at Les A Casino in Jeju. Earlier this year he took second in a $60,000 event at the same venue for $1,313,000, and he finished sixth in the $100,000 main event there in 2025 for $1,288,000. Boika’s lifetime tournament earnings now sit above $10 million, with more than half of that coming from Triton events alone.
Card Player reported that Boika described the win as one of the top achievements of his career.
“This actually means a lot to me. I’m very happy. This is one of the best achievements that a poker player can do, so I’m speechless. The fields are really tough here. But that’s what makes it the most interesting tournament in the world right now. So I’m very happy to be here, and I hope I will be able to continue grinding these tournaments.”
The $3,275,000 prize pool was split among the top 23 finishers. Reda Achnit, a Moroccan player who qualified through a CoinPoker online freeroll and had no prior live cashes, made a run to 14th place for $51,000 in his first live outing.
Seth Davies Falls in Fifth
American pro Seth Davies took the chip lead into the eight-handed final table but bowed out in fifth for $226,000 after running pocket eights into the pocket aces of Yu Lei. That result pushed his career earnings to $47.1 million. Boika had scored the tournament’s first knockout, cracking Vladas Tamasauskas’s pocket queens with ace-queen suited to send him out in eighth for $95,000, ahead of eliminations for Manuel Fritz (seventh, $130,000) and Mingcong Chen (sixth, $175,000).
Boika later knocked out Nevan Chang in fourth place for $282,000 when pocket queens held against pocket sixes, then eliminated Yu Lei in third for $343,000 after Yu shoved jack-ten from the small blind and Boika’s ace-queen held.
Heads-up against bracelet winner Philip Sternheimer, Boika held roughly a 5:3 chip lead before the two got the money in on an 8-5-3-J board. Sternheimer’s nine-seven combo draw missed when the river came the ace of spades, sealing the title for Boika’s top pair of jacks.
Boika earned 924 Card Player Player of the Year points for the win, his fourth final table of the season, lifting his total to 2,715 points and moving him to 86th in the 2026 standings presented by CoinPoker. A second $25,000 event at the same Jeju stop concluded the same day, with Khoa Anh Ngo winning nearly $1.1 million.