76 Players Paid $100K to Play PLO. Hold'em Has a Problem.

Seventy-six players paid $100,000 to play pot-limit Omaha in Montenegro — and that number should terrify every no-limit hold'em purist who thinks PLO is a side game.

That's $7.6 million in buy-ins. For PLO. At $100K a seat. This isn't some niche side event squeezed between the real tournaments — it's the main event of the 2026 Triton Montenegro festival, and it drew a bigger field than most $100K NLH events on the same circuit.

Seventy-six entries at $100K a pop makes this one of the largest high-roller PLO fields in history — and the nine-handed final table reads like a who's who of action players.

The Final Table Tells the Story

Michael Watson leads the nine remaining players with 4,335,000 in chips. The Canadian has been a fixture in the biggest PLO games on the planet for years, and he's got a comfortable margin over Austria's Manuel Stojanovic (3,425,000) in second.

Then there's Patrik Antonius — the man who basically is high-stakes PLO — sitting third with 3,225,000. Austria's Matthias Eibinger (2,585,000) and Denmark's Martin Granhoej Dam (1,880,000) round out the top five. That's three countries, two Austrians, and zero no-limit grinders who wandered in from the $100K NLH.

This is a PLO final table full of PLO players. Not hold'em pros taking a shot. Not celebrities buying the experience. Dedicated four-card specialists who chose this event over the NLH alternative.

The Counter-Argument Is Weak

Yes, someone will point out that Triton's clientele skews toward action-heavy formats and that $100K PLO self-selects for whales who love variance. Fair. But 76 entries isn't a whale convention — it's a movement. You don't accidentally fill 76 seats at $100K. You fill them because the best high-stakes players in the world decided PLO is where the real competition is.

Hold'em still owns the WSOP Main Event, the WPT, and the recreational imagination. Nobody's arguing that. But at the top of the pyramid — the $50K-and-up ecosystem where the game's future gets shaped — PLO is pulling away.

Seventy-six entries. $7.6 million in the prize pool. Watson, Antonius, Eibinger at the final table. If this is a side game, it's the most expensive side game in history.