After Triton Montenegro Glory, Seth Davies Plans a Shift in Poker Strategy
Seth Davies has just had the best stop of his poker career.
At Triton Montenegro, he won his first title on poker’s most prestigious high-roller tour, taking down the $50K NLH 8-Handed and then followed it up with a $4.19 million runner-up finish in the $200K Triton Invitational.
But what might look like a breakout moment from the outside is, in truth, the culmination of years of quiet grind, close calls, and brutal learning curves. Davies’ journey into the high-stakes scene wasn’t a tale of instant success. It was one of taking hits, recalibrating, and showing up again.
The Long, Uneven Road to Riches
Today, Davies is known as one of the more respected names in the high-stakes circuit, but he admits the early going was rough. He cashed in his very first $100K at the 2017 Poker Masters and notched some $25K success at the Bellagio, but those were outliers, not trends.
“My whole early high-stakes career didn’t really start off well,” he told PokerNews. “I never really won anything or had too many big scores for the first few years, so it was pretty downhill. Triton was the worst of that.”
“You’re trying to stay on your feet, but it feels like it’s going really fast”
Davies made his debut on the Triton Super High Roller Series in Jeju in 2019 and played more than 20 events across three stops without a single cash. It wasn’t until Madrid, three years later, that he broke the drought. His maiden victory this week came in his 37th Triton event, the second-most cashes by any player before winning their first title.
Like many players making the leap from mid-stakes, Davies says he was unprepared for the speed and scale of high-stakes poker, not only financially, but also emotionally and strategically.
“It’s kind of like a deer in the headlights. You bust a $25K and think, ‘Oh shit, I just lost $25,000,’ and suddenly you’re in a $50K. Then that goes badly, and now you’re firing a $100k. You’re trying to stay on your feet, but it feels like it’s going really fast.”
Cracking the High-Stakes Code
Early on, Davies tried to apply the same playbook that worked in smaller tournaments: aggression, pressure, lots of bluffing. But those instincts broke down against elite pros and deep-pocketed amateurs who weren’t there to fold.
“In a normal game, the guy who’s there for fun is just waiting to make a pair, and you can bluff him off everything else. But at Triton, there are guys playing $50Ks and just punting. As the stakes got bigger, certain players cared less and less about the money. It’s backwards from what you’d expect.”
At first, that unpredictability felt chaotic. But over time, Davies realized it was actually the new edge, a different kind of soft spot that wasn’t about technical weakness but psychological variance.
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Of course, identifying value in the chaos doesn’t mean printing money. Even defining “profit” in this space is complicated when public figures only reflect gross cashes, not what players actually take home.
“The all-time money list and life-time earnings obviously don’t equal profit, everyone knows that. But as far as measurable metrics go, it’s all we really have.”
Back in 2016, Davies earned $200,000 in live results. By 2020, that number ballooned to $8.5 million. Today, he’s closing in on $40 million, though much of that has come with mental reframing.
“Your brain doesn’t shift the way it should. When you’re playing $500 or $1,000 buy-ins, a $500K downswing feels catastrophic. At this level, it’s not uncommon. The scale is just different.”
Breaking Through in Montenegro
That recalibrated mindset made his win in Montenegro hit even harder. After years of battling Triton’s elite fields, he finally broke through with a win.
“Having played so many of these for years, and built such good relationships with the staff and players, everybody knows each other’s name. It just felt really special and everyone was genuinely happy for me. That moment, I’ll never forget.”
But the victory was only half the story. Davies wasn’t even guaranteed a seat in the Triton Invitational until ten days before the event. A last-minute pairing with Silicon Valley friend Sameh Elamawy got him in, and from there, he caught fire and rode the heater of his life to a second-place finish worth over $4 million.
Yet even in the glow of success, he’s frank about what it took to get there, especially the costs, both financial and emotional.
“The last two Tritons before this, I lost 10% of my net worth on each trip. I was seriously asking myself, ‘Am I going to keep doing this?’ Doing that twice in a row…it just went really, really bad.”
Staying Sane in the High Roller World
Davies says the emotional volatility of high-stakes poker is just as dangerous as the financial kind, especially in moments of success.
“As time goes on, and you see what these stakes do to people, you realize discipline is the biggest piece. ‘Winner’s tilt’ is real.”
“It’s the same as in tennis. If you play the best shot of the match, what you should do on the next point is play as conservatively as possible. Something just went great, you’re super hyped up and want to keep going. That’s what winner’s tilt is. You’re up money, you can’t lose on the trip, and so you’re willing to run some crazy bluff that you wouldn’t usually run.”
That discipline for Davies comes in knowing when to step back, when to recalibrate, and look at what’s guiding his next move. With the economy around high-stakes poker becoming less predictable, Davies is planning a return to more modest roots.
“Over the last couple Tritons I was really doom and gloom about where the ecosystem’s heading. So many of the VIPs — especially the Malaysians — they’re just really good players. Guys like Richard Yong, Paul Phua, Wai Kin Yong. They study, they work hard, they love poker. There are fewer true punters.
“A lot of us are thinking about how long we can sustain this. You’re wondering how many pros are actually making money.”
Which is why this summer, Davies will be back at the World Series of Poker, grinding smaller fields and approaching them with the same focus he once reserved for the high-roller stage.
“It’s a switch-up, but I think it’s a pretty disciplined move. Playing lower, taking it seriously, being sensitive to the market. You’ve just got to be mature and say, ‘Okay, I might make less money going forward.’ That’s fine. This is the right thing to do.”
And it’s not just about market conditions. It’s about sustainability, both in poker and in life.
“As my kids get older, I don’t want to travel too much. In a couple of year,s I might not be playing so many Tritons anymore. Maybe I’ll just be home more often and take the WSOP a lot more seriously; play the lower stakes and kind of have that be my work.”
For him, poker remains a passion, but one that must evolve alongside a changing poker landscape, a young family and shifting priorities.
Pictures courtesy of Triton Super High Roller Series
Will Shillibier
Managing Editor