In case you haven’t heard yet, there are some enormous cash games going on in Macau right now. And the word enormous might even be an understatement after reports are coming out that one of the cash game pots was worth a reported $14 million!
APT owner Tom Hall has been the biggest source of rumors about the $14 million pot, which was won by an unknown player who was reportedly down over $12.6 million; Hall wrote the following about the big play:
Biggest hand I ever saw and arguably the craziest was a guy betting HK$28m (US$3.6) on the river into a HK$51m (US$6.55) pot with a gutshot straight draw against what turned out to be top set. He was down over HK$100m (US$12.8) at the time and hit it.
When you add up all of the money that Hall described, this equals around $13.75 million (or $13.8m just to round off). You can read about all of Tom Hall’s reports on the Macau high stakes poker games in this thread.
The action has been pretty intense all throughout the big games at Macau with Johnny Chan reportedly winning $1.41 million. In addition to this, Tom Dwan lost $2.6 million in one day, but came back to win $1.7m overall, and Andrew Robl was up $2 million – only to drop back down to even.
Apparently the games are pretty exclusive because Patrik Antonius was denied a seat at the big table. 2010 WSOPE Main Event champion James Bord tried to get him into the game, but Canadian billionaire Guy Laliberte refused because he thinks that Antonius is too nitty. Hall wrote about this by typing:
Confirmed that Patrik Antonius was not allowed into the game, James Bord (who was playing) tried to get him in but Guy Laliberte insisted no WAY. Antonius played ~US$640/US$1280 PLO instead with Andrew “good2cu” Robl and a few others.
Apparently, the rich businessmen who play in this game want lots of action, and people who bring their own money – as opposed to being staked.
American Elio Fox etched his name into poker lore by winning the 2011 WSOPE Main Event, and the biggest ever WSOPE prize at €1,400,000 ($1.93 million). With the victory, Fox becomes the third US player to win the WSOPE Main Event since it was started in 2007.