Poker is popular with visitors to casinos, due to its strategic depth. While ordinary players play for low stakes, the more serious ones often play for large sums – sometimes hundreds of thousands – ensuring winning and losing are a big deal. This article will take a look at some of the biggest winners and losers from high stakes poker games.
Patrik Antonius
This professional from Finland claimed a massive victory in 2009. His competitor was Swedish player Viktor ‘Isildur1’ Blom and the amount at stake was a colossal $1, 356,947. Antonius was the man who emerged on top and the resulting win was highest sum ever won in a game of online poker ensuring that he has a place in the history books – at least until someone wins even more!
Niklas Hagen
Hagen is another highly respected pro, this time from Germany, and 2013 proved to be spectacular for him. He ended that year with winnings of $6.3 million from high stakes poker – with $4.5 million of this coming via live tournament play. To get some idea of how impressive this is, consider that the previous highest total for a single year was $3.5 million – set by Ben Sulsky the previous year – meaning Hagen almost doubled it.
Terrence Watanabe
One of the all-time biggest losers from high stakes poker is Mr Watanabe – who blew an eye-watering $204 million in just one year. In Watanabe’s defence, he was not a professional poker player, but rather a businessman who became addicted to the game when not working. He was not able to pay off his debts – making this a distinctly cautionary tale.
Phil Ivey
Ivey is one of the most successful professional players on the circuit, but that didn’t prevent him from having a bad year in 2015 – with huge losses of $1,644,550. This included dropping $163,500 in an 8-game against Timofey Kuznetsov that, given they were playing for $400-$800 a time counts as a huge loss on its own. What it shows is that even top players suffer setbacks.
If you managed one win like those enjoyed by the first two players on this list, you could retire for life, but the risk of an equally big loss is always there so if you are playing at online casino like spin palace always make sure to keep it fun.
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