The biggest losses in poker history

As for the biggest defeats, that's where this article will focus. If you think your failures are worthy of sadness and self-pity, you'll feel better when you find out how many people at the poker table have lost the most!

P.S. - all defeats are in seven figures.

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Patrik Antonius - 4million $ 

This Finn is well known in the poker world. Before becoming a poker player, however, Mr Antonius was a model, tennis player and coach. However, his passion for poker prevailed and he became a very recognisable face at the WSOP, WPT and EPT.

The Finnish-born man burst onto the poker scene in 2005, finishing runner-up in the WPT in Las Vegas in December of that year Five Diamond World Poker Classic tournament and won a whopping $1.05 million. USD. 

During his career, Antonius has won somewhere between €11.5 million and €12 million. Best known as heads-up A situational specialist, he spent most of his non-tournament time on Full Tilt Poker, where he was the highest earner in 2009. However, there is a popular saying - "You rise high, you fall low". And the following year, Mr Antonius's poker career entered a dark period. He managed to lose $4,000,000 $ in 12 months. During the interview, the player said that a sudden back injury had completely thrown off his concentration and prevented him from playing well. Excuses? Maybe not, because as soon as his health improved, Antonius' results returned to normal.

Fun fact: despite losing four million dollars in a year, Mr Antonius also holds the record for the most prize pots won online. Playing on Full Tilt against another professional poker player, Viktor Blom (Isildur1), the Finn raked in a monstrous $1.356 million. The prize pool was a whopping $186 million. 

So you could definitely say that his gaming history is like a roller coaster!

Guy Laliberte - >30 million $ 

This may seem like a cosmic sum to mere mortals, but not to Canadian billionaire Laliberte. This Quebec-born entrepreneur is the father of the legendary Cirque du Soleil founder and ranks 15th on the list of richest Canadians. Laliberte may also be remembered for being the first Canadian space tourist, flying there in September 2009 and spending 10 and a half hours there. As well as being a successful businessman, he has pretty good poker skills. 

The business titan burst onto the poker scene in ~2006 and immediately entered the WPT tournament at the legendary Bellagio Casino in Las Vegas, where he won almost €0.7 million. He won a whopping $7.7 million at the Bellagio. And while that's not a lot of money compared to the man's fortune, in the world of poker, that's a pretty impressive prize. 

He went on to participate in tournaments periodically, but most of his time was spent in the most expensive Full Tilt poker rooms (High Stakes). Laliberte has won just over USD 2.5 million in his career. Not bad, right?

But what does such an achievement look like when you learn that through Full Tilt, the Canadian-born billionaire bled for ~$30-31 million. It's a bit funny that a man lost with as many as six different accounts. However, the businessman claims that a group of scammers conspired against him and that he was just stupid and kept falling into the same trap and agreeing to play for huge sums.

Andy Beal - at least 20 million $ 

If you think Laliberte is one of the most reckless and unsuccessful poker players in the world, then Beal is an even richer businessman whose losses should be even bigger than our aforementioned Canadian, but are officially estimated at around $16-17 million.

However, if you didn't know the latter, Beal's biography should give you the idea that he could be a very successful poker player. Daniel Andrew Beal is the CEO of Beal Bank, an entrepreneur, an investor and a gifted mathematician. He is quite well known in the mathematical world for having developed the Beal Conjecture, a generalisation of Fermat's Last Theorem, for the proof or disproof of which he promised $1 million. 

A man's wealth is valued at ~$9.5 billion. A few dozen dollars lost in poker is just a drop in the ocean. 

Whatever the case, the figures are really staggering. A.Beal is nicknamed in the poker world Professor, Banker, Suicide King. The financial giant became most famous in the poker world when, between 2001 and 2004, he played a series of high-stakes games against the best poker players in the world at the time, nicknamed "The Corporation" by the media. The stakes at this table? Neither high nor low - 50,000/100,000$. 

As a mathematician, Beal certainly didn't go crazy and in May 2004 won one of the biggest hands in poker history - $11.7 million - and embarrassed the world's most famous poker players and tarnished their reputations.

However, the "Corporation" wanted a rematch and the games continued. By around February 2006, the businessman had already made a loss of 3.3 million dollars. Then Mr Beal took a week's rest and when he returned he simply destroyed all his opponents, and within a couple of days he had gone from a loss of a few million dollars to almost fourteen million dollars. plus. The Corporation then sent its most powerful weapon - Mr Ivey. Poker Tiger Woods Spun the titan of business in spectacular fashion and won $16.6 million in three days.

Phil Ivey vs Andy Beal!

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So that would be the Beal story. But it doesn't stop there. As these are private games, it is not possible to verify the data, but sources say that Beal has lost at least $30-40 million playing at home. Other billionaires and Hollywood celebrities (e.g. former Spider-Man actor T.Maguire) have sat at the table with him.

Phil Ivey - 5-6 million $ 

There is no way to get better at something than to keep improving, learning, training and putting yourself into practice. Mr Ivey is hailed as arguably the greatest poker player of all time and this label is not a coincidence. A very long and extensive professional poker player, he is estimated to have amassed a fortune in excess of $100 million from gambling. And while he single-handedly brought professional poker players back to prominence around the world after smashing billionaire mathematician A.Beal for three days in a row, Phil Ivey has certainly had his share of poker failures.

Mr Ivey, an American holder of ten WSOP bracelets, WPT champion and Poker Hall of Fame member, has had some really black stretches in his career. In 2014 and 2015, he was the highest online poker player in the world! 

After hundreds, if not thousands, of consecutive unsuccessful sessions, Mr Ivey lost $5.1 million over that two-year period alone. It's not every day that you see a man who is one of the best poker players in the world at the top of a list of the biggest losers.

Gus Hansen - at least 22 million $ 

For some reason, this is not the first and not the last Scandinavian country on this list. While the classification of Denmark as Scandinavia is debatable, for a professional poker player G.Hansen There is no debate about losing at the poker table. Officially, he is the player with the most losses at the table.

Holder of one WSOP bracelet and three WPT event titles, Denmark's Gus Hansen is clearly one of the most famous and successful poker players not only in Denmark, but also in Europe. He has won at least $12 million in his career, and is one of the most successful poker players in the world. live tournamentsnot to mention private games or unaccounted tournaments. 

Despite his great success at the poker table, Hansen is also facing significant financial problems. The main reason for this is the extraordinary losses he has made over live cash games. Often visiting a prestigious Bobby's RoomAt the Bellagio in Las Vegas, where the top players play for the highest stakes, a man lost a considerable fortune. And his losses on the Full Tilt Poker platform alone are estimated at around $21 million. 

Great Dane - Hansen, as he is nicknamed, recently gave an interview in which he revealed why his losses are so high. "If you look at my tables choice, it would probably be the worst you've ever seen." The Danish poker player also blamed his stubbornness, which he said led to a foolish ambition to try to prove something, while a host of other additional factors also contributed and hindered his performance. At the end of the interview, however, Hansen tipped his hat to his rivals and said that you also need to be honest and accept when others are outperforming you in terms of ability, or even surpassing you. 

Chun Lei Zhou - over 10 million $ Chun Lei Zhou

Better known by his pseudonym "SamRostan", in the poker world C.Lei Zhou is more or less an average figure. Although he has competed and performed well in a number of tournaments, no one would classify him as one of the best, elite players. This is partly because, according to the statistics, at least officially, he is one of the top five louder in online poker.

And that hasn't always been the case. In 2016, C.Lei Zhou played 166 226 handus or around 455 per day. He is one of the most active poker players online, so it's no surprise that his poker winnings in 2016 were €748k. He was ranked 3rd in the world in terms of money won.

It's becoming a bit of a trend, isn't it? The players who win big are also among the people who lose big. C.Lei Zhou has played with several different accounts on the PokerStars platform. The profile "Patpatman" has lost 2.06 million. The "Patpatpanda" profile on Full Tilt has won $2.06 million. Patpatpatpanda has a total of USD 6.6 million. The latter platform has losses of around USD 10 million.

Despite the major setbacks, Lei Zhou's passion for poker seems to be undiminished. Another interesting nuance is that big losses have not made it easy for C.Lei Zhou bullyin'amu player. He remains perhaps the hardest poker player to break. 

Viktor Blom - 7.5 million $ 

The final member of our list, Viktor Blom of Sweden, broke into the poker world at the age of just 20 - quite young compared to the other top players. As time has shown, age is no barrier, and Blom was at one point the biggest wunderkind in poker. His famous benefit, the likes of which no one has ever seen before, is etched in the minds of many online poker in the world. At one point, he was playing on nine tables (nine-tabling), where the stakes were $500/1000, and where such greats as P.Ivey, P.Antonius and T.Dwan were seated.

At the age of just 15, Blom had already earned around $300,000 from poker online. His biggest successes continued to come online, where he won €1.7 million in two weeks at the age of just 18. The Swede then switched to Full Tilt, where he continued his dominance until he met an American Stinger88 - Bryan Heistings. Five hours of play heads-up 500/1000$ Blom lost around $4 million in the Omaha pot-limit. 

It is said that after this episode, the Swede became psychologically unstable and did not play poker professionally online for a couple of months. 

But his gaming history is full of impressive highs and lows. Once upon a time, this guy had the courage to challenge one of the best players of all time - Mr Ivey. After the match, the Swede said that Ivey was the strongest opponent he had ever played against. The American emptied his wallet of three million dollars. 

However, the Swede should not be discouraged, as his opponents fear him much more than any other player on the internet. Isildur1 A player using an alias had to vent his frustration when it was revealed that the man who beat him, B. Hastings, and several other poker pros had shared information with each other about Isildur1 hand'sus. 30,000 accumulated hands database, they have inevitably gained a significant advantage. Although the gains take away Full Tilt The platform could not pay for it, but the main initiator of the information sharing lost his privileges (albeit temporarily) through Full Tilt.