Speaking of the biggest losses – this article will be dedicated to them. If you think your failures are worth sadness and self-pity, you will definitely lift your spirits by learning how much people have lost at the poker table!
P.S. – all losses reach seven-figure sums.
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Patrik Antonius – $4 million
This Finn is well known in the poker world. In fact, before becoming a poker player, P. Antonius was also a model, tennis player, and coach. However, his passion for poker triumphed, and he became a very recognizable face in WSOP, WPT, and EPT tournaments.
This man, born in Finland, burst onto the poker scene in 2005 and in December of the same year, he took second place in the WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic tournament in Las Vegas, winning a modest sum of $1.05 million.
Throughout his career, P. Antonius has won somewhere between 11.5 and 12 million euros. Best known as a heads-up specialist, he spent most of his time outside of tournaments on the Full Tilt Poker platform, where he was the highest-earning player in 2009. However, there is a saying – “The higher you rise, the harder you fall.” And the very next year, a dark period came in P. Antonius's poker career. In 12 months, he managed to lose $4,000,000. In an interview, the player stated that an unexpected back injury completely disrupted his concentration, and as a result, he couldn't play well. Excuses? Maybe not, because as soon as his health improved, P. Antonius's results returned to their previous form.
An interesting fact – despite losing four million dollars in a year, P. Antonius holds the record for the largest online prize pot. Playing on Full Tilt against another professional poker player, Viktor Blom (Isildur1), the Finn scooped a monstrous prize pool of $1.356 million.
So, it can definitely be said that his gaming history is like a roller coaster!
Guy Laliberte – >$30 million
It may seem like a cosmic sum to ordinary mortals, but not to Canadian billionaire G. Laliberte. This Quebec-born businessman is the founder of the legendary Cirque du Soleil and ranks 15th on the list of the richest Canadians. Many may also remember him for being the first Canadian space tourist, flying there in September 2009 and spending 10 and a half hours in space. Besides being a successful businessman, the man also has quite good poker skills.
The business titan appeared in the poker arena around 2006 and immediately became a participant in the WPT tournament at the legendary Bellagio casino in Las Vegas, where he won nearly $0.7 million. And although compared to his wealth, this is not a lot of money, in the poker world, such a prize is truly impressive.
The man continued to participate in tournaments periodically but spent most of his time in the most expensive Full Tilt poker rooms (High Stakes). Throughout his career, G. Laliberte has won a little over $2.5 million. Not bad, right?
But how does such a win look when you find out that through the Full Tilt platform, the Canadian billionaire bled about $30-31 million? Somewhat amusingly, the man lost with no less than six different accounts. However, the businessman claims that a group of cheaters conspired against him, and he simply acted foolishly, repeatedly falling into the same traps and agreeing to play for huge sums.
Andy Beal – at least $20 million
If you think G. Laliberte is one of the most careless and unlucky poker players in the world, then A. Beal – an even richer businessman whose losses should be even greater than our previously mentioned Canadian, but officially amount to about $16-17 million.
However, if you didn't know this fact, A. Beal's biography might suggest to you that he could be a very successful poker player. Daniel Andrew Beal – the head of Beal Bank, businessman, investor, and talented mathematician. In the world of mathematics, he is quite well known for creating Beal's conjecture – a generalization of Fermat's Last Theorem, for the proof or disproof of which he promised no less than $1 million.
The man's wealth is estimated at around $9.5 billion, so tens of millions lost in poker are just a drop in the ocean.
Nevertheless, the numbers are truly staggering. In the poker world, A. Beal is nicknamed The Professor, The Banker, The Suicide King. The financial market giant became most famous in the poker world when, between 2001 and 2004, he played a series of very expensive (high stakes) games against the best poker players in the world at the time, whom the media nicknamed “The Corporation.” The stakes at this table? No less than $50,000/100,000.
As a mathematician, A. Beal certainly didn't disappoint, and in May 2004, he won one of the largest hands in poker history – $11.7 million, shaming the world's most famous poker players and tarnishing their reputations.
However, “The Corporation” wanted revenge, and the games continued. By around February 2006, the businessman had a $3.3 million loss. Then A. Beal took a week off and returned to destroy all his opponents, and after a few days, he went from a few million dollars in losses to almost fourteen million dollars in profit. Then “The Corporation” sent their most powerful weapon – P. Ivey. The poker Tiger Woods impressively wrapped up the business titan and won $16.6 million in three days.
Phil Ivey vs Andy Beal!
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So that would be A. Beal's story. But it doesn't end there. Since we are talking about private games, the data cannot be verified, but sources claim that A. Beal has lost at least $30-40 million playing at home. Other billionaires and Hollywood celebrities (e.g., former Spider-Man actor T. Maguire) would sit at the table with him.
Phil Ivey – $5-6 million
There is no way to become better at something than to constantly improve, learn, train, and test yourself in practice. P. Ivey is considered perhaps the best poker player of all time
And such a label stuck to the man not by accident. A player who has tasted a lot of professional poker bread for a very long time, according to calculations, should have accumulated wealth exceeding 100 million USD mainly from gambling. And although he single-handedly restored a good name to professional poker players worldwide after defeating billionaire A. Beal in mathematics for three consecutive days, Phil Ivey has certainly experienced his share of failures playing poker.
Holder of ten WSOP bracelets, WPT champion, and member of the Poker Hall of Fame, American P. Ivey has had some truly dark streaks in his career. In 2014 and 2015, he was the poker player who lost the most money online worldwide!
Having played hundreds, if not thousands, of unsuccessful sessions in a row, P. Ivey lost 5.1 million USD in just that two-year period. It's not every day you see someone titled as one of the best poker players in the world topping the list of the biggest losers.
Gus Hansen – at least $22 million
For some reason, this is not the first and not the last representative of Scandinavian countries on this list. Although the classification of Denmark as part of Scandinavia is debatable, there is no debate about the professional poker player G. Hansen's losses at the poker table. Officially, he is the player who has lost the most at the table.
Holder of one WSOP bracelet, three WPT event titles, Dane Gus Hansen is unequivocally one of the most famous and successful poker players not only in Denmark but in all of Europe. Over his career, the man has won at least 12 million USD in live tournaments, not to mention private games or unrecorded tournaments.
Despite his immense success at the poker table, G. Hansen faces significant financial problems. The main reason for this is the extraordinarily large losses in live cash games. Frequently visiting the prestigious Bobby's Room in the Bellagio casino in Las Vegas, where the best players play for the highest stakes, the man lost a considerable fortune. And through the Full Tilt Poker platform alone, his losses amount to approximately 21 million USD.
The Great Dane – as G. Hansen is nicknamed – recently gave an interview in which he revealed why his losses are so significant. “If you evaluated my table selection, it would probably be the worst you've ever seen.” The Danish poker player also blamed his stubbornness, which, according to him, led to foolish ambitions to prove something, and a multitude of other additional factors also contributed and hindered good results. However, at the end of the interview, G. Hansen tipped his hat to his opponents and said that one must also be honest and acknowledge when others catch up to you in skills or even surpass 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 a mid-level figure. Although he has participated in and performed successfully in several tournaments, no one would classify him among the best, elite players. This is partly because, according to statistics, at least officially, he is one of the top five biggest losers in online poker.
But it wasn't always this way. In 2016, C. Lei Zhou played 166,226 hands or about 455 per day. He is one of the most active online poker players, so it's no surprise that in 2016 his poker winnings were 748 thousand USD, ranking him 3rd in the world by money won.
This is becoming somewhat of a trend, isn't it? Players who win a lot are also among the biggest losers. C. Lei Zhou played on the PokerStars platform with several different accounts. The profile “Patpatman” has lost 2.06 million USD, and the Full Tilt profile “Patpatpanda” – 2.6 million USD. On the latter platform, losses amount to about 10 million USD.
Despite significant failures, it seems that C. Lei Zhou's passion for poker does not fade. Another interesting nuance – large losses have not turned C. Lei Zhou into an easily bullied player. He remains one of the hardest poker players to break.
Viktor Blom – $7.5 million
The last member of our list – Swede Viktor Blom – burst into the poker world at just 20 years old – quite young compared to other top players. As time showed, age was not an obstacle, and V. Blom at one point amazed everyone as the greatest poker prodigy. Many remember his famous performance, the likes of which no one has seen in the online poker world. At one point, he played at nine tables simultaneously (nine-tabling), with stakes of $500/1000, against such giants as P. Ivey, P. Antonius, and T. Dwan.
At just 15, V. Blom had already earned about 300 thousand dollars from online poker. He continued to show his greatest success playing online, where within two weeks, at just 18, he won 1.7 million USD. Then the Swede moved to the Full Tilt platform, where he continued his dominance until he faced American Stinger88 – Brian Hastings. Playing heads-up 500/1000$ pot-limit Omaha for five hours, V. Blom lost about four million dollars.
It is said that after this episode, the Swede broke down psychologically and did not play professional online poker for a couple of months.
However, his gaming history is full of impressive highs and lows. At one point, this guy had the courage to challenge one of the best players of all time – P. Ivey. After the competition, the Swede said that Ivey was the strongest opponent he had ever played against. The American emptied the Scandinavian's wallet by three million dollars.
Nevertheless, the Swede should not hang his head, as opponents fear him much more than many other online players. The player known by the nickname Isildur1 had to swallow his pride when it was revealed that B. Hastings and several other poker professionals who defeated him were sharing information about Isildur1's hands. By accumulating a database of 30 thousand hands, they inevitably gained a significant advantage. Although winnings cannot be taken away…Full Tilt platform was not responsible for this, but the main information-sharing initiator lost their privileges (albeit temporarily) through Full Tilt.
