The biggest ever pot in the history of online poker, standing at a world-beating $6.47 billion, has just been won on PokerStars, but before you spit that sip of coffee back out through your nose and all over the curtains, please be advised this was a play-money pot.
Yes, welcome to the curious, twilight world of the play-money “high stakes” tables, which have inexplicably exploded this week.
The PokerStars Blog reports that five new entries to the all-time Top Ten play-money pots have occurred within the last seven days alone, with the new record beating the previous one by more than one billion.
Strangely enough it involved former World Champion Chris Moneymaker, who, we hope, is merely fulfilling his contractual obligations to PokerStars and has not been permanently reduced to playing at the play money tables.
Explosive River
The game was No Limit Hold’em; the place, the new 10M/20M tables on PokerStars; the stakes, “fun.” Here’s how the action went down: Italian player “viziato1991” min-raised on the button; “MoXpade” re-popped it to 140 million, and Moneymaker got out of the way (OK, so he was only indirectly involved in the hand.) Viziato1991 made the call and we saw a flop of 8sTdJs.
Next, the intrepid MoXpade led out for 193 million and viziato1991, again, made the call, while both players checked the 7d on the turn. The river brought an explosive 9s, putting a straight on the board and completing a possible spade flush. Sure enough, all hell broke loose. MoXpade lead out for 677 million, and viziato1991 wasted no time in jamming for 3 billion.
MoXpade had “only” 2.2 billion in chips and made a crying call, with AcQs for an improved straight, while viziato1991 showed the spade flush with 4-6.
Biggest Real-Money Pot
Viziato1991 was not done yet, though, and was clearly intent on relieving the unfortunate MoXpade of even more of his hard-earned billions. Viziato went onto win another mammoth hand from his opponent shortly after with a higher full house, this time for 4.9 billion.
This pot now ranks as the third all-time biggest pot in the history of play money. Perhaps it’s time to move up in stakes, Viziati1991…
The biggest real-money online poker pot of all time, incidentally, occurred on November 21st 2009, in the glory days of the Full Tilt nosebleeds, between Patrik Antonius and Viktor Blom, who was then in the dying phases of his anonymous Isildur1 rampage.
The pot was a whopping $1,356,947, and was won by Antonius during a game of $500-$1000 PLO. In fact, the top five biggest online pots ever all occurred within three weeks of each other, and featured just three players: Blom, Antonius and Phil Ivey, with Blom featuring in every single one.
