Dan Bilzerian – $200 Million. Bilzerian is a huge Instagram star and claims that. He is simply the biggest winner in the history of online poker tournaments, with more than $13.4 million in online cashes and counting. He's been ranked Worldwide #1 on the PocketFives Online Poker Forums and Rankings an amazing 13 times, and won a record 25 of the sites elusive Triple Crowns. Despite the Full Tilt losses, Blom came out as the biggest online poker winner of 2015. Ben 'Sauce1234' Sulsky was just behind Blom with $1.15 million in profits. Sulsky made $743,000 on Full Tilt and another $409,000 at PokerStars. Below you can get see the 10 biggest online winners of the year: 1. Viktor ‘Isildur1' Blom – $3,497,000 2.
When a game turned into a University student's obsession, he turned his passion into a job, and that work into a record-setting career. Ten years on, that career is now a life, and at 31-years-old, 888poker Ambassador Chris Moorman is already a legend, adding to it with every step forward in a game he still loves.
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'I still have that passion for the for the game, and as long as I still have that, I'll still be here,' Moorman told PokerNews from his mother's home in Brighton, UK, where he's back playing online poker and enjoying a little downtime, just a day removed from another successful run at the Barcelona, Spain stop on the European Poker Tour.
'I still get that great buzz from the game. It's obviously a different kind of buzz than it was the first time I won a tournament, but in a lot of ways I've learned to appreciate it more. I definitely appreciate that poker allows you to do things on your own time, and on your own schedule. As players, we get to travel to all these amazing places, seeing all these friends all over the world, and I really like that aspect of it. In my life, I have some friends that will stay friends no matter what changes. How close you are at the time is related only to how recently you may have seen each other, and a few months may have passed, but it's easy to renew those friendships again. You're quickly the same friends you once were, just in a different place, seeing and experiencing new things together. All this and we get to play a game for a living with the potential of enjoying a bit of luck.
'There are definitely a lot of pluses to poker. Sure, it's not as easy at it once was, but you can still make a good living, and certainly an enjoyable one. So for now, I'm still stuck on poker.'
Biggest Winner Online Poker History Sites
Moorman's track record speaks for itself. He is simply the biggest winner in the history of online poker tournaments, with more than $13.4 million in online cashes and counting. He's been ranked Worldwide #1 on the PocketFives Online Poker Forums and Rankings an amazing 13 times, and won a record 25 of the sites elusive Triple Crowns. It took him a while to get there, but he's also had some great success live, earning more than $4.4 million in live tournaments to date, with a win in the 2014 World Poker Tour LA Poker Classic Main Event for $1,015,460 marking the career breakthrough win he'd struggled for years to find.
It may seem hard to fathom, but it all started with an online, freeroll.
Moorman played competitive Bridge as a teenager and took Billiards rather seriously while an economics student at the University of Essex. In 2005, returning from a University championship pool tournament, he and his flatmates stumbled upon an ad in a student newspaper for an online, freeroll on what was then Victor Chandler Poker.
The lads made a pact: They would learn the game from the ground up together, play the freeroll on Monday nights, and no matter what happened, never make a deposit and get sucked into the world of online gambling.
'We didn't even know what poker was,' Moorman said. 'There wasn't really much going on Monday nights anyway, so all five of us decided to stay in and play every week. We looked up the rules online, but we were really just clicking buttons. We made a pact not to make a deposit because we really didn't want to be seen as gamblers. It's funny now, but at the time we thought we were all looking out for each other.'
The first few weeks, the boys busted from the freeroll with little fanfare. Things changed dramatically for Moorman when he was home for a holiday and logged on to play alone.
'I must have had the most amazing run of cards ever because I still had no idea what I was doing, but I came second for a few hundred dollars,' he said.
Moorman tried to spin it up playing low stakes sit-n-go's with mostly break even results before he discovered the $.05/$.10 cash games on the site. The misguided strategy of pushing all in every hand worked, until it didn't, with Moorman picking up $.15 in blinds time after time until someone picked up queens or better and called to bust him.
'I just thought it was rigged,' Moorman said. 'The truth is, I just wasn't very good.'
'I must have had the most amazing run of cards ever because I still had no idea what I was doing.'
Down to his last $25, Moorman let it ride in a single Sit and Go. Online poker's biggest winner was a simple turn of the cards from never having been, but fate had different plans. Moorman won, and was back to the few hundred he'd started with. He took a week's break from the game and returned with a new plan.
'I regrouped, came back and realized what I was doing wrong,' he said. Moorman focused on cash games, developing a relatively tight and effective strategy for a time in the history of online poker when he admits it may have been harder to lose than win. He'd hunt bonuses on different online sites, but for the most part, the cash games on Victor Chandler Poker were his bread and butter, and soon they would consume him.
'At first, I just thought it was really fun, and the fact you could make some money playing a card game was one of the coolest things ever,' Moorman said. 'My dream job had always been a video game tester, writing for magazine or something like that. I was always really into games. The idea that you could play a card game where you could make money, play a few hours and you'd walk out with a few hundred dollars, it was groundbreaking for me. I wouldn't say it was an addiction because it eventually became a job for me, but it was definitely an obsession. I was hooked straight away.'
It got to the point where Moorman figured he could make as much, or more, playing poker than at the summer laminating job he'd held in between his first two years at school. In between his second and final year, he weaved a tangled web of lies to his family, convincing them he was staying back at school to take a summer job at a local shop, only to be playing poker all day and watching the Ashes cricket matches with friends at night.
He did better than expected over the next few months, moving up in stakes to the $1/$2 cash games, and after meeting poker mentors David Gent and Paul Foltyn, he opened up his game and developed a more aggressive style with a bigger win rate.
'Back then the games were just so soft, it was easy,' Moorman explained. 'Running bad meant booking a small loss or only breaking even. It's not like today where a bad session means actually losing money, you don't win every time you play and it's really hard to win if you're not playing your A-game.'
In between hands, Moorman still found a way to graduate from the University of Essex with an economics degree, but knowing his immediate future lay in playing cards, he had to come clean to his parents about what he'd been up to.
'At first, when I told my mom, she still didn't get it,' Moorman said. 'She thought people were chasing me down dark alleyways with guns. My dad understood better. He had played cards and knew it was possible to have an edge. He knew it was a skill game.'
After Moorman showed his father the state of his finances, the fact he'd already paid off his student loans and had built some savings in the bank, they struck a deal. Moorman would have six months to prove he could make a sustainable living playing poker.
'I had to make it work in six months,' he explained. 'I had this taste of what life could be like and it felt so close, so I put everything I had into those six months. I had friends who wanted to go out on a Friday night, but not me, I was staying home and playing, waiting for all the drunks to come home and spew off their money. In the end, I did much better than I thought I would.'
After the six months were done, Moorman pushed his bankroll up close to six figures, and instead of forcing him to go out and get another job, Moorman's father wanted his son to teach him how he did it.
Moorman's burgeoning career as a poker pro had taken off, and it wasn't long before changes at Victor Chandler forced his migration over to bigger sites like Full Tilt and PokerStars. Forced to wait for a friend's help in setting up PokerTracker software, and faced with the reality the games were tougher on these newer and more popular sites, Moorman decided to play a few Sunday tournaments, and the rest, as they say, is history.
'I made fifth in a Sunday tournament on Full Tilt for $13,000 and I realised that everyone playing in these tournaments was even worse than in the cash games,' he said. 'When I first started winning playing cash, I would have a good session, make $1,000, and buy a new TV or something. It was exciting, but after a while, I had bought everything I was going to buy, and the excitement wore off. It was just money going into the bank. Tournaments brought a new adrenaline rush, and then I discovered Pocket Fives and became obsessed with moving up the rankings.'
For Moorman, it wasn't about the money, the titles or the accolades. It was about the connections. The further he moved up the rankings, the closer he came to some of the names he'd seen as consistent winners online. Once he crept up close behind them, it seemed less daunting to contact that player to talk about poker, see how they felt about the game, and maybe gleam something from them.
'Back then everyone was trying new stuff,' he said. 'The game hadn't been solved or anything like that. It was really new to everyone and most people were willing to talk and try to learn from other people who may have a different take on the game.'
As his network grew, so did Moorman's game, moving from a more tight-aggressive style with a few moves, to a looser and more profitable one for the time. He quickly rose up the rankings, right up to the top, and was always hungry for more.
'The top ten rankings would come out on Wednesday and every week I would be so excited to see where I was,' he said. 'It really took over my life. Everything else came second to poker. If it wasn't my job, I would have probably been considered dangerously obsessed. Looking back, it was a little extreme.'
The wins just kept on coming, and Moorman enjoyed every minute of it.
'I loved that winning feeling,' he explained. 'I would always rather win a small tournament than come third or fourth in a big tournament for more money. That's why I played seven days a week. The games were just so easy at that time, it was hard not to play. Every session I'd make a few final tables and some money. It took over my life. I really was obsessed.'
Traveling the live circuit was never his first priority, but Moorman would occasionally satellite in online and travel to different tournament destinations around the globe. Having already accomplished almost everything he could online, his focus soon shifted.
Moorman had tremendous success backing players in live and online events, right out of the gate, booking a seven-figure score when one of his horses finished second in the Main Event at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure. It wasn't long before he was backing a stable of as many as 30 players, and his own action in tournaments seemed to take a back seat to the amount he was gambling on the play of others. Moorman admits things got a little out of control.
In the PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker prior to Black Friday, he was putting so many players in the Main Event, he ran over and above the $1 million transfer limit on PokerStars, and had to borrow money elsewhere just to cover buy-ins for his players.
'When I saw I could make a million dollars in a day getting drunk on the rail while somebody else was playing, I really thought this was where it was at,' Moorman admitted. 'I was making a $100,000 every time someone busted. It was amazing, and I think I closed my eyes a little bit. I just thought everyone could win, or at least I could teach them how to. Honestly, I had made a lot of money that I really didn't know what to do with. I didn't drive, so I wasn't going to buy a car. I didn't know where I wanted to live, so I wasn't buying a house or anything. I didn't want to play the stock market, because I wasn't willing to put in the time to do the research. I just figured I knew poker, I knew who played good or bad, and I could back the one's I thought were good. It looked like easy money and the sky was the limit, especially having that big success early on. Before long, I had players in hundreds of thousands in makeup and I wasn't very good at cutting them off.'
The backing losses mounted, and so did the pressure to win a live tournament. For all the success he'd had online, Moorman just couldn't find a way to make it work live. It seemed like he was snake bitten, continually finding himself on the losing end of key pots at crucial moments, running bad, and even running late, famously showing up three hours after the restart of a World Series of Poker Europe event in London where he'd once held the chip lead, blinding off to a spot back in the pack and never finding a way to recover.
As the number of live buy-ins continued to rise, so did questions about whether or not his online skills would ever translate to the live felt, and if he would ever find a way to break through.
Black Friday hit and Moorman finally got out of a backing cycle that seemed destined to ruin him. Suddenly, the focus was back on him, and the live results began to show it.
'In 2011 I made the final table of the Aussie Millions and that year at the WSOP it seemed like I was deep in everything,' he said. 'I almost won Player of the Year and I don't even play mixed games. It was crazy.
'That year after Black Friday was a big breakthrough for me live. Before that, I was backing 30 guys and focusing on my poker seemed pointless, with all that weighing over my head. I had pretty much reached all my goals online, having reached number one on Pocket Fives. I didn't really know what was next for me. After Black Friday, I was able to just focus on myself again. I had a big year when it was just me. I didn't even change that much. Sure, I made some slight adjustments in my game, but I was really still doing similar stuff. The difference was now I was winning all ins at the crucial times instead of losing. That year gave me a lot of confidence.'
Things also changed personally for Moorman at that time. He had continued to profitably stake Jason Koon, and when Koon got heads up for a bracelet at the WSOP, Moorman turned up on the rail, meeting longtime poker agent and mutual friend Katie Lindsay for the first time. Moorman didn't get a new agent out of the meeting, but he and Lindsay did start dating.
By the time the 2014 WPT LA Poker Classic Main Event rolled around, Moorman was splitting time between Canada and Mexico to play online poker, and Los Angeles, where his relationship with Lindsay had grown to be quite serious.
'The backing thing was really a huge hit to my bankroll,' Moorman explained. 'I knew I wanted to ask her to marry me, but I wanted to be a bit more financially secure before I did it, so I was kind of waiting to book a big score before I popped the question. I had been waiting for a few months actually because I asked her dad for permission back in November and the LA Poker Classic was already in February. Her mom had kind of spilled the beans a bit when we got in a bit of a fight in December and she mentioned she might not want to leave me just yet since I'd already asked for her father's permission to marry her.
'She must have thought I'd gotten cold feet because we'd been traveling to all these exotic locations around the world that would have been the perfect places to ask, but I was really waiting until I was a little more financially secure. Then the big win in LA came, and it was perfect.'
There weeks later, he planned a surprise engagement party and finally asked. Lindsay said yes, and within months, the poker power couple made it official.
Having Lindsay in his life has forced Moorman to strike a balance between the personal and the professional. He still plays online poker, inking a deal with 888poker this summer to represent the site as an ambassador, but it is no longer the obsession it once was. He plays when he's on the road in countries where it's legal. When he's back in LA, he and Lindsay spend their time doing what you would expect a young couple to do, and that rarely includes poker.
It's an older and more mature Moorman that turns up periodically on the live tournament circuit now, or online, playing when he really feels like he wants to, and not because he has to.
'When I sat down in the High Roller in Barcelona a few days ago I was sure I was the oldest person at the table,' he said. 'Now I'm back in England playing online and with WCOOP coming up, I started to wonder how I did it before, day after day, waking up at 4 p.m. and playing until you can go to sleep at 8 a.m. The time schedule over here is brutal. So I do feel a bit older in that respect.
'I also feel a bit wiser, having been through a lot of ups and downs in poker. Now I have a lot friends who are a bit younger and it feels nice to be able to help them go through some difficult times. Now I'm the one who is older and wiser and they ask me for advice. Even so, all that experience really doesn't matter when you're on a long downswing. It still gets to you, it doesn't matter how much success you've had in past. In poker, it's all week to week. One week you can feel amazing, the next you're useless, and that never seems to go away. You just learn to tone it down a little.
'The game has changed so much over the years, and these days, I'm not always making poker my number one priority. I'm older, and I have other things going on in my life, so I can't put as much time towards the game as is ideally best. I have to use the time I can spend on the game wisely, not waste it, and understand that it's hard to go through a stretch where you're not not winning and you start thinking maybe it's time to do something else. Then you win and you suddenly think you're invincible again. None of it's real, but it's easy to buy in to, especially as you get older. There are many sports where it's easy to see your time is done, when you physically can't do the same things you once did after you hit a certain age. That's not really the case in poker. You can be successful when you're much older, even when it's hard to find as much time to play. You can still have the the edge you gain from all that experience, the trick is to use that as an advantage.'
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Poker has evolved into one of the most popular card games of all time. While it was earlier primarily played for recreational purposes amongst friends, it is now a full-blooded competitive sport and has also emerged as the biggest form of gambling all over the world.
The World Series Of Poker has taken the ‘sport' to the next level, with a main event held every year, along with several smaller tournaments, promising millions of dollars to potential winners. The WSOP has created many instant millionaires and has inspired thousands of players from around the world to take up Poker professionally.
Texas Hold 'em is undoubtedly the most popular Poker variant, and majority of the biggest winners in history have become rich while playing that.
- Did you know that the total prize pool for the 2012 WSOP Event crossed the $ 80 million mark ?
- Can you believe that Antonio Esfandiari pocketed more than $18 million by winning just one Poker event ?
- Ever wondered who are the biggest winners in Poker history ?
- Do you want to be inspired by stories of professionals overcoming all odds to win mega sums of money ?
Well fret not, as we have compiled a definitive list of the top 10 biggest single event Poker winners to inspire you.
1. Antonio Esfandiari – 18.3 Million
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0RPJ8Gi3Jg
Nationality : Iran
Winning Amount : 18,346,673
Total Prize Pool : $42.6 million
Date : 3rd July 2012
Event : 2012 WSOP Event #55 – The Big One For One Drop
Aptly nicknamed ‘The Magician' , Antonio Esfandiari is one of the most well known Poker players in the world, and for a valid reason. Antonio managed to win the largest ever cash prize for one Poker tournament when he pocketed a staggering $18.3 million at the 2012 WSOP The Big One For One Drop event, which was held to benefit the One Drop Foundation. Not only that, Antonio is actually a former professional magician, widely known for his unusual tricks with poker chips.
The event had a huge total prize pool of $42.6 million, and even the runner up received a cool $10.1 million, not the worst way to lose is it ? The event saw more than 48 millionaires try their luck, including 28 professional Poker players and some of the very best in the business participated as well.
2. Daniel Colman – $15.3 Million
Nationality : USA
Winning Amount : $15,306,668
Total Prize Pool : $37.3 Million
Date : 29th June 2014
Event : 2014 WSOP Event #57 – The Big One For One Drop
23 year old Dan Colman overcame 41 other professional Poker players to take home a staggering winning prize of $15.3 million, in June 2014. This was the second largest sum of money ever won by a single player in a Poker tournament. He also became popular on social media for showing absolutely no signs of joy after winning the massive amount. Ace of spades casino party hire leeds airport.
Famous as an online Poker professional, Colman trusted his guts and brought his skill set to the actual tables at the 2014 WSOP – The Big One For One Drop event, a charity organization, which eventually managed to raise $4.6 million to provide clean water in developing countries. The total prize pool of this event was #37.3 Million.
It was fate that led Colman to that day, as back in 2012 he had actually contemplated leaving Poker for good and applying for college. However he messed up his applications and eventually decided to give Poker another shot.
3. Elton Tsang – $12.2 Million
Nationality : China
Winning Amount : $12,248,912
Total Prize Pool : $27.4 Million
Date : 29th October 2016
Event : 2016 Monte-Carlo One Drop Extravaganza
Chinese professional Poker player Elton Tsang made the world sit up and notice when he bagged the third largest cash prize in a single Poker tournament, and the largest cash prize awarded in a Poker tournament held outside the USA, when he won a mammoth $12.2 million at the 2016 Monte-Carlo One Drop Extravaganza.
Born in Canada, Tsang is currently based in Hong Kong, and has been using his newly acquired wealth to accumulate property and other investments. He defeated 25 other players on his way to winning the big tournament, which had a total prize pool of $27 million, with each player buying in with $1million each.
4. Jamie Gold – $12 Million
In blackjack what does insurance mean. Nationality : USA
Winning Amount : $12,000,000
Total Prize Pool : $82.5 Million
Date : 29th July 2006
Event : 2006 WSOP Main Event #39
The current president of production of the entertainment company Buzznation, Jamie Gold gained worldwide stardom for his brilliant win at the 2006 WSOP Main Event.
Gold was only one out of a staggering 8773 different players who had purchased the buy in for the event, with the buy-in fixed at $10,000. This led to the largest ever prize pool in Poker history with a staggering total pool of $82.5 million. The prize money was distributed among the top 873 players (top 10%), with the highest amount being $12 million and the lowest amount being $14,597.
Jamie was notorious for his table antics which included showing his opponents some of his cards, and even mumbling strange things while playing, which had almost got him banned several times.
5. Martin Jacobsen – $10 Million
Nationality : Sweden
Winning Amount : $10,000,000
Total Prize Pool : $62.8 Million
Date : 14th July 2014
Event : 2014 WSOP Main Event
Swedish professional Poker player Martin Jacobsen won the 5th largest single event prize money when he bagged a cool $10 million after winning the 2014 WSOP main event. Born in Sweden but currently residing in London, Jacobsen attained instant stardom following his win.
His win was all the more remarkable because on the second day of the tournament, he actually was placed below the third shortest stack of chips, and managed to make a remarkable turnaround to finish second in the table on the second day. By the third day, he was well in the lead and ended up winning the grand prize. He was widely praised for his gutsy bet-sizing and his impeccable timing, 2 key reasons for his huge victory.
6. Peter Eastgate – $ 9.1 Million
Nationality : Denmark
Winning Amount : $9,152,416
Total Prize Pool : $64.3 Million
Date : 3rd July 2008
Event : 2008 WSOP Main Event
Peter Eastgate, at that time, became the youngest ever player to win a World Series Of Poker Main Event, aged just 22 when he won $9.1 Million in July 2008. With a buy-in of $10,000 , Peter managed to beat scores of other fancied competitors on his way to winning the big one.
The final table lasted two days, with 274 hands taking place over a playing time of more than 15 hours, and at the end of the grueling session, Eastgate finally managed to defeat the experienced Ivan Demidov to win the title.
Having initially qualified for the main event through Ladbrokes' website, his travel to Vegas for the event was also sponsored by the betting firm, and he was registered as part of Team Ladbrokes.
Eastgate also decided to eventually auction off his WSOP Gold Bracelet, with the amount of $147,000 being donated to UNICEF.
7. Jonathan Duhamel – $8.9 Million
Nationality : Canada
Winning Amount : $8,944,310
Total Prize Pool : $68.7 Million
Date : 9th November 2010
Event : 2010 WSOP Main Event
In the second largest Poker event ever held, more than 7300 different players registered for a shot at a mega winning prize, each with a $10,000 buy in which took the total prize pool of the event to an unbelievable $68.7 Million, the second highest of all time.
After 4 long months of intense poker sessions, a champion was finally crowned in November 2010, as Jonathan Duhamel emerged as the winner of the 2010 WSOP Main Event and won a staggering amount of $8.9 Million.
Duhamel played brilliantly and was pretty much in the lead throughout the event, never looking like slowing down. With his win he became the first Canadian ever to win a WSOP Gold Bracelet, and also donated $100,000 to the Canadian Children's Foundation, which was the largest single donation the charity organization ever received.
8. Pius Heinz – $8.7 Million
Nationality : Germany
Winning Amount : $ 8,711,956
Total Prize Pool : $64.5 Million
Date : 9th November 2011
Event : 2011 WSOP Main Event
Pius Heinz became the first ever player from Germany to win Poker's biggest prize when he won the 2011 WSOP Main Event, at the age of just 22. The Cologne born player took home a mammoth $8.7 million after overcoming 6865 different players in this mega event.
Players from over 85 different countries paid the $10,000 buy in fee for this event, taking the total tournament prize pool to $64.5 million.
The final table session lasted two days and Heinz was widely appreciated for his masterful strategies while playing. Among the final 9 players on the final table, Heinz ranked 7th in terms of chips, and still managed to turn it all around and make a remarkable comeback to win against all odds.
The 2011 WSOP Main Event was the most watched Poker event in history, with people in more than 135 countries tuning in to catch the action live.
9. Joe Cada – $ 8.54 Million
Nationality : USA
Winning Amount : $ 8,547,042
Total Prize Pool : $ 61 Million
Date : 9th November 2009
Event : 2009 WSOP Main Event
Joe Cada became the youngest ever WSOP Main Event winner when he won the 2009 event at the age of just 21, which is literally the age limit for gambling in the USA.
The youngster overcame 6494 other competitors on his way to winning $8.5 million, with the buy in for the tournament set at $10,000, taking the total prize money pool to $61 million. A total of 87 hands were played before Cada managed to defeat heavily fancied Darvin Moon, who still took home more than $5.1 million in winnings.
Even before his mammoth win on the final table, Cada had already been awarded a $1 million contract by PokerStars, a company which sponsored his accommodation as well as a percentage of his buy-ins.
Apart from Poker, Cada is also a professional indoor soccer player. Gambling runs in his family as his mother is a former blackjack dealer.
10. Greg Merson – $8.52 Million
Nationality : USA
Winning Amount : $ 8,527,982
Total Prize Pool : $62 Million
Date : 9th October 2012
Event : 2012 WSOP Main Event #61
American professional Greg Merson won an incredible $8.52 million when he overcame thousands of other players to capture the 2012 WSOP Bracelet.
With a final hand consisting of almost 400 hands, one of the most thrilling finales of recent times culminated in Merson's victory, with runner up Jesse Sylvia also taking home a cool $5.29 million.
Formerly a drug addict, Merson's story is inspiring as he overcame a lot of financial and psychological hurdles to reach where he is now. He was even ranked as 2012's WSOP Player Of The Year, after adding the $10,000 No-Limit Texas Hold 'em to his title as well.
11. Ryan Riess – $8.3 Million
Nationality : USA
Winning Amount : $ 8,359,531
Total Prize Pool : $59.7 Million
Date : 9th 05th November 2013
Event : 2013 WSOP Main Event #62
The then 23 year old Ryan Reiss shocked the Poker World when he finally managed to beat the heavy favourite Jay Farber at the 2013 WSOP Main Event, to take home a stunning winning amount of $8.3 million. The runner up also took home a huge sum of $5.1 million.
The tournament, which begun back in July, saw a total 6352 Poker players trying their luck out. That number included many poker legends and favourites from around the globe. Reiss was considered as just another young rookie in the game. However, after the first 7 days he emerged as one of the November 9, with the 5th largest stack going into the final round of the tournament.
Reiss gained widespread respect for his gesture of immediately acknowledging the runner up Farber, despite the whole crowd chanting his name wildly.
12. Jerry Yang – $8.25 Million
Nationality : Laos
Winning Amount : $ 8,250,000
Total Prize Pool : $59.78 Million
Date : 17th July 2007
Event : 38th WSOP Main Event 2007
Asian poker legend Jerry Yang enhanced his reputation as one of the best ever with a huge victory at the 2007 WSOP Main Event, when he outsmarted 6358 other entrants on his way to winning a mega prize of $8.25 Million. Already 40 years old during his win, Yang was one of the more experienced players on the card in Vegas.
Biggest Poker Tournament
The buy-in for the tournament was set at $10,000, with more than 6000 entrants buying in, leading to a huge prize pool of $59.7 million. Yang donated 10% of his winnings to various charities and also revealed his plans of sending all 6 of his children to the best universities and set them up for life.
