When the World Series of Poker is in town, the hundreds of millions dollars up for grabs in the weeks-long tournament series isn’t the only money changing hands. With so many top level poker players and tourists in town the Rio, and other bigger casinos on the Las Vegas Strip, typically spread huge cash games, some at astronomical stakes. This year there was very little fanfare surrounding these games, until a gossip thread on 2+2, followed by a Twitter picture posted by high-stakes regular Dan “Blitz” Bilzerian confirmed that the big games were going, and that they were bigger than ever.

The biggest game rumored to be taking place started around the time the high-rollers came into town for the Big One for One Drop tournament, and reportedly this game (which took place at the Aria) saw the stakes escalate from $2,000/$4,000 No Limit Holdem with an $8,000 straddle all the way up to $5,000/$10,000 NLHE with a minimum buy-in of $1,000,000! According to the 2+2 gossip the players were all businessmen, with Bilzerian the only participant who could remotely be called a poker player. Among the players rumored to be playing are Guy Laliberte and Richard Yong, both of whom cashed in the Big One for One Drop tournament.

Without Bilzerian this story would have likely remained as nothing more than NVG gossip, but several well-respected posters chimed-in saying the game was going, although details about the players involved and the stakes they were playing were scant, but thanks to a Twitter Pic posted by Bilzerian, with the simple caption of “Our poker game is officially fucking huge…”, showing $9.4 million in $100,000 Aria Chips in a single rack the game and the $5k/$10k stakes seem to be somewhat confirmed!

This isn’t the first time that stakes this high have been reported, as the Star World Casino in Macau (where many of the high-rollers that are now in Vegas regularly play) has played host to ultra-high-stakes cash games over the past few years –with players like Tom Dwan, Andrew Robl, Sam Trickett, Patrik Antonius, and Phil Ivey regularly playing.

Of course, with so much money on the line, and changing hands, it’s unlikely that we will ever know any specifics regarding these games (we’ll apparently have to wait a decade or two for some poker player to write a tell-all book on the games) but when you a see a picture of $9.4 million in a single rack of chips your imagination can start to fill in most of the gaps! When a standard three-bet is to $75,000 you know you’re playing poker for some serious stakes.

Tags: Big Games, Businessmen, Cash Game, Cash Games, Casino In Macau, Changing Hands, Fanfare, Grabs, Guy Laliberte, High Rollers, high Stakes, Poker Game, Poker Player, poker players, Richard Yong, Star World, Twitter, Vegas Strip, World Casino, World Series of Poker

This entry was posted on Friday, July 6th, 2012 at 9:40 am and is filed under Poker News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.