Poker is a game of wins and losses. As a poker player, you always sit at the poker table knowing that you might end up winning a fortune on the day or leave without much or anything at all.
We all just need luck to be on our side when we play.
Losing is a part of poker but some players who lose big. In this article, we take a look at some of the biggest losers in the poker world while playing poker.
Ben Sulsky
Ben Sulsky began competing in online freeroll tournaments with no money when he first began playing. He then went out to acquire a $3,000 bankroll and lost $1,200 in a single night. This loss affected him deeply, and he stopped playing as a result.
After two years, Sulsky returned only to lose $1,000. He then deposited $1,000 and began playing $0.10/$0.25 with bankroll management guidelines of 25-30 buy-ins. His winning run began at this time and he was better at high stakes poker and poker games in general.
He rose to become one of the greatest players in No-Limit Hold’em and Pot-Limit Omaha, but he began to have difficulty finding action as other players refused to compete with him. He won the $10,000 No-Limit Hold’em heads-up tournament at the 2013 World Series of Poker.
Sulsky is a master at online cash games. He seldom competed in live competitions. Sulsky began playing more live tournaments after the 2015 World Series of Poker. With almost $1,400,000 in wins, he finished fourth in the $100,000 One Drop Event and the $50,000 Poker Players’ Championship.
Sulsky had a fantastic year in 2012, winning roughly $4 million, but the next year was quite the reverse. In 2013, he lost virtually all of his poker earnings, resulting in a net loss of roughly $3 million in two months. That was a tough lesson to take for a man who just wanted to play poker.
Patrik Antonius
If you’ve been following high stakes poker, you’re definitely familiar with the name Patrik Antonius. He is unquestionably one of the most well-known and accomplished poker players in the poker world.
Yet, after losing a million dollars in a row, he decided to abandon online poker.
Losing $1,000,000 may appear to be a significant sum, but it isn’t in the games Patrik is used to. His choice was not based on how many buy-ins he had lost.
Instead, the Finn found that, with the development of various poker software, online poker had evolved tremendously and that it was now a whole new game.
He could have definitely kept up by learning how to utilize online poker software himself, but he believed it was best to leave the virtual feeling to others and focus his concentration on live games where there is little to no poker software needed.
Gus Hansen
Despite his stellar performance on the live tournament circuit, Gus Hansen is one of the largest losers in online high stakes games, particularly when compared to elite players.
For whatever reason, the Great Dane could never master these games, although it took him a while to (sort of) give up trying.
By 2014, his losses on Full Tilt Poker had surpassed $20 million, resulting in a very ugly graph and a difficult pill for the Dane to swallow.
He eventually gave up on online poker and concentrated his efforts on live games and high-stakes backgammon, with considerably greater success.
Paul Phua
Wei Seng “Paul” Phua is a professional poker player and a Malaysian-Chinese businessman. Paul is a casino VIP party organizer that organizes high stakes gaming in Macau on a regular basis. He apparently has a net worth of $400 million USD.
In 2006, he collaborated with Steve Wynn, who had just opened Wynn Macau. Paul was essential in the success of Wynn’s enterprises.
He began playing Texas hold’em in his forties. High stakes cash games in Las Vegas began to migrate to Macau, and major names like Phil Ivey began to play there.
By 2011, more professional poker players had begun to join the games in Macau, allowing Paul to play alongside and learn from them.
By 2011, more professional poker players had begun to join the games in Macau, allowing Paul to play alongside and learn from them. When Paul entered the 2012 World Series of Poker, he earned $1,000,000 in the Big One for One Drop event.
Paul has played little over 49,000 hands in online poker, which is around 3% of the total of hands Gus Hansen has played. Because of the tiny sample size, Paul’s defeats do not accurately represent his playing style. Paul’s current internet losses are over $4.6 million. He exemplifies how, while you might be successful, you can also be one of poker’s worst losers.
Chun Lei Zhou
Chun Lei Zhou came in third place among 2016’s largest winners with $748,018. He was one of the most active online players at the highest stakes, having played 166,226 hands.
Chun’s success is that the majority of this money was gained playing an eight-game, which is a true test for poker players.
Chun Lei’s PokerStars losses total $2.06 million. He lost $2.61 million on Full Tilt. In addition, he lost $10 million in his other Full Tilt account. His total online losses are believed to be more than $10.2 million.
While one of the accounts, Samrostan, has won $460,000 on PokerStars, it is still a long way from recouping its online losses. Despite his losses, his enthusiasm for the game and desire to develop is apparent.
Guy Laliberte
Guy Laliberté is the founder and former CEO of Cirque Du Soleil, as well as a poker player.
He helped arrange the “Big One for One Drop” tournament at the WSOP and benefited for the One Drop Foundation. Laliberté’s fortune is believed to be worth more than $2 billion.
Laliberté is thought to go by several identities online, including Lady Marmalade, Noataima, Zypherin, and Patatino. His losses from these aliases total about $26 million.
Laliberté was harmed by Full Tilt’s habit of lending large sums of money to their sponsored financiers, which he considered freerolling in games against him.
He is widely regarded as the greatest poker loss of all time and one of the biggest poker regrets in the gambling world.
