The high-stakes cash games in Macau that featured many of poker’s biggest names have apparently wrapped up for the time being, and now questions are swirling around the final results. While a handful of media members and staff did their best to report from inside the Starworld Casino, the higher-ups made sure to keep most of the information, including some of the players’ names, confidential.
Speculation within the community has Tom “durrrr” Dwan winning as much as US $9 million against Chinese businessmen during the week-long action. None of the figures, however, have been confirmed.
For those who haven’t heard about the incredible action taking place at Macau, here’s a brief summary: During the final stages of the Asian Poker Tour (APT) Main Event, some of the world’s top poker players, including Dwan, Phil Ivey, and John Juanda, joined the regular high-stakes game in Macau with millions of dollars on the table.
APT tournament director Matt Savage broke the news of the game to poker forum TwoPlusTwo and, with the help of Poker King Club Marketing Director Stella Yeh, APT Chairman Tom Hall, and a few other sources inside the casino, was able to provide as much information regarding the game as possible in accordance with casino rules.
Playing short-handed with blinds as high as HKD $5,000/10,000, Juanda, Dwan, and Chau Giang were reportedly the big winners, while Ivey traveled back to the US “ahead an unknown amount,” according to Savage. Most of the pros left town after several long sessions, but Dwan accepted a challenge to play a Shanghai businessman for stakes higher than the casino had ever seen.
During the weekend, Yeh said Dwan originally bought in for around US $2.5 million against his opponent and proceeded to play heads-up No Limit Hold’em with blinds at HKD $30,000/60,000 (approximately US $4,000/$8,000). That’s around 10 times the stakes Dwan normally plays on Full Tilt Poker.
Reports from the inside had Dwan losing the first session by HK $20 million (US $2.58 million), but he was able to bounce back in the second marathon session. TwoPlusTwo poster “MacauPro” was providing the forum with numbers from the game and said Dwan finished up HK $68 million (US $8.76 million) in the second heads-up session. However, Dwan’s friend and former roommate David “raptor517” Benefield responded by saying, “fwiw, Tom is still down in HU.”
Dwan supposedly won close to US $2 million in the earlier short-handed games, bringing his total winnings to an estimated US $8 million to $9 million for the trip. Depending on who you talk to, though, those numbers could be poles apart.
Savage posted some final thoughts on TwoPlusTwo Monday morning: “The game broke last night after a mammoth near 48-hour session where it started 5-6 handed, was HU for a while and then others joined again at the end. The game would have broken today anyway, as some of the principals are going out of town for a week, we expect it to resume in a week or so. Ivey and Durrrr both ended up overall for the trip and sure will be looking forward to an invite back. Dwan expected to relax in Asia for a few days before heading back to the US.”
Should the action resume in Macau, Poker News Daily will continue to provide updates. Stay tuned.
I met Dwan a year and a half back at Lollapalooza and suggested that he should try Macau cuz I had just come back from there and the games were crazy. U can ship my cut on Tilt, durrrr