Nosebleed cash games in Macau

Poker News / Matthew Pitt / 15 November 2010 / Leave a Comment

Most people would think you had lost the plot if you decided to start a cash game with Phil Ivey, John Juanda, Chau Giang and Tom Dwan but they would certainly be calling for the men in white coats if you decided to do just that made the blinds $650/$1,300 and then increase them to $1,300/$2,600!

That is exactly what has been happening in Macau, where a number of well-known players have been taking part in the Asian Poker Tour (APT) Macau festival. Whilst the actual tournaments have been quite disappointing, due to lower than expected turnouts, the cash games that have been played are being reported on forums across the world.

Respected tournament director, Matt Savage was the first to break the news via the Two Plus Two forum, posting, "Despite the light turnout at the Asian Poker Tour Macau the cash games are some of the biggest in history as Tom Dwan, Phil Ivey, Chau Giang, and John Juanda are playing HK$5,000-10,000 with some Chinese businessmen. The game plays much bigger and there was about 40 million on the table last night when I saw the game." The current exchange rate is currently around 7.75 HK$ to one US dollar, meaning there was around $5.16m in play!

Dwan was still in the Main Event when he heard of the massive cash game developing his attention turned to that. Savage reported, "Tom Dwan made it through day one in the 5K main event but only came downstairs to play one hand 10-4 off suit in an attempt to bust and get back to the cash game but instead he doubled up and asked me to call him as soon as he was under 20 BB's. We are down to 35 players and paying 18." Dwan finally busted in 25th place.

The private cash game begun in the Hard Rock Casino and last 20 hours in total before the players agreed to go on a break and switch to the Starworld Casino, which incidentally is the only casino in Macau that is allowed to spread Pot Limit Omaha, where the poker superstars have reportedly been asked to play for stakes of HK$10,000 and HK$20,000 by the Hong Kong businessmen who started the game.

None of the players involved have mentioned this in their tweets or blogs but once they return to home soil I am sure we will here much more about the battles at the felt. News filtering from the "Poker King" poker room is that Ivey is up HK$15,000,000, Dwan HK$4,000,000 and Juanda lost around HL$1,500,000 in the last session but was massively in profit before he left town. Dwan is also reported to have won the biggest pot of the night, which tipped the scales between HK$16,000,000 and HK$20,000,000.

In the photo that accompanies this piece, you can see Juanda sitting with a huge pile of chips. The "normal" sized chips are HK$100,000 each whilst the oversized round chips are HK$1,000,000. It would be amazing if they switched to Pot Limit Omaha in the next session. Stay tuned to see if they do and if there are any more monster pots won and lost.