Elite poker pros recognise that bigger is better. With more money at stake, heftier profits are on the cards. And therein lies the appeal of high roller poker tournaments for any player with an edge.
These events carry entry fees starting at $25,000, often going up to six-figures, and occasionally touching $1 million. These tournaments are not for people with faint hearts or shallow pockets.
There was once a time when the highest-priced tournament entry fees were capped at $10,000. That’s been the cost to play the World Series of Poker Main Event since 1972.
But times change, inflation rises, and the financial infrastructure of poker creates demand for tournaments your seat requires where more money. So, the potential proceeds are nosebleed high.
H2: Amateurs And Pros Go for The Gold
Amazingly, despite the dizzying costs of entry, high roller tournaments attract their share of recreational players who are long shots to win. And that is great for the game’s best poker players of all time.
Daniel Negreanu himself has always played the highest tournaments out there; for him, it’s more efficient than risking less and potentially winning less. With the amateurs in as longshots, these high roller events are especially alluring for pros.
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But that begs a question: Why would somebody with a day job put up a six-figure sum to be an underdog in a field dominated by the best-known sharks?
It is precisely because of those sharks.
Compete in a tournament where the buy-in is a daunting sum and the pro-to-amateur ratio will heavily skew in the pros’ favour. It increases the likelihood that a wealthy poker fanatic can square off in a poker hand against the Phil Iveys and Daniel Negreanus of the world.
H2: Fantasy Camp for Poker Lovers
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“Amateurs love playing against stars of the game,” said Ty Stewart, executive director of the World Series of Poker. He explained that there is a fantasy camp aspect to the high roller tournaments.
“It’s not something you’d be able to do in any other sport. In boxing, you can’t take on a heavyweight champion.”
But in poker, you can do the equivalent of that, going up against the game’s most proficient bruisers.
Recreational players, he added, “get a big kick out of beating the pros.”
Rare as that may be, sometimes it happens – with millions of dollars on the table in a high roller tournament.
H2: The Recreational Player Who Won a High Roller
Such was the case last year when Santhosh Suvarna finished first in the $250,000 No Limit Hold’em Super High Roller at the World Series of Poker.
Winning, of course, is the name of the game, but it’s not the only thing that drew him to risk a sum so high that it could have covered the down payment on a luxury condo in Vegas.
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During the tournament, he endured a roller coaster ride to his first-place prize money of more than $5 million.
Suvarna expressed his preference to play against professional poker players, even the best in the business, even if he is an underdog.
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“I love to play with Phil [Ivey],” he said. “I can learn from him.”
Suvarna, who lives in India, can then take that education to his home games, which, he insisted, are low-stakes types of poker games.
H2: Born In Melbourne
The history of high roller poker begins in Australia. In 2006, executives at Crown Casino in Melbourne came up with the audacious idea of throwing a tournament with an entry fee of AUD $100,000. They called it the Australian Poker Championship.
Poker players and poker media dubbed it the Aussie Millions.
At the time, the sum of money to get into action was so high that only 10 players had the nerve to pony up. They included Phil Ivey, Barry Greenstein, and the sports betting superstar Tony Bloom.
It was winner-take-all, and the champ was John “Luckbox” Juanda. Though nine players might not have loved dropping $100K, it did nothing to dampen their appetites for more of these big-budget tournaments.
In 2012, the Big One for One Drop had what was then a history-making buy-in of $1 million. Guy Laliberté, founder of Cirque du Soleil spearheaded the event, with a portion of the entry fees going to its namesake charity. The charitable foundation aims to provide clean drinking water in places that need it.
Antonio Esfandiari won first prize at the premiere tournament for an $18 million haul.
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In 2014, Dan Colman aced it and took home more than $15 million. Daniel Negreanu finished second that year. Initially, Daniel said he was bummed to be a runner-up.
Then he put things in perspective and realised that he should be thrilled to have won nearly $9 million – even if it meant a second-place finish.
H2: The Highest of The High
In 2019, the highest stakes tournament ever – consider it the high roller of high rollers – took place in London during the Triton Poker Super High Roller Series.
A seat in the tournament went for £1,050,000 (at the time, it was the US equivalent of about $1.4 million), and 54 contenders dug deep to buy in.
The winner was Aaron Zang, but he took home less money than the second-place finisher, Bryn Kenney (a high-roller regular who tops poker’s all-time money list).
When they got heads-up, the two poker stars negotiated an ICM chop, based on their chip counts at that time.
As a result, second-place finisher Kenney took home £16,890,509, while the actual winner left with £13,779,491.
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If anyone were upset with the outcome, you’d never know it. Nor were there complaints from the other six final table finishers, who all snagged more than $1 million each:
| Position | Player | Country | Prize (GBP) | Prize (USD) |
| 1 | Aaron Zang | China | *£13,779,491 | $16,754,497 |
| 2 | Bryn Kenney | United States | *£16,890,509 | $20,537,187 |
| 3 | Dan Smith | United States | £7,200,000 | $8,719,164 |
| 4 | Stephen Chidwick | United Kingdom | £4,410,000 | $5,340,488 |
| 5 | Vivek Rajkumar | India | £3,000,000 | $3,632,985 |
| 6 | Bill Perkins | United States | £2,200,000 | $2,664,189 |
| 7 | Alfred DeCarolis | United States | £1,720,000 | $2,082,911 |
| 8 | Timothy Adams | Canada | £1,400,000 | $1,695,393 |
Plus, a portion of the money went to charity and that makes people feel good all around.
H2: A High Rolling Future
Coming up on the buy-in busting circuit is the Super High Roller Bowl: a $100K Pot-Limit Omaha tournament at the PokerGO studio inside Aria in Las Vegas.
In case anybody wonders what’s on the cards when entering such a deep-pocketed event, PokerGO has a sign near the studio entrance.
H3: It reads: Making and Breaking Millionaires.
Succinctly put, that is what the high roller tournaments – with their giant entry fees and massive payouts – are all about. Who’s ready to buy in?
