Quoclong Pham Wins Big

paigow-pokerIt would be fair to say that the relatively sedate game of Pai Gow Poker, a.k.a. Double Hand Poker, rarely attracts headlines. However, so-called Face Up Pai Gow Poker, which is played with a fully-exposed dealer hand, did so at Harrah’s Las Vegas Casino & Hotel in November, 2021.

Professional player Quoclong Pham, from Vancouver, Washington, was visiting Sin City for business and pleasure and, early in his gambling session, turned up the third highest possible hand in the game. His combined seven-card straight flush – that is, seven consecutive cards of the same suit, one of which was substituted with a ‘semi wild’ joker, as allowed by the rules of the game – was sufficient to win the ‘Mega Progressive Jackpot’ of $1,393,273. Fortunately, Pham was shrewd enough to invest an additional $5 on a side bet that allowed him to qualify for the Mega Progressive Jackpot.

The newly-made millionaire reportedly had no extravagant plans for spending his winnings and intended to put the money away for a rainy day. Understandably non-plussed by the whole affair, Pham said, ‘It’s just surreal. It’ll hit me tomorrow once it hits the account.’

Coincidentally, Pham was not the only lucky gambler to become an instant millionaire. Earlier the same day, at Circa Resort & Casino in Downtown Las Vegas, ‘Nikki’, from Southern California, won a progressive jackpot worth $1,075,234 jackpot on a ‘Wheel of Fortune’ slot machine.

Phil Hellmouth

phil-hellmuth-300x269Phillip ‘Phil’ Hellmouth Jr., still known to many as ‘The Poker Brat’, despite turning 55 in 2019, was born in Madison, Wisconsin. He went to college locally, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, before dropping out to focus on his poker activities. In the World Series of Poker (WSOP), Hellmouth earned his first cash as long ago as 1988, when he finished fifth in a Seven-Card Stud Split event at Binion’s, Las Vegas. However, the following year, at the age of 24, he won the WSOP $10,000 No Limit Hold’em World Championship at the same venue, making him, at the time, the youngest player to do so.

That record was beaten by Peter ‘Icegate’ Eastgate, aged 22, in 2008 and again, by Joe ‘The Kid’ Cada, aged 21, the following year, but Hellmouth still holds several WSOP records, including the most WSOP bracelets (15) and the most cashes (137). His victory in the WSOP Europe Main Event in 2012 also made him the only player ever to win the WSOP Main Event and the WSOPE Main Event. Hellmuth was inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame in 2007 and currently lies nineteenth in the all-time money list, with just shy of $23 million in live earnings.

For all his success in Texas hold’em and other poker variants, Hellmuth is still prone to foul-mouthed temper tantrums, particularly after a bad beat, and fully deserves his derogatory nickname. He was widely criticised for launching a verbal assault on James Campbell at the 2018 WSOP Main Event, simply because Campbell re-raised, all-in, after – at the time, unbeknown to Hellmuth – flopping a flush draw. As it turned out, Hellmuth folded, but Campbell failed to make his flush and lost the hand to the third player in the hand, Alex Kuzmin.

Frozen Gems Slot by Play n Go

frozen-gems-300x169Introduction

For Let It Snow from Hacksaw Gaming, players will need cold-weather gear instead of board shorts and flip-flops. In a cold, snowy mountain covered with pines, a wardrobe change is prompted by the change of environment from the tropical island to the cold mountain.

Metrics

We’re looking at a variance rating between medium and high. This slot can turn grinding sessions into blockbuster payouts in an instant. 96.36 % is the RTP and 10,000x is the top payout.

Playing cards from 10 to Ace represent the low-value symbols here. A premium icon is a gemstone in a green, red, purple or orange colour.

W is also the Wild, which can substitute for all symbols to form a winning combination. Also, if five lines are selected, the wager will be multiplied by 2.5 times. For the free spins round to be activated, there must be Scatters on the reels.

Features

You’ll need free spins, expanding reels, and multipliers if you want to get close to that top 10,000x payout. The Cascading Reels feature is activated after every winning spin, so winning icons are removed from the reels, and new symbols fill in the blanks. Each successive win in the Cascading Wins feature increases the multiplier by 1x.

There are 2x and 3x Splitting Scatters, which split the symbols on the reels beneath, and the frozen horizontal Bonus Wheel Symbols, which represent Bonus Wilds. In splitting reels, more symbols appear on the reels, so there are more paylines. Three winning symbols or scatter symbols must land on the reels below to activate the Bonus Wheel modifiers.

Three Scatter symbols must appear simultaneously on the reels for the Frozen Spins feature, 9 free spins are awarded here, along with a 5x bet win. Free spins are awarded for every additional Scatter that lands during the feature.

In the Frozen Spins feature, any multipliers active on the spin are carried over. Each winning spin increases the win multiplier by 1x during free spins.

 

 

John Juanda

john-juandaJohnson Juanda, usually known as ‘John’ or by his nicknames, ‘J.J.’ or ‘Luckbox’, was born in Indonesia, but has resided in the United States since 1990 and is currently based in Marina del Rey, California. He currently lies fourteenth in the all-time money list, with $25.2 million in total live earnings.

Since turning professional in 1997, Juanda has won five World Series of Poker (WSOP) gold bracelets in poker variants including Texas hold’em, Omaha hold’em, stud and draw lowball, a European Poker Tour (EPT) title and numerous other tournaments worldwide. Indeed, he won his last tournament, a Triton Poker Super High Roller Series event in Budva, Montenegro – for which he collected HK$4,720,000, or $601,358 – as recently as May, 2019. His biggest payout, though, came in another event in the same series in Macau in 2017, when he claimed the first prize of HK$22,410,400, or $2,870,092, by defeating Fedor Holz heads-up.

Juanda, who turned 48 in July, 2019, has a reputation as a conservative, low-profile player and a man of few words; in fact, he is known, in some quarters, as the ‘Silent Assassin’. Nevertheless, he is one of the most successful and consistent players, online and live, of the last twenty years or so and was, quite rightly, inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame in Las Vegas in 2015. Fellow professional Daniel ‘Kid Poker’ Negreanu, who introduced Juanda at the Hall of Fame ceremony at Binion’s, once called him ‘the most underrated and neglected superstar’ in poker.