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.

The Longest Run In Vegas

vegas-300x152It is truly impressive to hold the longest winning streak among all of the big wins. As a result of Archie Karas’ incredible run in Las Vegas, the term ‘The Run’ has become synonymous with his journey.

The Mirage was his first stop in Vegas when Karas arrived with $50 in his pocket. In this environment, he bumped into the same poker player he had met in LA and persuaded him to stake him $10,000. With this bankroll, he played $200/$400 limit Razz and in no time his bankroll grew to $30,000. He paid $10,000 to his backer plus another $10,000 for staking him.

With only $10,000 left, Karas was confident of blowing up his bankroll. A bar was more appealing than the poker tables to him, so he decided to play pool instead. His chance meeting with a high-stakes poker player also occurred here. As soon as they started talking, the two agreed to play high stakes 9-ball pool, in which each game would be played for a $5000 wager.

This player was always referred to as Mr. X by Karas and he would never reveal his real name. In the end, Karas won hundreds of thousands of dollars playing pool. Karas continued to win, and Mr. X raised the stakes to $40,000 per game, but Karas still won.

Binion’s Horseshoe then offered poker tables for the two to play at. Additionally, Karas won $3 million here and quickly accumulated his winnings. One of Kara’s biggest strengths and weaknesses was that he was never afraid to put everything on the line. Without flinching, he was willing to stake his whole bankroll. With $4 million in winnings, he finished this marathon betting session.

As a result of his continued play in Las Vegas, he increased his bankroll within three months to $7 million. It wasn’t long before he gained a reputation as one of the most successful high-stakes poker players in Las Vegas.

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.

Daniel Colman

daniel-colman-300x300Massachusetts-born Daniel Colman currently ranks seventh on the all-time money list, with live earnings of just shy of $29 million. His position is thanks, in no small part, to the second largest payout in poker tournament history, $15,306,668, which Colman took home after winning the World Series of Poker (WSOP) ‘Big Drop for One Drop’ tournament in 2014. In fact, 2014 proved to be a seminal year for the 23-year-old Colman, who collected four titles, including the European Poker Tour (EPT) Super High Roller event in Monte Carlo and the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open in Hollywood. Nevertheless, Colman caused controversy by flatly refusing to give interviews after Big Drop for One Drop and later calling poker ‘a harmful game’.

Colman began playing poker as a 17-year-old, in online heads-up sit-and-go tournaments, where he attracted the attention of former hedge fund manager Olivier Busquet, nowadays heralded as one of the best players of that form of poker in the world, who became his sponsor. By his own admission, in 2012, Colman was on the verge of abandoning poker to return to his college studies but, having ‘messed up’ his applications, decided to give the game one last try. The following year, he became the first player of hyper-turbo poker – in which blind levels increase every three minutes or so – in online history to win over $1 million in single calendar year; in fact, in just nine months, Colman amassed a total $1,018,708, before rakeback, on the Pokerstars network.