Poker's Super High Roller Events: Here To Stay?

Poker players love escalation. Whether from an inherent competitiveness or degeneracy, it seems that they are always looking to raise the stakes. But nobody could probably foresee just how quickly the ante would be upped in the game of tournament poker.

If you were to tell players a decade ago that, in a matter of years, there would be multiple $10,000 buy-in no-limit hold’em events every month, they would probably be a bit skeptical.

But if you told them that by early 2013, there will have been a $1,000,000 buy-in event, four $250,000 buy-in events, and 16 more events with buy-ins of $100,000* or higher, they would think you were downright crazy.

High Roller’s Take Off

The idea of a six figure buy-in open event has been around for a while, with the Aussie Millions hosting a $100,000 AUD buy-in tournament annually since 2006. But the whole idea of hosting multiple “Super High Roller” events every year only seemed to take off in 2011.

In that year, the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure announced it’s first $100,000 buy-in event and the Aussie Millions responded by announcing the first $250,000 buy-in event later that same month, in addition to its own $100,000 challenge.

By February, those three Super High Roller events had paid out from prize pools totaling $12.5 million dollars, and a handful of players walked away with seven-figures worth of tournament scores, including Daniel Negreanu ($1,000,000), David Benyamine ($1,145,824), Eugene Katchalov ($1,500,000), Sam Trickett ($3,018,736) and Erik Seidel ($3,114,747).

With so much money on the line and drastically smaller fields to wade through, high-stakes players were instantly hooked on the idea of the six-figure buy-in tournament and all of the adrenaline-inducing action it supplied.

“I just want to make the money bubble and play around that,” said Sam Trickett before he sat down in his first $250,000 buy-in event. “I just want to be all-in on the bubble and see what it feels like. That’s what I play poker for.”

Black Friday Setback?

It seemed that 2011 was destined to become the year of the Super High Roller.

But on April 15, the U.S. Department of Justice seized online poker’s biggest sites, and after poker’s Black Friday many thought that the Super High Rollers couldn’t possibly continue to take place at the rate they were. Many of the high stakes players took a major hit to their liquidity, with millions frozen in their accounts on. Many of the game’s biggest names were also drawing large endorsement checks from these sites, and would have to be dramatically more careful about game selection now that they didn’t have to insurance of a sizable monthly check if their time at the tables was less than lucrative. All things considered, many thought that the Super High Roller trend would be over just as soon as it had started.

This has been anything but the case, however. Despite attendance taking a dip in 2012, the Super High Roller events have endured, with established events stabilizing and even some new events announced. Since Black Friday, the Bellagio has hosted three $100,000 buy-ins as part of the World Poker Tour. The Aussie Millions has hosted four more six-figure buy-in events, with turnout staying steady year-to-year. The 2013 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Super High Roller drew a record turnout of 59 entries, building a huge $5.7 million prize pool.

The increasing use of a re-entry format, which allows players who bust to buy-in again within an allotted period, has also helped keep the prize pool numbers up.

The European Poker Tour Grand Final in Monte Carlo hosted its first ever €100,000 buy-in event in 2012, drawing 38 entrants and 7 re-entries. The event is rumored to return in 2013, although the official schedule has yet to be released.

WSOP and Others Get Into the Big Game

At the 2012 World Series of Poker, the first ever $1 million buy-in tournament took place, with 48 players posting the unheard of seven-figure sum to play the Big One For One Drop. In the end Antonio Esfandiari walked away with $18.3 million for the win, taking over the lead on the all-time tournament earnings list.

Matt Savage, the WPT’s executive tour director, says that this list might have something to do with why these mega buy-in events have withstood Black Friday.

“I think the chase for all time money leader has driven High Roller and Super High Roller fields,” Savage said. “The players that are entering these events have no fear which makes it so much fun to watch.”

In the wake of the Big One For One Drop’s success, the WSOP has announced that the 2013 schedule would feature an $111,111 buy-in event. 2012 Aussie Millions $100,000 challenge champion Dan Smith thinks that the increase in gigantic tournaments is indicative of the health of the game’s upper echelons.

“It’s not just super high roller tournaments, high-stakes poker in general is thriving,” Smith told Card Player. “On Full Tilt Poker there are three tables of $1,500-$3,000 deuce-to-seven triple draw running, and tons of $1,500-$3,000 eight-game have been running as well. In Macau there are massive games, so it makes sense that with so many people looking to play high stakes, that these Super High Roller tournaments are able to run.”

With many of poker’s biggest tours hosting six-figure buy-ins in 2013, it seems that the Super High Roller is still alive and well.

High Roller Excellence

With so much money on the line, the Super High Rollers usually attract the best of the best. But who among them has proven to be the cream of the crop so far?

Here is a look at some of the most successful players in these six-figure buy-in events, in terms of number of cashes (if tied for number cashes, the player with higher earnings will be listed higher):

Britain’s Sam Trickett has proven himself to be the most successful player in Super High Roller events so far, being tied with Dan Shak for the most cashes in six-figure-plus buy-in events with five. Shak’s impressive number of cashes has yielded just over $2 million in earnings, however, while Trickett has garnered an unbelievable $16.2 million. Now, $10.1 million of that came from Trickett’s runner-up finish in the Big One For One Drop, but even discounting that event Trickett has an incredible $6.1 million in Super High Roller event earnings since the beginning of 2011.

The former soccer professional’s track record in events with buy-ins of a quarter-million dollars or higher is particularly impressive. There have only been five open tournaments with this buy-in, and Trickett has cashed in four. Days after winning the 2011 Aussie Millions $100,000 challenge he finished runner-up in the first ever $250,000 buy-in event. In 2012 he finished second in the first ever million-dollar buy-in event as previously mention, and then followed that up with a seventh-place finish in the Macau High Stakes Challenge $2 million HKD ($257,854) buy-in event.

Rounding out his super high roller dominance, he won the 2013 Aussie Millions $250,000 challenge this January for another $2.1 million. Super High Roller events took Trickett from being a promising young talent to being the second highest earning tournament player in the history of the game in just over two years.

*This includes the Aussie Millions $100,000 challenge, which has players buy-in in Australian Dollars (AUD). This tournament has run eight times since 2006, and the exchange rate with United States Dollars (USD) has varied a great deal. For the most part, the tournament has cost around $100,000 USD to enter, but it has been as low as $67,076 USD in 2009.

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