Top Guns Fall to Stanley Choi at the Macau High Stakes Challenge

The Poker King Club in StarWorld Hotel Macau hosted the Macau High Stakes Challenge under the Chinese gambling laws. The $260,000 buy-in event some an impressive lineup of the most prominent poker players on the planet.

One of the most renowned Chinese poker rooms saw the following poker aces compete for a whopping prize pool of $23,511,128: Phil Ivey, Gus Hansen, Andrew Robl, Erik Seidel, Tom Dwan, John Juanda, Philipp Gruissem, Sam Trickett, JP Kelly, Brian Rast and Joe Hachem. However, the poker pros had to give way to Stanley Choi.

Choi overcame the challenging lineup to secure the crown and the $6,465,560 first-place reward, tenth biggest in the history of poker. Remarkably, this was Choi’s first major live tournament, and he managed to knock out all the big shots in just one day.

There were 73 players competing for the main prize, their buy-ins and a number of re-buys generated the $23 something million prize pool – a pretty good pot for a single tournament.

China gambling news report that among the big names of poker, participating in the Challenge, John Juanda managed to achieve the best results. He came in fifth place and took home %1,645,800. Sam Trickett was next in line and walked away with almost a million for his seventh place.

The tournament saw great action before leading to the final table, where Choi was joined by Tang Zheng, John Juanda, Nicholas Wong, Zhu Guan Fai, Lap Key Chan, Phil Ivey, Sam Tricket, Alan Sass, Di Van Hoang Dang, Philipp Gruissem, and JP Kelly. Every one of the finalists walked away with at least $500,000 in their pockets.

The heads-up consisted of Choi and Zhu Guan Fai, who was not too disappointed with the second place and the $4,349,735 for a day’s work.