Faded the flush
High Stakes Poker’s popularity stems in part from, well, the high stakes for which the players play and the massive pots they can produce. And there has never been a bigger pot on the show than the one featured Monday night, when Alan Keating took down a cool $1,412,500 in a single hand.
Sitting on the button, Keating simply called for $4,000 pre-flop in a double-straddled pot holding K♦-K♣ and Peter Wang raised from the big blind to $14,000 with A♠-3♠. Keating then three-bet to $69,000 and Wang called.
The flop was what one might call an “action flop”: 2♠-J♠-K♥, giving Keating top set and Wang the nut flush draw with an over card. Keating bet $70,000, Wang check-raised to $200,000, and Keating called.
With the A♦ on the turn, Wang now had top pair to go along with his nut flush draw. Wang almost immediately moved all-in for his remaining $434,000 and Keating insta-called. As he called, Keating also flashed two fingers to Wang, indicating that he was willing to run it twice. Wang obliged, but both rivers paired the board, giving Keating full houses and a scoop of the largest pot in High Stakes Poker history.
Records are made to be broken
The previous High Stakes Poker record for juiciest pot belonged to Santhosh Suvarna, who bested Andrew Robl for a $992,000 score about a year ago.
While Keating had the best hand throughout in his record-breaking pot, it was quite the opposite for Suvarna. Robl had flopped trip fours, but Suvarna hit runner-runner Kings for a full house versus what became a worse full house for Robl. Most of the money ended up in the middle on that river; while Robl was clearly confident that he had the best hand most of the way, he had to have realized something was up once Suvarna bet big. But Robl was pot-committed at that point, so there wasn’t much else he could do but see the bad news.
Though Keating broke the High Stakes Poker record by more than 40%, it is still a far cry from the largest pot won in televised or live-streamed poker history. In May 2023, Tom Dwan won an astonishing $3,081,000 on Hustler Casino Live when neither he nor Wesley Fei would back down on a low board, Dwan with Queens, Fei with A-K.
And that hand came just three months after the previous live-streamed record. In that instance, Poker Hall of Famer Patrik Antonius won $1,978,000 on PokerGO’s No Gamble, No Future’s “Cash of the Titans” show.
