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HEADLINE:
The Mother of all Poker Games

Body:
Latest Bluff magazine describes the Andy Beal phenomenon

The popular poker magazine, Bluff carries an interesting report on what was probably one of the most expensive poker games of all time in its current issue.

In what is considered the largest head-to-head poker game ever, self-made billionaire banker Andy Beal matched $20 million against a rotating cast made up of the best high-stakes poker players in the world, including Phil Ivey, Jennifer Harman, Todd Brunson, and Ted Forrest.

Throughout last (February) month, Beal played many of the world’s best poker players in head-to-head games of Texas hold’em, for stakes of $30,000-$60,000 and $50,000-$100,000 at Wynn Las Vegas, the magazine reports.

Average pot size per hand was over $300,000 with the largest pot at $1.9 million. To play in a game of such astronomical stakes, twenty of the world’s best poker players had to combine bankrolls. They played three series of matches in February where each side started with at least $10 million on the table, with millions more in reserve. Wins and losses ran as high as $10 million in a single day, and one session featured two $8 million swings.

Claiming the game as the latest (and largest) installment of the richest poker game of all time, Bluff says that it started in 2001 when Beal, the publicity-shy owner of one of the most profitable banks in Texas, whose other hobbies have included theoretical mathematics and astrophysics, became interested in poker. On six occasions between 2001 and 2004, he played “heads up” – one-on-one – against members of the group of high-stakes pros who took turns opposing him.

Although the professionals won in most of those matches, Beal developed into a world-class high-stakes heads-up hold‘em player, who once won $5.5 million in five days and on another occasion won $12 million in one day!

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