12 Jan 12

The Top 5 Poker World Records

Following Randy Lew's successful world record attempt where he played 23,493 hands profitably in 8 hours, we look at some of the biggest records in poker.

Biggest tournament

It is hard to define just what the 'biggest tournament' was, because poker has evolved so much that there are several contenders.

If it is for the biggest buy-in, then the $1 million buy-in 'One Drop' tournament at the WSOP this year is going to take the honour. If you want the biggest prize pool and live attendance, then we have to go all the way back to 2006 when Jamie Gold bested 8,773 other players to win the main event for $12 million.

But, we have picked a recent example, one that shows that online poker is still flourishing in the aftermath of Black Friday. Just last month, PokerStars hosted a staggering 200,000 players in a $1 buy-in tournament as part of their 10th anniversary celebrations. They even managed to get to 200,000 with a day to spare, suggesting that the record can and will be broken again this year.

Proof online poker is alive and kicking

Endurance record

One record that seems to get broken with surprising regularity is the endurance record for continuous play, with no breaks. In 2008, the record stood at 72 hours and 2 minutes, but since then has been broken by Dave Cain, Paul Zimbler, Phil Laak, and finally seven players from Austria called 'The Glorious Seven'.

Max Krückl, Julia Doetsch, Erich Grünwald, Thomas Wagermeier, Rudolf Teichmann, Stephan Reischl, Nuran Karasu, and Jens Tölle played for a total of 137 hours straight in a hotel room. Some of the men dropped out at times, but Reischl, Karasu, and Tölle played for the entire 137 hours.

All-time money list

The all-time money rankings for live tournament poker are a troublesome way to judge ability, because they only account for winnings, and not profit. Not only this, but an influx of invitation only and super high roller events have distorted the rankings even more, by hosting elite small field events with seven-figure first prizes.

But when all is said and done, it is hard to disagree with any all-time money list that has Erik Seidel, Daniel Negreanu, Phil Ivey, and Phil Hellmuth in numbers 1-4 respectively. The all-time leader being Seidel, who has $16,885,167 in live tournament winnings at the time of writing.

King of the super high rollers - Erik Seidel

Biggest pot

Cash game records are significantly harder to track than multi-table tournaments, because often they are played outside of the public sphere. For that reason, we have to turn to either the biggest online cash game pot, or at least, the biggest televised cash game pot. And here are both of them:

Most bracelets

Come on, we had to include it just because he would have pointed it out himself if we hadn't.

Phil Hellmuth still holds the record for most WSOP bracelets won at 11. Ok, many of them may have been before the boom against significantly smaller fields than we see today, yes they have all been in hold'em, and no, this doesn't mean he is the best player in the world (Or even necessarily a winning player).

But for sheer comedy value, and because he reminds anyone who will listen about it all the time, we have to tip our hat to Phil and his 11 bracelets.