Judging by the massive, more than 200-pages long thread on twoplustwo and the number of retweets and articles on Tom Hall's recent interview with PokerNews Chad Halloway, the Macau high-stakes cash games are an inexhaustible source of inspiration, envy, resentment, admiration, rumors, and gossip in the poker community.
It all began in 2010, during the Macau Asian Poker Tour, when Matt Savage posted the following message on twoplustwo:
Despite the light turnout at the Asian Poker Tour Macau the cash games are some of the biggest in history as Tom Dwan, Phil Ivey, Chau Giang, and John Juanda are playing HK$5,000-10,000 with some Chinese businessmen. The game plays much bigger and there was about 40 million on the table last night when I saw the game.
So the Macau Big Game kicked off and has been going on for 3 years now, just like the Nosebleed Cash Games thread, and the dazzling string of top pros rumored to be winning or losing fortunes (most notably, @Tom Dwan and @Sam Trickett); trying to get in, or allegedly being banned from the games (@Patrik Antonius).
And all the while, the "Chinese businessmen" playing in Macau have remained largely shrouded in mystery, with the exception of a few known names - more specifically, Wang Qiang, Paul Phua and Richard Yong.
The "businessmen":
Forum posts of this kind are characteristic of how many feel about the games and the pros who get hooked on them:
"I can definitely see why he gave up on the online games and started focusing on live. Which is easier to beat: online poker pro computer nerds or wealthy business owners who view gambling as their entertainment and don't mind losing millions doing it?"
The pros:
One thing is certain, however, the level of the game has risen enormously and all of the players with first-hand experience who have offered insights have spoken about it at some point or another. Sam Trickett wrote in a blog about Macau, "What I’m trying to say is that the game is not as soft as people think and it is getting more and more difficult to win." As per Andrew Moseley, speaking to Lee Davy on CalvinAyre.com:
"When I first went out there the players had already been playing together for quite a while. Some of them have improved at an incredible rate, two in particular. The games are way tougher at all levels than they were, because a lot of the worse non-pros have stopped playing, and some of them have become incredibly good, very fast."
The stakes:
With a game where there is 'not enough space [for a 10th player] due to all the chips on the table' and the chips in question are mostly HKD 100,000, we can only agree with Tom Hall: "There is nothing like a trip to the Macau Big Game to get the adrenalin flowing".
Read more:
Execellent blog by Sam Trickett, including accounts of specific hands.
Adrien Bacchi 18 mars 2014
"City of dreams" they say :). Nice article, I'm even more curious about #Macau ;).
Annie RKH 18 mars 2014
RankingHero - Ranking, Linking and Satisfying-the-Curiosity of the Poker World - another article on Macau is up :)
Pfffff .... Bon Ben on peut pas gagner a chaque fois après une journée éprouvante en faisant le yoyo entre bad beat (full floppé
Adrien Bacchi 16 mars 2014
Aïe moche... la prochaine fois ça ira mieux !
J-1 avant le deep open de mon club on croise les doigts svp !
Adrien Bacchi 15 mars 2014
Doigts croisés, GL !
2eme victoire consécutive au tournoi hebdo du club ! Bon presage pour le deep open de dimanche ? Espérons qu'il reste de l'influx !
On y croit et que le good run continue !!!
Adrien Bacchi 14 mars 2014
GG félicitations ;) !
Arnaud Baroni 14 mars 2014
Merci
Nicolas Levi 14 mars 2014
Voila pourquoi j aime tant le poker ! Ou trouver de telles émotions ?
Arnaud Baroni 12 mars 2014
tel le poisson jai rien pané (oula faut que je me repose moi !) faut y faire comment maître bacchi pour intégrer la vidéo direct ?
Adrien Bacchi 13 mars 2014
Quand tu écris ton message, tu as un bouton "vidéo", c'est le 4ème en partant de la gauche.
Tout est expliqué ici
http://www.rankinghero.com/fr/static/blog-tutoriel.html#buttons
Fais le test et confirme moi que ça marche ;).
Arnaud Baroni 13 mars 2014
Merci beaucoup je ferais ça , un maître Je vous dis !
Plus que 5 jours avant le 1er deep open de la saison de mon club faut win nier !!! Et ENFIN broder l'étoile sur le polo!
https://www.facebook.com/winamax/posts/10151986754366918:0
Petite victoire au tournoi hebdo de mon club ! C'est bon ça pour la confiance pour les prochaines échéances !! Avec un hu a la davidi !!! (Calme toi Arnaud ! )
Arnaud Baroni 7 mars 2014
Le Sélect Poker Tours (un club de tours 37) merci !
Nicolas Levi 7 mars 2014
Cool ça. C'était le deepstack pour lequel tu te préparais ?
Arnaud Baroni 7 mars 2014
Non Nicolas c'est juste le tour de chauffe du tournoi hebdo le deep c'est dimanche 16!! Mais bon la confiance est la ;-)