The Biggest Pot in WSOP History

The biggest hand in World Series of Poker history occurred three handed this past Sunday morning at the Rio in Las Vegas. The eventual pot would top 180 million chips...

Joseph Cheong was the chip leader at the time playing against French Canadian Jonathan Duhamel only a few million behind and relatively short stacked John Racener.

In the pivotal hand #213, 25 hands into the three-way play, a battle of the big-stacked blinds broke out. Cheong opened the pot, Duhamel raised, Cheong 4 bet and Duhamel 5 bet small. Cheong then 6 bet big going all in with A 7. Duhamel wasted no time in calling with Q Q, putting himself at risk in the process. No ace or miracle cards came on the board.



In an exit interview, Cheong felt that Duhamel was being aggressive and could five bet light and then fold a quarter of his stack to his shove for his tournament life. Cheong said he made a read and went with it. He would do it again in that spot.

The size of the pot was unprecedented as there was a shorter stacked John Racener at 30 million and usually the players would prefer to eliminate him before tangling for such a big pot. Both players were at least 75 blinds deep.

Cheong went out in third collecting $4,129,979 a few minutes later, after shoving his small stack a few times.

That left Duhamel with a massive 188,950,000 chips versus John Racener's 30,750,000. John Racener wasn't able to overcome that chip deficit and settled for second, but he moved up $1.5 million in his payday by avoiding action while the two big stacks clashed.