Lightning Strikes Twice at Full Tilt Poker September 17, 2008

Since online poker took off about 11 years ago no one has won a $600K pot. The highest reached before the double strike was $585K. But with the $500/$1,000 stakes becoming more and more popular at Full Tilt Poker, $600K was always knocking.

The first strike came at about 10.30 am on September 12. Online player "patatino" entered with the queen and two of diamonds and "trex313" entered with the jack and nine of diamonds. The flop gave interesting possibilities and the betting continued unabated. "trex3is", who had a chance of getting a straight went all in with $298K. "patatino" then went all in with $302K. Other players provided $10K. Thus he pot reached $610K, a world record for online poker. However "trex313" ran out of luck and had to content himself with a jack top. "patatino" got a deuce on the turn and thus squeezed ahead with a pair of twos.

No one expected the second strike to follow so soon because lightning does not strike twice at the same place. But barely 11 hours later at 10 pm on September 12 history repeated itself. This was in a sense more interesting because it involved two legends of live poker, David Benyamine and Patrik Antonius. Antonius entered with a six pair and Benyamine with an ace pair. When the flop contained a six Antonius became aggressive. When the turn showed an ace Benyamine became even more aggressive, forcing Antonius to go all in. Benyamine matched the contribution and the pot went to $605K. Benyamine won because his three aces beat Antonius' three sixes.

Though Benyamine beat the $600K mark he was unable to overtake the pot won by "patatino". Therefore "patatino" remains the winner of the single largest pot in the history of online poker. Both hand histories have been taken from MarketPulse and the step-by-step replay of the hands can be seen there.