Biggest Ever HSP Pot

Alan Keating, known for diving into wild pots with some sketchy hands, won the biggest ever High Stakes Poker pot worth $1,412,500.

Background: Let’s set the scene. Keating is a bit of an enigma in the high-stakes poker world - he loves the action, isn’t shy about playing questionable hands, and lives for the battle. Then there’s Peter, a mysterious Chinese businessman whose last name remains unknown and doesn’t speak a word of English.

But poker doesn’t need words. Your game does the talking. And Peter’s not afraid to get in there.

Earlier in the month, Keating made quite possibly the gutsiest call of all-time when Peter put him to the test by showing all-in for $235k into $440k on A-7-K 6 4 board. Peter was bluffing with 6-3 but Keating somehow made the call with 9-7. 

Safe to say, these two have a serious history.

Preflop: Which brings us to the hand, the biggest pot in High Stakes Poker history. And once again, it’s the two action junkies, Peter and Keating, going head-to-head.

The hand starts with Keating limping on the BTN with K-K on Rick Salomon’s $4k straddle. Peter’s on the BB and bumps it up to $14k, which Keating responds to by 3betting to $69k, Peter responds with a call. Just like that, there’s $145k in the middle heading to the flop.

Post Flop: And what a flop it is: KhJs2s. Keating continues for $70k, around a half-pot sizing which Peter quickly raises to $200k with each of the players being around $600k deep at that point. 

All that wild action in earlier sessions is paying off, Keating must be thinking. He calls and heads to the Ad turn.

Peter instantly shoves for $434k. Keating snap-calls. 

They run it twice, the board pairs on both runouts and Alan Keating scoops the biggest ever pot in High Stakes Poker history.

Behind The Scenes: Ever wondered what Alan Keating’s life is really like? Now you can find out. He recently launched a YouTube vlog where he breaks down his thought process during some of the wildest hands he’s played and gives a behind the scenes look at the high-stakes world of chasing nosebleed private games around the country.

In The News

• Negreanu. Daniel Negreanu picked up his 2nd tournament win of the year at the PokerGO Tour’s $5K PLO event, taking home $182,500. It also marked his record-setting 11th PGT title. 

• Chips. Have you ever wanted to spend $5k on a fancy chipset? Well, you’re in luck because WPT partnered with artist Daniel Arsham to produce 100 limited edition chipsets. 

• God Mode. Veronica Brill released an illustrated YouTube series called God Mode, where she shares her story and involvement in exposing the Mike Postle scandal.

• Foxen. Alex Foxen won his 8th PGT title by taking down the $15k PLO event for $315,000. This was Alex’s first PGT win since January of 2023. 

Mariano Up Cool $2 Million

Poker vlogger Mariano is up $2 million after his first 1000 hours of playing streamed high-stakes cash games, according to HighRollPoker.com. 

What: Mariano is a regular on Hustler Casino Live and shares his sessions with 180,000 subscribers on YouTube. Since tracking began in April 2021, he’s played 1,018 hours and made $2,076,495, averaging 7.2 BB per hour which equals to $2,040 hourly.

Background: Just six years ago, Mariano Grandoli was playing $1/$3 games at local casinos around Southern California, documenting his low-stakes journey while attending college. Since then, he’s climbed the ranks fast and now regularly plays in high-stakes streamed games, mostly at HCL.

Big Pots: Winning big takes some luck, and Mariano’s had his share of it. One standout moment was during a $100/$200/$200 game on Hustler Casino Live, when he got all-in preflop with AA against two opponents holding KK which resulted in a $788k pot shipped his way.

All-time: Mariano is only the 8th most profitable streamed cash game player in the HighRollPoker rankings. Leading the pack is Andrew Robl with $4.85M in profit who is followed by Tom Dwan with $4M in winnings. 

Strategy Corner

In a recent episode of Jared Alderman’s podcast with Joey Ingram, the host shared a simple, yet powerful heuristic that can be applied to your games. 

On many rivers, especially ones that are perceived to be bad by your opponent, they will check back with their middling hands. If you hold a hand that's slightly better than those middling hands, you don't want to let them reach showdown for free. That’s where the block bet comes in.

Instead of checking and letting them check behind with hands you beat, you take control and get thin value - or deny them the chance to realize free equity with hands that might bluff-catch.

If players aren’t donk-betting enough in general, we can exploit this by checking back more often on early streets. Why? Because passive players let us realize equity and take hands to showdown. 

Did you know?

1829. The earliest reference to poker can be found in memoirs of English actor Joseph Cowell who described a 20-card game he observed in New Orleans.