Jonathan Little Hand of the Week: Breaking Down the Biggest TV Pot Ever

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Last week saw the biggest-ever pot in US TV history take place on the No Gamble No Future show by PokerGO. Patrik Antonius won the pot of almost $2,000,000, so I figured this hand deserved a bit of breakdown.

As mentioned, Antonius was the beneficiary of this massive hand. On the other side of the table, it was Eric Persson losing a cool million in one go.

The action was $1,000/$2,000, and Persson kicked things off with a raise to $7,000, holding Q♥9♥ in the cutoff. Rob Yong made a call on the button with A♣2♣.

In the small blind, Antonius woke up with A♥K♥ and went for a raise of $30,000 – the perfect sizing to make your opponents pay to see the flop but not price them out completely and lose value in the process.

Persson and Yong made fairly standard calls in position, so nothing too out of line up to this point in the hand.

The Flop

The flop came an interesting one as it fell 8♥3♥3♣, giving both Persson and Antonius flush draws. Antonius continuation bet for $40,000, and this is where things started to get really interesting.

Persson snap-raised to $140,000, and I think this is a pretty big mistake. If Patrik decides to raise again, which he might well do with better flush draws and big overpairs like pocket aces, kings, and queens, Eric will be in a really tough spot.

I think the best play here was to simply call and see the turn. As played, Rob naturally got out of the way, and the action was back on Antonius.

Patrik then went ahead and made a play I wasn’t expecting. He clicked it back, making it $250,000. A lot of people, myself included, would just call here to keep Eric in with all of his nonsense hands.

Antonius realizes that a lot of Persson’s hands will be flush draws and perhaps a few random holdings that he will have to call with getting amazing pot odds.

With his particular hand in position, and given these odds, Eric does the only thing he can do and makes the call, ballooning the pot to almost $600,000.

The Turn

The fourth card came the A♠, improving Patrik to top pair, top kicker, to go along with his flush draw. Now holding an extremely strong hand, Antonius bet out for a fairly small amount of $150,000, trying to keep Eric in and extract the maximum value.

After a few seconds, Eric decides he wants to play for all of it and announces he is all in for the additional $550,000 Patrik has left in his stack.

After playing the hand the way he did, it was clear that Patrik Antonius was never folding, and sure enough, he made the call after a very short deliberation. And it’s not every day that you see a $2,000,000 all-in pot on the turn where one opponent is drawing dead.

However, it was the case here, as there were no cards that could help Persson on the river. If you want to see how the hand played out and the accompanying table talk, make sure to check out the video above!