Guy Laliberte Lost More than $31 Million Playing Online Poker

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If you research online poker winner’s and losers, the name that is often mentioned as being the biggest loser in the history of the game is Gus Hansen. Looking at his online profiles, you’ll notice that he’s dropped $20.73 million over the years in high stakes online poker action.

On Sunday, HighStakesDB.com released an article revealing that Hansen is not the games biggest loser. Instead, that dubious honor falls to Guy Laliberte, the found of Cirque Du Soleil. According to HSDB, Laliberte has dropped over $31 million playing online poker from 2006 through 2012.

Laliberte Averages $6 Million a Year in Losses

According to the piece, Laliberte dropped a combined $31,078,040 over the seven-year period, playing during that time on Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars. You’re probably wondering why those earnings don’t easily show up. That’s because he played on the site using at least six accounts that are known to be his.

It appears that Laliberte was allowed to play on Full Tilt Poker using at least five different accounts during that period. Multi-accounting would normally be frowned upon because it would imply underhanded dealings from players. However, in the case of Laliberte, he lost millions on each and every account used at Full Tilt.

He started on the site using the moniker “noataima” and from October 2006 through April 2008 he dropped $7.06 million. He also used account “patatino” from April 2007 through February 2009, dropping another $5.92 million.

A well-known account of Laliberte’s was “lady marmelade.” This account dropped $6.63 million from April 2008 through early 2009. From September to December 2008, Laliberte played as “elmariachimacho,” where he dropped another $4.16 million.

The last of his Full Tilt account was “Esvedra,” that he played from July 2010 to July 2011. He managed to only drop $2.68 million on that account.

The only PokerStars account that’s presently known to belong to Laliberte is “Zypherin.” Playing on PokerStars from January 2011 to October 2012, Laliberte lost $4.6 million.

From looking at his player graphs from all these accounts, Laliberte never went on any type of prolonged winning streak or really any winning streaks of any type. He did manage a couple pots exceeding $500,000, but those were quickly erased by other losses.

Amazingly, Laliberte was losing at the rate of $6 million each year. To put that in perspective, only Daniel Negreanu and Erik Seidel have won more than $30 million in live tournaments in history. Laliberte blew through that figure in just seven years – and that’s just from accounts that are publicly known. There’s a good chance that there are other accounts and the figure is much higher.

Laliberte The Ultimate Online Whale?

In the gambling world, Whales are high-rollers that keep the action flowing and are usually a great source of income whether it is at casinos or in poker rooms. There are many high profile poker whales in history, but Laliberte may indeed be online poker’s greatest whale.

Unfortunately for Laliberte, he is one of those whales who always donates to the game and seldom makes enough money to be considered a legitimate threat. Billionaire Andy Beal is one of the most well-known whales in poker history due to his battles with “The Corporation” in the early 2000’s.

While he ultimately quit battling them after an epic loss of $16.6 million to Phil Ivey in 2006, Beal proved to be a challenge to the group, having once taken The Corporation for $13.6 million. They were forced to turn to Ivey to correct their ship.

Laliberte is respected by the poker world because of his philanthropy, including his creation of The Big One for One Drop, but he is hardly considered a feared poker competitor. If his online poker history proves anything, it is that he is a wealthy whale that helps to keep the high stakes poker world afloat.

Photo Credit – Bluff Europe