Guy Laliberté is the founder and owner of the renowned Cirque du Soleil circus company and is one of the richest people in the world, making it to the Forbes’ list of billionaires year after year. He started his career as a clown and stiltwalker in Canada; now his total wealth is estimated to be around $2.5 billion. He can therefore afford some high stakes action, not to mention a journey into space: he paid the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos) $35 million via Space Adventures so that he could travel to the International Space Station onboard the Soyuz TMA-16 back in 2009.
Although he has not been very active a poker player lately, he had previously been known as the “engine of online poker”; he is the biggest high stakes loser to date, being down $25 million combined on his ‘oataima’, ‘lady marmelade,’ ‘patatino,’ ‘elmariachimacho’ and ‘esvedra’ accounts. Despite working hard to improve his play, taking coaching from a number of pros, he has never had any major success.
Three times WSOP champion Mike Matusow now says, however, that this is no coincidence as the high stakes regulars had agreed that whenever Laliberté joined them, they would play with equity chopping. That is, when all-in against each other, they would split the pot according to the odds percentage of their hands; for instance, if Player A has AQo and Player B has KJs when they shove, Player A gets 59% of the pot and Player B receives 41%, regardless of the outcome of the hand. This basically means that it was only Laliberté at the given table who had to risk his full buy-in when going all-in.
Strictly speaking, equity chopping is not forbidden so the regulars did not cheat, although such agreements are not usually allowed in brick-and-mortar casinos. The assumption, however, that they collided behind Laliberté’s back in order to get his money raises a number of ethical concerns.
Guy Laliberté
The community is currently split over the issue, some saying that this was downright cheating, deceiving a fellow player, while others claim that no rule has been breached. For certain, the case is far from being easy to judge.
Although he has not been very active a poker player lately, he had previously been known as the “engine of online poker”; he is the biggest high stakes loser to date, being down $25 million combined on his ‘oataima’, ‘lady marmelade,’ ‘patatino,’ ‘elmariachimacho’ and ‘esvedra’ accounts. Despite working hard to improve his play, taking coaching from a number of pros, he has never had any major success.
Three times WSOP champion Mike Matusow now says, however, that this is no coincidence as the high stakes regulars had agreed that whenever Laliberté joined them, they would play with equity chopping. That is, when all-in against each other, they would split the pot according to the odds percentage of their hands; for instance, if Player A has AQo and Player B has KJs when they shove, Player A gets 59% of the pot and Player B receives 41%, regardless of the outcome of the hand. This basically means that it was only Laliberté at the given table who had to risk his full buy-in when going all-in.
Strictly speaking, equity chopping is not forbidden so the regulars did not cheat, although such agreements are not usually allowed in brick-and-mortar casinos. The assumption, however, that they collided behind Laliberté’s back in order to get his money raises a number of ethical concerns.
Guy Laliberté
The community is currently split over the issue, some saying that this was downright cheating, deceiving a fellow player, while others claim that no rule has been breached. For certain, the case is far from being easy to judge.
