culture
The pots, and what we can prove about them.
Money attracts bad arithmetic. Pot sizes get rounded up, broken records keep circulating for years, and a televised hand turns into an online one somewhere along the chain of copies. So every figure below names the page it came from and the day we read it, and a pot we could not find at a source that prints it is not on the page at all.
seven pots we could check
| Pot | Players | When | Where | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12,700,000 dollars | Ossi Ketola and Bjorn Li | 16 September 2025 | Triton series, Jeju, heads up at 40,000 and 80,000 | PokerNews |
| about 11,000,000 dollars | Ossi Ketola and Alex Foxen | 15 September 2025 | Triton series, Jeju, heads up | Card Player |
| 3,100,000 dollars | Tom Dwan | May 2023 | Hustler Casino Live, an ordinary cash game | PokerNews |
| 1,356,947 dollars | Patrik Antonius and Viktor Blom | 21 November 2009 | Full Tilt Poker, pot limit Omaha at 500 and 1,000 | HighStakesDB |
| 1,108,500 dollars | Tom Dwan and Phil Ivey | Full Tilt Million Dollar Cash Game | Televised cash game | PokerNews |
| 878,959 dollars | Patrik Antonius and Viktor Blom | 16 November 2009 | Full Tilt Poker, pot limit Omaha at 500 and 1,000 | Card Player |
| 575,700 dollars | Gus Hansen and Daniel Negreanu | High Stakes Poker | Televised cash game | PokerNews |
Two rows carry an event rather than a date, because the source names the programme and not the day it was recorded. We would rather leave the cell vague than fill it in.
the largest one, hand by hand
Blinds of 40,000 and 80,000, heads up. Ketola held a pair of nines and Li a pair of eights, and the board never touched either of them.
Ketola
Li
flop, turn, river
A pair against a pair, one rank apart, for 12.7 million dollars. It is worth sitting with that for a moment, because it is the honest shape of the biggest hand ever streamed: not a brilliancy, but two players who each believed the other did not have it. What decides a hand like this before the cards are dealt is stack depth and range, and that is worked out on the page on heads up play.
The same article that reports the pot also reports the objection to it. These were scheduled heads up matches with fixed buy ins rather than a cash game people could join and leave, which is why some of the poker world does not count them against the previous benchmark, a pot of 3.1 million dollars won by Tom Dwan in May 2023. We name both rather than pick a winner.
the online record, and a difference of one dollar
On 21 November 2009 Patrik Antonius and Viktor Blom played a pot limit Omaha pot on Full Tilt Poker at stakes of 500 and 1,000. HighStakesDB gives the pot as 1,356,947 dollars and PokerNews as 1,356,946. We have not been able to work out which rounding is right, so both numbers are here. Antonius won it with a five high straight.
What makes the figure worth keeping is the speed of what came before it. Five days earlier the same two players had set the record at 878,959 dollars, and that had itself replaced a pot of 723,938 dollars. Three records inside a fortnight, in a game most people had never heard of. That is what an unusually rich and unusually short lived set of games looks like from the outside, and the rules of the game they were playing are on the Omaha page.
what we left out
Several pots that appear on lists of this kind are missing here, and for one reason: we could not read them at a page that reports the hand rather than summarising somebody else's list. That includes a number of figures from streamed cash games, and a number of private games whose amounts are known only from the people who played in them.
It is a real loss to the page and the right trade. A pot that never happened is worse than a shorter list, and this is the section of the site where an invented number would be hardest for a reader to catch. The same reasoning governs the integrity section, where we also say which figures we deliberately left out.
next step
The only pot size that matters is yours.
Enter what you have set aside for poker and the calculator tells you which stake that supports and how large the risk of losing the lot is. It is the exact opposite of this page, and considerably more useful. Free, no account.
questions
What is the biggest pot in poker history?
The largest single pot we could verify at a source that prints it is 12,700,000 dollars, played on 16 September 2025 between Ossi Ketola and Bjorn Li at the Triton series in Jeju. The article reporting it also reports the disagreement about whether a scheduled heads up match should be counted alongside ordinary cash games, so the answer depends on which question you are asking.
What is the largest pot ever played online?
A pot of about 1.36 million dollars between Patrik Antonius and Viktor Blom on 21 November 2009, in pot limit Omaha at 500 and 1,000 on Full Tilt Poker. Our two sources give 1,356,946 and 1,356,947 dollars, a difference of one dollar we have not been able to resolve, so this page prints both.
Why do the figures on other sites disagree with these?
Because most of them are copied rather than read. Pot sizes get rounded, records that have been broken keep circulating, and televised pots get mixed up with online ones. Every figure here names the page it came from and the date we read it, so you can check it rather than trust us.
Do these games have anything to do with normal poker?
Almost nothing. The stakes are several thousand times those of an ordinary online table, the fields are tiny, and the players are often settling private matches. They are interesting as spectacle and useless as a benchmark.
How long does a record like this last?
Sometimes days. The 2009 online record was broken twice in a single week, and the two Triton pots on this page were played on consecutive days. That is precisely why each row carries a date and a source rather than the word record.
What is a pot in poker?
The money in the middle: everything all players have bet during the hand, which goes to whoever wins it. On this page the amounts are the total pot and not the profit of the player who won it, because part of that money was their own.
sources
Every amount, date and card on this page comes from one of these, read on 30 August 2026. Where two of them disagree, the page says so instead of choosing.
- PokerNews, Two Players Fight for a $12,700,000 Hand of Poker
The 12.7 million dollar pot at Triton Jeju in September 2025, with the blinds, both hands and the board. It is also the source for the caveat on this page: the article itself reports the argument over whether scheduled heads up matches belong in the same record book as an ordinary cash game.
- Card Player, Alex Foxen Loses $11 Million Pot, Largest In TV Poker History
The pot of roughly 11 million dollars played the day before, between the same Finnish player and Alex Foxen, with the cards and the board. Read together with the article above, the two show how quickly a record of this kind is replaced.
- HighStakesDB, Top 5 Full Tilt Poker Hands
The five largest pots of the 2009 online games, with dates, stakes and amounts. This is where the online record of 1,356,947 dollars on 21 November 2009 comes from.
- PokerNews, Five of the Most Historic Poker Hands
The same online record printed as 1,356,946 dollars, with both players hole cards and the board, plus the Dwan and Ivey pot of 1,108,500 dollars and the Hansen and Negreanu pot of 575,700 dollars.
- Card Player, Online Poker, Patrik Antonius Wins Largest Ever Online Pot
The record that stood for five days in November 2009, at 878,959 dollars, and the one before that at 723,938 dollars. Useful mainly as evidence of how short lived these numbers are.
Back to poker culture, or read about the games these pots were played in on the high stakes page.