During the weekend, six players paid out 500,000 euros (£423,000) to get a seat at an unofficial game which took place at the final of the European Poker Tour in Monaco. One of these players was Talal Shakerchi, who is reported to be a hedge-fund tycoon from the UK.
Reports suggested that during this unofficial weekend poker game, Mr. Shakerchi lost over £850,000 before he walked away from the table. However, Shakerchi has a history of both losing and winning large sums of money at poker games. Reports suggest that in the last few years, Shakerchi has managed to play a number of live tournaments and walk away with more than £1 million in prize money.
This unofficial game of high stakes poker had a friendly ring to it as all players appeared to be friendly with one another. While Shakerchi lost a considerable sum of money, he is a wealthy man having established his own hedge fund called Meditor, prior to which he worked at Old Mutual. Talal Shakerchi, just like the other six players expected to win big when he paid out 500,000 euros to get a seat at the live event. However, luck was not on his side and he not only lost his 500,000 euros but soon went on to spend more and lose more.
When he walked away from the table, he reported had blown away more than £850,000. However, he was still in a good mood and promised the remaining players at the table that he would be back again to try his luck and see if he could recover his losses.
Commentator Frank Op de Woerd who covered the game, later sent out a tweet which said
While they’re playing 100k+ pots the conversation is very friendly and all 3 of them are laughing a lot. Talal seems very unlucky and running very bad – can’t seem to win a hand. Talal Shakerchi: ‘goodbye, see you guys tomorrow‘.
While there were a number of guests around that table, not all of them were aware of how high the stakes were, nor were they aware of who the players were at the table. The six players included Shakerchi, one more British amateur and four of the world’s top poker players, who were battling it out for pots of one million euros (£848,225) at a time.
Shakerchi was born in the Midlands and has done extremely well in his hedge fund business. Based on the Sunday Times Rich List, he is estimated to worth around £100 million and is said to be extremely generous with his money and his philanthropic activities.
