$1M buy-in tournament planned with Holz, Cates, Tony G. and co.

$1M buy-in tournament planned with Holz, Cates, Tony G. and co.
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Arved Klöhn Content Writer
Fact Checked: PokerListings
  • Updated: January 21, 2026
  • Read time: 2 min

A poker tournament with a buy-in of $1,000,000 is cooking up as part of BTC Miami, a bitcoin conference in Florida. Well-known players such as Fedor Holz, Dan Cates and Tony G. have expressed interest in the super-highroller event.

Almost 10 years ago, the first poker tournament with a buy-in of 1,000,000 dollars took place as part of the WSOP. Since then, super highstakes tournaments with absurdly high buy-ins became more and more fashionable. The Triton Highroller Series specialised in exactly these events and held tournaments with high six-figure buy-ins several times a year.

At first, these tournaments sounded very exciting – high buy-ins and high prize pools promised thrills, even for spectators. But after some time, interest in these games waned. The reason was quite simple: there were always exactly the same players sitting at the tables. They had all bought shares among themselves and only held a fraction of the action themselves. It is one thing to buy into a $100k tournament with your own money and quite another to have sold 90% of your action to all the other players.

Nevertheless, the allure of the big buy-ins is still there. Now there is one thing in this world that can be perfectly combined with absurdly expensive poker games: Bitcoins, the cryptocurrency that has been soaring for years and has made many people millionaires virtually overnight.

April 2022: BTC Miami with a $1M poker event?

In April 2022, a Bitcoin conference will take place in Florida and there seems to be a poker tournament with a buy-in of $1,000,000 coming up as part of this conference.

In November, a rather unknown account tweeted this announcement:

Interest among well-known players

The offer was immediately met with great interest from several well-known poker players. Among others, Antanas “Tony G” Guoga, Haralabos Voulgaris, Fedor Holz, Justin Bonomo, Dan Cates, Jason Koon and Dan Smith agreed to play.

Daniel Cates
Daniel Cates
Fedor Holz
Fedor Holz
Tony G.
Tony G.

While doing so, Guoga made it clear right away that he does not want to sit down at the same table with “robot pros”. He tweeted: “Should ensure there is a committee and that no pure robot pros kill the great event”.

Voulgaris, who got rich from sports betting, echoed the same sentiment, stating, “Would play if it was a non-professional event.”

The event is to be hosted during the BTC Miami by High Stakes Capital, an investment company. The crypto currency conference will take place from April 6th to 9th at the Miami Beach Convention Centre. It will be interesting to see if the million-dollar tournament actually happens and if it reignites interest in more super high stakes events.