Max Katz Sponsors Galen Hall and Earns over $1 Million

PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event winner Galen Hall looked for sponsors for his Caribbean action in December, 2010. Russian businessman and poker player Max Katz didn’t take long to make a deal with him – and consequently profited over $1 million.

Max Katz
Max Katz

Galen ’GasparLeMarc’ Hall, it seems, had had a good feeling about the PCA before the tournament even began. Using the screen name ’GoldenBears’, the pro posted the following at the 2+2 forum on 21st December, 2010: “I feel like I am really on the brink of taking the next big step in my live game.” He then offered 55% of his total PCA buy-ins. The package consisted of the $10,300 Main Event, the $2,150 NLHE as well as the $5,250 (8-max), $5,250 (HU) and $5,250 (Bounty Shootout) NLHE events. These totalled at $28,200 in buy-ins and Hall sold them at 1.18; that is, he sold 1% of his future winnings for $332,76.

He also published his stats as some sort of advertisement:

Galen Hall Stats

Hardly had Hall posted his offer when ‘Revenant’ insta-reserved 50% of it for Max Katz. In as few as 26 hours, the deal was made: Katz bought 50% of Hall’s PCA action for $16,638. The rest is pretty obvious: by winning the Main Event, Hall earned $2,3 million, which means Katz easily made the best investment in his career to date: he made $1,150,000 on $16,638 in a mere week’s time. That’s what I call profit.

Although Katz is an acknowledged poker player, he is far from being part of the “elite.” As a businessman, however, he seems to possess pretty solid skills. He also owns the site Pokeroff.ru which provides a means of poker sponsorship: basically, you can buy and sell percentages of poker buy-ins (and therefore winnings) as if they were shares on the stock exchange; a feat increasingly popular with Russian players. As to whether Katz sold (at least part of) Hall’s percentages, I’m curious…