Poker NewsMuch more than just a poker blog...
The Russian player Max Katz, who is known to be a better backer than player did well again; it turned out he and his team had a major share in Pius Heinz' Main Event [3], therefore they win lots of money on the German pro.
As we already reported, Max Katz has a great sense for choosing whom to stake [4]. He is a very interesting, but controversial part of the poker community. His name has been connected with scandals sometimes, but he makes enormous amounts of money on his sponsoring deals.
His most interesting investment was in January, when he bought 50% Galen 'GasparLeMarc' Hall's PCA actions [4] for $16,638. Hall won the Main Event, which earned Katz $1,150,000. But of course, we could mention David Vamplew's EPT London [5] or Ben Wilinofsky's EPT Berlin victory [6] as well, in all of which Katz had his percentage.
The young Russian businessman operates a staking website called Pokeroff, through which his team sponsored 170 poker players, who played a total of 2,915 events during this year's WSOP. Joe Ebanks and Amir Lehavot both won their respective events, but of cours Pius Heinz' Main Event victory brought the biggest money to Katz.
Max Katz
When Katz was asked how he came to know Pius Heinz, he answered the following to Betfair [7]:
"Somebody recommended Pius, he published an offer on the site, at first it was only a offers for small events at the WSOP for like the $1,000 and $1,500 tournaments and we bought them. Then he won seventh or eighth place in one of the $1,500 events, then he decided he wanted to sell more shares in the Main Event and we agreed."
Katz was also asked exactly how much did Pokeroff win with Heinz, but he didn't want to give an exact number.
"Actually I cannot say the exact number and I would prefer for you to publish rumours, because we like to keep the exact number secret, but yes we had a big share of Pius."
These rumours say that Katz' percentage was 40%, according to this, they made $3,486,147. It is also rumoured that Pokeroff invested a little more than $1,000,000 during this year's WSOP.