Max Katz Sponsors Galen Hall and Earns over $1 Million

PokerStars [3] 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.

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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 [5] 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:

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…