Michael Terry's  Instablog

Way to go David Einhorn, taking third on the One Drop Texas Hold 'em! Don't have to love the guy to see why he is good, brass stones and no tell.

NY Times

Professional poker player Antonio Esfandiari on Tuesday became the biggest winner in poker tournament history, beating some of the most prominent pros in the game and at least two billionaires to take a first-place prize of more than $18 million.

At $1 million, the One Drop buy-in was four times the size of the tournament with the next-highest buy-in. Poker tournaments are officially organized events with predetermined prizes in which the player with all the chips at the end wins. High-stakes poker games known as "cash games," in which winnings are based on the value of the chips, sometimes have buy-ins of $1 million or more. Cash game outcomes generally aren't disclosed publicly.

Kicking off its final hours of the live primetime broadcast on ESPN with showgirls and television shots of piles of cash, the Texas Hold'em game was poker's biggest spectacle in years. Many poker insiders hoped the event would help the game recapture its status as a pop-culture phenomenon enjoyed five years ago, before the economy and a government crackdown on online poker caused a sharp downturn in games.

With 48 players, the One Drop tournament pitted some of the world's most successful poker players, including Phil Hellmuth, Phil Ivey and Daniel Negreanu, against others including hedge-fund manager David Einhorn and Guy Laliberte, the Cirque du Soleil founder who hosted the event to benefit his water nonprofit, One Drop.

Mr. Einhorn outlasted all but two of the players to take third place, which meant he won around $3.4 million after the buy-in. He has pledged to donate the money to education nonprofit City Year.

Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.