Guy Laliberté is the co-founder of the world-famous Canadian circus production company Cirque du Soleil. However, poker fans know him for his appearance on the Game Show Network program High Stakes Poker and for being one of the biggest losing players in online poker history.
Recently, he’s been in the news for something unrelated to both.
Guy Laliberté Arrested in French Polynesia for Growing Marijuana
Last week Guy Laliberté was detained by French Polynesian police after the Canadian billionaire turned himself in. According to the charges, he was growing marijuana on his private island, Nukutepipi.
The story was originally reported by the local news outlet Polynesia 1. Laliberté’s company has now confirmed it after pokernews.com reached out for comment.
Laliberté’s lawyer stressed in a statement that his client was growing the illegal plant for “medical and strictly personal reasons” only, and in no way did he intend to sell it to anyone.
Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté is expected to appear in court in Tahiti today after being detained on suspicion of trafficking cannabis. His company says he grows cannabis on his private island for his own medical use, but does not sell it. https://t.co/GA0ZjqfRKp
— CBC News Alerts (@CBCAlerts) November 13, 2019
French Polynesia is under the jurisdiction of France and thus growing marijuana illegally can land Laliberté in prison for up to 10 years. However, these cases are rarely prosecuted. Also, since Guy Laliberté turned himself in, he has every reason to hope for a lighter sentence.
Guy Laliberté Is One of the Biggest Losers of All Time in Online Poker
Former fire eater turned circus producer Guy Lileberté was also an avid recreational poker player for a while. However, he saw a lot less success on the felt than other poker loving billionaires, such as Bill Perkins or Cary Katz.
In 2007, he appeared on an episode the classic poker show High Stakes Poker on the Game Show Network.
In 2012, he final tabled the $1,000,000 WSOP Big One for One Drop event. He eventually took 5th place for $1.835 million in a field featuring the biggest stars in poker.
However, on the virtual felt, Laliberté had a much tougher time playing.
Between 2006 and 2012 he lost an estimated $31 million on online poker, playing mostly high stakes PLO cash games.
He has played on a number of accounts. Therefore when you search the highstakesdb.com database, Gus Hansen on Full Tilt comes up as the biggest loser with over $20.7 million in the red.
However, Laliberté had 6 different accounts on two different poker sites, Full Tilt and PokerStars. If you add the losses up across those accounts, it turns out he has Gus Hansen beat by over $10 million.
HSDB attributes the screen names “patatino”, “noataima”, “lady marmalade”, “elmariachimacho” and “Esvedra” to Guy Laliberté on Full Tilt. On PokerStars, it’s just “Zypherin”.
The samples for all of these accounts show at least $2.6 million in losses. Laliberté has lost the money playing under the screen name “noataima”, $7.068 million over the course of 67,390 hands. That is an astonishing -$104.88 per hand losing rate.
Despite his massive poker losses, Guy Laliberté’s net worth is still estimated to be around $1 billion.
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