The Triumphant Return of Tony G

Anyone who has ever hit the heights in a game or sport and then taken a year or two away from it knows how difficult it is to make a successful comeback. So perhaps someone ought to have told Tony G that scooping €109,000 on his first big appearance since 2014 isn’t what’s meant to happen!

"Last night, I sat down and played poker for the first time in a very long time and I was surprised to see that I am still qualified and the champion," Tony G said the morning after.

The Lithuanian ‘big mouth’ is notorious for his table antics, consistently winding up his fellow players and then cutting them down to size when they make a mistake – but he’s also an extremely good player, and despite becoming heavily involved in politics in his homeland he seems to have remembered exactly how to play the game.

Tony Takes on the best

His surprise appearance at the Celebrity Cash Kings game saw him lock horns with the likes of England’s finest poker pro Sam Trickett and Igor Kurganov, the Russian who not only boasts $millions but also Liv Boeree as his better half!

Playing a mix of €50/100 and €100/200 blinds at the Kings Casino in Rozvadov in the Czech Republic wouldn’t suit everyone’s wallet, but these guys can afford it. Tony G famously offered a €1million bet to the UKIP leader Nigel Farage on the recent Brexit vote – Farage no doubt kicking himself that he didn’t have the balls to accept it!

And speaking of money, German wunderkind Fedor Holz is also expected to join in the 4-day high-stakes games this week. Holz, who has won over $10million since January this year alone has been talking of ‘retirement’ from poker – at the grand old age of 23!

Big bad Tony G may have been missing from our screens for a while, but he is close friends with the Kings Casino owner Leon Tsoukernik (and boy do I have some juicy gossip to share about million Euro games involving ‘Leon and friends’) so it’s not so surprising to find him slugging it out again with the big boys of the nosebleed stakes.

Big game, big money

With minimum buy-ins of €10,000, joining the ‘celebrity’ cast was November Niner Vojtech Ruzicka, whose run at this summer’s WSOP made him only the 2nd Czech person ever to make the final table.

‘Practicing’ in high-stakes cash games with the likes of Tony G, Holz and Daniel ‘Jungleman’ Cates, however, may not be the best way for Ruzicka to preserve his new-found $millions.

The action has been fast and furious over the first two days of the Cash Kings, and the live streaming on Twitch has allowed us to see the sort of games which for these players would normally be ‘invite-only, bring half a million in cash’ private games!

And if this all sounds like a jet-setting lifestyle, you’d be exactly right – with all the players who need a lift to Barcelona for the EPT Main Event being offered one in the private jet belonging to Rob Yong, owner of Dusk ‘Til Dawn casino in England. For Tony G, nights such as these must make him wish he’d never heard of politics.

Big man, big heart

And just in case you were wondering what Tony G planned to do with his €109,000 comeback winnings…he donated every euro of it to charity! His charitable organisation– the A. Guoga Foundation – passed the proceeds on to Vilnius University and two Lithuanian charities - Bėdų Turgus and Maisto Bankas – not something most politicians would do!