Antonio Esfandiari has been a staple on the international poker circuit since the early 2000s, when he first made a name for himself as a tournament poker player.
In 2004, he won his first 7-figure tournament score, taking home $1.4 million for the first-place finish at the WPT LA Poker Classic in Los Angeles.
While the popular “Magician” has had an illustrious poker career that spans decades, no moment in his poker life was greater than the one in 2012, when he bested a field of 48 to win the first-ever million-dollar tournament.
This is the story of how Antonio “The Magician” Esfandiari won “The Big One for One Drop” in 2012, and forever changed tournament poker, as high-roller tournaments became the norm following the massive success of this charity poker event.
Who Is Antonio “The Magician” Esfandiari?
Born in 1978 in Tehran under the name Amir, Antonio Esfandiari travelled to the USA with his father at the age of nine. They found a home in San Jose, California, and Antonio ran into some trouble as a young man, as he was arrested for selling marijuana to an undercover police officer.
Despite this brief stint in jail, Antonio bounced right back and managed to build a career for himself as a professional magician.
While performing magic, he stumbled upon a game of Texas Hold’em Poker, and he fell in love immediately, launching his career as a card player.
Antonio first became known to the wider poker audience in 2004, when he won the LA Poker Classic for almost $1.4 million, becoming an overnight poker star.
During the early 2000s, Antonio continued playing in tournaments, but also appeared in iconic cash game shows High Stakes Poker and Poker After Dark, where his mysterious persona of a magician played very well with the TV audience.
By 2012, Antonio was a real poker celebrity, and his name would always come up in discussions on the best players of the era.
Guy Laliberte Launches the Big One for One Drop
In 2012, Canadian entrepreneur and philanthropist Guy Laliberte, who had strong ties to the poker community, came up with a brilliant idea. He wanted to launch a million-dollar buyin tournament that would feature a charity component and bring together the best players in the world.
Dubbed “The Big One for One Drop,” the world’s first million-dollar tournament was a resounding success, as plenty of pros and businessmen wanted to take part in the historic event.
The likes of Phil Hellmuth, Tom Dwan, and Gus Hansen were among the pros attending, while businessmen were represented by the likes of Paul Phua, David Einhorn, and Guy Laliberte himself.
A total of 48 players paid the $1,000,000 buyin to play in the event, with over $42 million going toward the prize pool, and the remainder sent to Laliberte’s “One Drop” charity foundation with the goal of providing fresh water in third-world countries.
Played during the 2012 World Series of Poker, The Big One for One Drop was the biggest event of the summer, and the biggest poker tournament ever played at that point in time.
Esfandiari Reaches the Final Table
When he first entered the million-dollar tournament, which was high above his average buyin, Antonio knew he would have to battle some of the best in the world to even make the money.
Cards cooperated in the early stages, and Antonio was able to build up a significant chip stack, and eventually made the final nine out of 48 runners.
A place at the final table meant a minimum payout of $1,109,333, which was a guaranteed profit, but Esfandiari wanted much more than that.
The payout structure for the event was a bit unusual, as the organizers wanted to pay 9 players, which meant payouts from fourth to ninth place were relatively flat. Fourth place paid just $2.6 million, compared to the $1.1 million for ninth.
The likes of Mike Sexton, Richard Yong, Robert Baldwin, Brian Rast, Guy Laliberte, and Phil Hellmuth all made their exits among those places, earning a nice profit on their buyin, but not making the big bucks.
Antonio was left in the field with fellow poker pro Sam Trickett and a famous businessman, David Einhorn. Einhorn made his exit in their place and won $4.35 million, while the two pros were left to battle it out for the title.
The Magician Is Left Speechless
“I’m rarely at a loss for words but this is one of those moments.” Those were the words Antonio Esfandiari told PokerNews shortly after defeating Sam Trickett in their heads up match and winning $18,346,673 for his efforts.
At the time, Antonio’s overall tournament winnings sat at around $5 million, which meant he had just more than quadrupled his overall tournament winnings in a single event.
What’s even more, Antonio was now number one on the all-time tournament poker money list, and the first player to ever win an event of this magnitude.
Winning the Big One opened many doors for Esfandiari, but it also changed a lot for the tournament poker world.
Following this event, a number of other $1,000,000 tournaments were played over the years, including multiple other One Drop events.
Besides that, poker tours around the world recognized that there was a clear interest by both pros and recreational players for poker events at this level, with buyins of $100k and above becoming the norm over the last decade.
While The Big One for One Drop was not the world’s first high roller event, its size and magnitude proved in practice that “if you build it, they will come.”
Since winning the tournament, Antonio has partially retired from poker, although he has made occasional appearances in some of the highest-stakes televised poker games in recent years, often doing quite well at the tables when the big money is on the line.
