Ranking the Biggest Baccarat Wins Ever – Who Won the Most?

Last Updated August 21, 2023 9:09 am PDT
Baccarat imagery with dice and deck of cards with man celebrating his biggest baccarat win
  • Phil Ivey and Cheung Yin Sun once joined forces to earn nearly $10 million playing baccarat.
  • The biggest baccarat win in one sitting was worth $12.9 million, won by Lin Hasan in 2015.
  • An anonymous group of high rollers won around $55 million at the Crown Casino in Australia.

Baccarat is a really fun game to play, especially when you are winning. You can rack up an incredible amount of cash in a short time period. Countless people have won large sums over the years, but what about the biggest baccarat wins ever?

You might have taken home a few thousand yourself once or twice, but that’s far from the top winners throughout history. They have taken home millions of dollars, some doing so in just one sitting.

If you’re looking for big baccarat wins, you’ve come to the right place. I’ll break down the top five runs, starting with “Mr. Bet a Million.”

5. John Warne Gates – $1 Million

John Warne Gates was an American industrialist but, more importantly, a gambler. He paid $30,000 a year for a suite at the Waldorf-Astoria of New York City. Gates would often host high-stakes poker and baccarat games in his suite.

Funnily enough, Gates was a pioneer for barbed wire. He worked as a promoter for the product for the Washburn-Moen Company.

His breakthrough came when he demonstrated that cattle could not run through his barbed wire fences.

He ended up being a business rival of J.P. Morgan, who bought out his company but did not invite Gates to join. Both figures played a big role in the Panic of 1907.

That didn’t stop Gates from becoming one of the biggest gamblers ever. Gates earned the nickname “Mr. Bet a Million” because he would, in fact, bet a million. His baccarat wager was across two hands, which ended with him winning one and losing the other.

Technically, Gates won a million, but the loss made it to where neither side actually paid anything.

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4. Phil Ivey and Cheung Yin Sun – $9.6 Million

Phil Ivey

The baccarat biggest win for Gates was memorable, but it was also more than a century ago. I have just the thing if you’re looking for something a little more recent.

Phil Ivey is a professional poker player, but he’s dabbled in the world of baccarat. In fact, he’s done a little more than that.

Ivey and his partner, Cheung Yin Sun, won $9.6 million by using an interesting method. The two used edge sorting and were obviously able to rack up a significant amount of cash.

Casinos will allow certain whales to play under certain circumstances. This led to the two essentially cheating, and it cost them dearly. The Borgata Casino sued them and the card manufacturer they used for the scandal back in 2014.

Cheung Yin Sun, also known as “The Baccarat Machine,” has been feared by casinos. Her scandal with Ivey put a damper on her gambling career, but she’s been able to make a name for herself outside of that.

In fact, there are rumors about a movie that will be made in her honor. However, the lawsuit might have made it a little less likely to happen.

3. Lin Hasan – $12.9 Million

I’ll admit, the previous two “winners” weren’t really winners at all. Neither of them ended up taking home their full prize, so it’s hard to say if they deserve to be on the list of big baccarat wins.

The next person on the list, however, is very much deserving. Lin Hasan was entered into the Guinness World Records after winning a whopping $12.9 million at a tournament in Macau.

He won the 2015 World Series Baccarat Championship, which was run by the Suncity Group. The tournament also set a record for the most prize money overall, which exceeded $15 million.

Lin Hasan didn’t cheat to win, nor did he gamble another hand like John Warne Gates.

When it comes to the single biggest win in baccarat, you could say that it belongs to Lin Hasan. Maybe you’ll win as much as he did if you use a real cash casino app.

2. Akio Kashiwagi – $15 Million

So, why isn’t Lin Hasan at the top of the list? Well, as you might know, baccarat sessions aren’t always just one tournament. Some high rollers can gamble for entire days, even multiple.

One of those gamblers is Akio Kashiwagi, who some say would have 80 hour baccarat sessions.

You might say it was time well spent, considering he is one the baccarat biggest win list. His biggest win was a whopping $15 million at Diamond Beach Casino in Australia. There aren’t many details about that story, but Kashiwagi has plenty of gambling stories to go around.

Interestingly enough, one of those stories involves Donald Trump, the former US president. As you might have known, Donald Trump owns three casinos, one of which being the Trump Taj Mahal.

That’s where the story takes place. At first, Trump struggled to attract gamblers to his casino, so he tempted Kashiwagi into playing for high stakes. He convinced Kashiwagi to do a $12 million freeze-out, but in classic Trump fashion, he pulled out once he was up $10 million.

Trump got the best of Kashiwagi, and the latter was not happy about it, but luckily his other biggest win in baccarat helped soften the blow.

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1. Anonymous Group of High Rollers – $55 Million

We have reached the biggest baccarat win in history. The win actually belongs to a group of anonymous high rollers who racked up a whopping $55 million at the Crown Casino in Australia.

Crown Casino advertised high stakes baccarat games during their promotion. That allowed some high-profile gamblers to play for as much as $500,000. This strategy was bold, but since the house edge is always in their favor, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Unfortunately, it backfired. They might have had the odds in their favor, but the players could still get lucky.

The Crown Casino learned a very valuable lesson and will likely never run a risky promotion like this again.

It’s estimated that the group took home around $55 million, which would easily be the biggest baccarat win ever. However, some of you might not consider it the real number one since it was multiple people, and it wasn’t all at once.

In that case, you might as well try to crack the rankings by playing live dealer baccarat. You could get lucky and land big online baccarat wins from the comfort of your own home!

How to Win Big in Baccarat

So, what can we learn from the baccarat biggest win list? Unfortunately, we don’t have first-hand witnesses of these monster wins, so we don’t know how they pulled it off. That means it’s pretty much all speculation at this point.

Luckily, baccarat is not a complicated game, and it’s pretty easy to see how they won this much.

For starters, almost all of them gambled unreal amounts of cash. Simply put, the more you gamble, the more you win or lose.

Lin Hasan was able to win a major tournament, so maybe this will inspire you to join the next baccarat event you see.

At the end of the day, winning an insane amount of cash in baccarat takes a lot of luck. You can employ some strategies, but almost none of them are proven to work.

If you read these 7 amazing baccarat secrets, you’ll find that playing the right way can take you far.

Big online baccarat wins are certainly possible as well. Read our detailed guide to playing baccarat online, and maybe you’ll end up cracking the list after all.

Footnotes:

Anthony Haage
Anthony Haage Author

Anthony is a sports writer for GamblingSites.com covering the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, and more. He also covers other various topics such as entertainment, general sports betting tips, and more.

His favorite teams are the Chicago Bears, Bulls, Cubs, and Blackhawks. He also will be a temporary fan of any team if it means winning him bets.

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