73 players particiapated in the Macau High Stakes Challenge last Friday. The field included many of the world's best poker players, including Phil Ivey, Gus Hansen, Erik Seidel and John Juanda. Another famous poker pro who paid the $260,000 entry fee was the American high stakes phenomenon Tom "durrrr" Dwan.
However, Dwan was nowhere to be seen when the tournament started and it didn't take long before his stack was eaten up by the fast-moving blind structure. The reason why Dwan never showed up was revealed by Tom Hall, a big poker profile in Asia, who also took part in the tournament.
Hall wrote on a poker forum that Dwan lost his passport and therefore got stuck in Hong Kong on his way to Macau - and missed out on the chance of taking home the first place prize of $6.4 million. The amazing first place prize was instead won by Stanley Choi and it was the 10th biggest first place price in poker history.
Now, you might think that this was the first time Dwan lost his passport, but it wasn't. In November last year, Poker Portal Asia reported that he had to leave the high-stakes games in Macau and return to the U.S. for a few days because he lost his passport. However, it was never reported that he lost any money because of it - apart from the cost of the airline tickets.