Olivier Busquet
| Current Residence | New York, NY, United States |
| Born | August 22, 1981 |
| Birth Place | Katonah, NY, United States |
| Total Winnings | $9,008,167 |
Olivier Busquet is an American professional poker player who is mostly famous about his attendances in the High Roller scene and the famous ‘Poker After Dark’ games being televised. Busquet has just over $9,000,000 in career earnings from live poker alone and did not do too bad at the online felts either. Off the tables he is also constantly busy with a podcast called twolivespodcast.com, and he challenged the poker scene back in 2015 for a MMA-fight, where JC Alverado became his opponent.
Life Before Poker
Busquet was born in ’81 in New York City where he also graduated at the Cornell University with a degree in philosophy. Afterwards, he worked on Wall Street for some time, somewhat not many poker players have on their CV.
Learning It the Hard Way
The beginning of his poker career did not went go without a struggle. Olivier is known about his aggressive poker strategy and in the beginning, he was still finding the right way to make his strategy worthwhile. After busting a couple of times his bankroll, he realized he was not going into the right direction. Luckily for him, he started playing Heads-Up Sit ‘n Go’s an earned more than $2 million dollars in a time where others were biting the dust by a mile.
Official records of his live poker career start as of the year 2008, but it would take until September 2009 where he would win his first big event, namely World Poker Tour Borgata Poker Open in Atlantic City. He bested a field 1018 entries to raise the trophy and collect a heavy $925,514 for his first prize, a tournament which was at that time the biggest ever WPT event ever held. After this win, Olivier did not have to think any longer of going broke again. His aggressive playing style was finally paying off after all these years.
Barely half a year later, he started playing the biggest buy-ins in live poker at that time with the 25K WPT Championship Event and the 25K European Poker Tour High Roller Event. In that last tournament he managed to become 2nd for almost $800,000, after losing the final heads-up from Tobias Reinkemeier, a Germany professional high roller.
Olivier was hot in 2012, people were having difficulties with stopping him from playing his own aggressive game. In March that year, he reached another Heads-Up during the European Poker Tour Main Event of Champione d’Italia, good for $570,382. His results were following up each other very fast and it resulted even in playing even higher stakes such as The One Drop High Roller in 2013, or the Super High Roller during EPT Monte Carlo.
Another year later, he won a 50K Super High Roller event during EPT Barcelona for almost $1,2 Million. Everybody knew, that with this guy does not have to be messed with.
Fighting in the Octagon
In 2015 Olivier Busquet had given the poker community a challenge to fight him in a MMA match. JC Alverado, a Mexican professional poker player and 1st on the all-time money list of Mexico, took up the challenge and the fight became reality on April 21st, 2016. With a 20-pound difference in favor of Busquet, after three two-minute rounds, Busquet won on technical knock-out, where JC Alverado had to be urged to the hospital for medical care as he was that much savaged by the American. Luckily, both ended up having respect for each other and the next fights they had, weren’t anymore in the Octagon, but on the poker tables.
Cruise Control
The past six years Olivier is scoring the one after the other cash but did not manage to scoop a major tournament. When looking in his statistics, he managed to win a Sit ‘N Go with Phil Hellmuth, Parker Talbot and Shaun Deeb, for $200K. Directly followed by a win in the 25K High Roller during a WPT event in Jacksonville for $187K. in 2019 he became 3rd in a 25K High Roller during the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open in Hollywood for $340,860, losing from Shaun Deeb and Albert Daher. As of 2020 there are no recovered live cashes any longer from Olivier, which not necessarily needs to say that he quit poker, but for sure he is on cruise control.
Olivier Busquet Tournament High Scores
| Date | Tournament Name | Buy-In | Place | Cash Prize |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jun/08 | Bellagio Cup IV, Las Vegas | $ 3.120 | 3rd | $ 50.010 |
| Sep/09 | WPT Borgata Poker Open, Atlantic City | $ 3.500 | 1st | $ 925.514 |
| Apr/10 | EPT High Roller Grand Final, Monte Carlo | € 25.500 | 2nd | $ 794.771 |
| Oct/11 | European Poker Tour High Roller, London | € 20.500 | 4th | $ 267.584 |
| Mar/12 | European Poker Tour Main Event, Campione | € 5.300 | 2nd | $ 570.382 |
| Dec/13 | European Poker Tour High Roller, Prague | € 10.300 | 2nd | $ 353.345 |
| Aug/14 | European Poker Tour High Roller, Barcelona | € 50.000 | 1st | $ 1.188.996 |
| Oct/14 | European Poker Tour UKIPT, London | £ 2.200 | 1st | $ 172.535 |
| Jun/15 | WSOP #15 Millionaire Maker, Las Vegas | $ 1.500 | 3rd | $ 589.569 |
| Jun/16 | WSOP #9 Heads-Up, Las Vegas | $ 10.000 | 3rd | $ 123.929 |
| Oct/17 | Poker Night in America, Philadelphia | $ 50.000 | 1st | $ 200.000 |
| Nov/17 | WPT High Roller Lucky Hearts, Hollywood | $ 25.000 | 1st | $ 187.416 |
| Aug/19 | Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open, Hollywood | $ 25.500 | 3rd | $ 340.860 |
You want to follow Olivier Busquet and his poker career? Make sure to follow him on one of his socials:
www.twitter.com/olivierbusquet (36,1K followers)
www.instagram.com/olivier_busquet/ (1,7K followers)
Image Credit: worldpokertour.com