Ka Kwan Lau

Ka Kwan Lau of Sheung Shui has $6,984,955 in recorded live tournament earnings, fifth on Hong Kong's all-time money list and 334th in the world, read on 24 September 2026. He is the most conventionally decorated player on the Hong Kong list: a World Series bracelet, a European Poker Tour high-roller title, a WSOP Main Event deep run and an EPT Main Event fourth place — won in Las Vegas, Barcelona and Prague rather than on the Asian super-high-roller circuit that produced most of the names above him.

Pot-limit Omaha, and the event he kept coming back to

The spine of his record is one tournament, entered repeatedly across five years.

In October 2021 he finished runner-up in the $25,000 Pot Limit Omaha High Roller 8-Handed at the 52nd World Series of Poker for $773,708. On 25 June 2023, in the same event at the 54th World Series, he won it — $2,294,756 and a bracelet, and still his best recorded cash. In June 2025 he returned to the $50,000 Pot Limit Omaha High Roller at the 56th World Series and took sixth for $386,768.

That is roughly $3.45 million from three entries in one event family, and it is the clearest evidence of specialisation anywhere on this list. Hong Kong's top earners are hold'em and short-deck players almost without exception; Lau is the Omaha player.

He is not only an Omaha player

The hold'em record would carry a career on its own.

On 1 September 2023, nine weeks after the bracelet, he won the €10,000 + 300 EPT High Roller at EPT Barcelona for $985,249 — two major high-roller titles on two continents in one summer. A decade earlier, on 12 December 2013, he finished fourth in the EPT Prague Main Event for $388,905. And on 9 July 2016 he reached 20th in the $10,000 WSOP Main Event Championship for $269,430, out of a field of several thousand.

Why his record looks different from the rest of Hong Kong's

Look at the venues: Las Vegas four times, Barcelona, Prague. Not one of his headline results is in Asia.

Every other player at the top of the Hong Kong list built a total out of Macau, Jeju, Montenegro and the Triton circuit — fields of two or three dozen at six-figure buy-ins. Lau's results come from open tournaments on the Western majors, where the buy-ins are lower and the fields are hundreds or thousands deep. It is a harder way to accumulate $7 million and a more legible one: a bracelet and an EPT title are results that cannot be explained by a short field.

What he shares with the others is that none of it happened at home. Hong Kong licenses no poker at all — as our Hong Kong page sets out from the Home and Youth Affairs Bureau's own policy, the Gambling Ordinance (Cap. 148) leaves only Jockey Club racing, authorised football betting and the Mark Six, officer-licensed premises such as mahjong parlours, and a narrow social-gambling exemption outside the general prohibition.

Reading the number

$6,984,955 is what his Hendon Mob profile showed on 24 September 2026, and it covers live tournament results only — no online play, no cash games, and no adjustment for staking or swaps. He remains active, so expect the figure to move; the date next to it is the point.