Poker Player Allen ‘Chainsaw’ Kessler Talks About His $1.2M Slot Jackpot at Thunder Valley Resort

Posted on: August 1, 2024, 12:32h.

Last updated on: August 1, 2024, 05:03h.

Philip Conneller @casinoorgphilc Read More

Expertise: Gaming Business, Regulation, Tribal Gaming.

Poker player Allen “Chainsaw” Kessler hit a mind-blowing $1.2M jackpot playing a slot machine at the Thunder Valley Resort in Northern California on Monday.

Allen Kessler, Chainsaw, jackpot, Thunder Valley Resort, Buffalo Power Pay Slot — Allen “Chainsaw” Kessler poses with an outsized novelty check for $1.2 million at the Thunder Valley Resort in Northern California. He says the win won’t change him. (Image: Allen Kessler/Thunder Valley Resort/Aristocrat Leisure)

The aftermath of the seismic win was videoed by “Chainsaw” himself and posted to social media Tuesday.

It occurred after a 12-hour session on Aristocrat Leisure’s Buffalo Power Pay slot. Kessler, who was in town to play the RunGood Series poker event, was betting $125 per spin during the session and was down $12,500 when the stars aligned.

‘So Surreal’

Three-time WSOP Circuit Ring-winner Kessler is an eccentric figure in the poker community, much loved for his endearing and fastidious obsession with the proper rules of the game and for railing against occasional statistical injustices inflicted by the poker gods.’

On social media, Kessler likes to post about the shocking price of food in Las Vegas, although dinner may be on him for some time to come. And he’ll never be able to talk about bad beats ever again.

“Omg, this just f###in happened. Covers my entire WSOP debacle with $1m to spare,” Kessler wrote in a tweet accompanying the video of his win.

It was so surreal,” Kessler told Casino.org Wednesday after he’d had some time to recover. “I’ve seen that wheel spin a million times, and it’s frequently a near miss, stopping at the one before or after the $1.2 million spot. When it stopped on the jackpot, my jaw dropped.”

While many poker players eschew slots and other casino games for their negative expected value, Kessler is a big fan and even plans his poker tournament schedule around events that are attached to real casinos so he can play them when he busts.

It’s relaxing, he says, and he can afford it, although he admits that he was betting way higher than usual on Tuesday. He also enjoys the comps casinos lay on for their big-spending players, such as the free rooms and food.

Chainsaw’s Biggest Gambling Win

Despite being among a select group of people to have cashed more than 100 times at WSOP events, Kessler says this is his biggest gambling win “by far.”

All that was left was to decide whether to take the lump sum up front, or a series of payments over 20 years. He opted for the lump sum because “with my diet, I may not live 20 years.”