Caulfield Cup Ownership Success for Poker Bad Boy Tony G

by Roy Brindley, 21 October 2025

Poker star Tony G wins Australia’s Caulfield Cup with Half Yours.

Tony Guoga (far left) celebrates Half Yours’ Caulfield Cup victory with his fellow owners and connections. © Getty

Key Facts:

• Poker player Tony G enters Caulfield Cup winner’s enclosure as a successful owner.
• Half Yours is now the favourite for the Melbourne Cup.
• Tony G’s, with a bad boy status at tables, founded PokerNews.
• Tony Bloom was the first poker-playing entrepreneur with a runner in The Race That Stops a Nation.

This week, high-profile poker player Tony Guoga was back in the winner’s circle. However, the Lithuanian-Australian’s most recent success did not come on the green felt. Instead, the 51-year-old was collecting a trophy of a different kind with Half Yours winning Australia’s famous horse race, The Caulfield Cup.

Guoga, who goes under the pseudonym Tony G, may have won $2.5 million when last seen in poker action during the summer of 2022, but Caulfield Cup success for Half Yours, a horse which he partly owns, can be considered an even bigger achievement.

Half Yours is now the favourite to win the Holy Grail of Australian racing, The Melbourne Cup. Staged on the first Tuesday in November, the race, described as “the race that stops the nation,” is one of the most sought-after races in the world.

Halfway Towards a Famous Cup Double

The 2025 Caulfield Cup, raced at Caulfield Racecourse in a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, attracted a capacity 50,000 racegoers. Many would have been happy when Half Yours scored. The lightly-raced horse was heavily supported and started as the 6/4 favourite.

Half Yours was steered to victory by Jamie Melham, who became the first female in the race’s 146-year history to win the race. Her success guarantees Tony G’s part-owned horse a place in the Melbourne Cup field. Half Yours now trades on 4/1 odds for Australia’s showpiece contest.

The Caulfield/Melbourne Cup double has been achieved a dozen times since 1906. Without A Fight was the last horse to win both races in 2023. Ethereal was the only other horse to win both races this century. He completed the double in 2001.

Bad Boy Tony Now Plays Big

Tony G is a colourful character who began playing poker in the early 2000s and announced his arrival on the big stage with back-to-back final table finishes in the World Poker Tour’s Paris legs in 2003 and 2004.

In 2006, he won the WPT’s ‘Bad Boys of Poker’ invitational event and became a familiar face on UK television screens playing events organised by Matchroom Sports. In 2009, he was a finalist in Channel 4’s historic TV production, Late Night Poker.

From 2013, Tony G’s poker appearances have become more intermittent. However, occasional sightings have seen him playing for the highest stakes, paying tournament entry fees of $100,000-plus.

From Cubes to a Blockchain Empire

Away from poker, Tony G is also a fascinating character with an interesting background. As a child, he was Lithuania’s Rubik’s Cube champion. His interest in poker followed, and it led him to set up the popular information site, PokerNews.

The Australian-educated poker player later founded the popular online casino and sportsbook, TonyBet, and developed a cryptocurrency online poker site, CoinPoker. Remarkably, in 2014, Tony Guoga began a five-year stint as a Member of the European Parliament for Lithuania.

A childhood dream just came to fruition.

What an incredible run by “Half Yours” to win the Caulfield Cup.

Many years ago, I backed a 200/1 horse in the Caulfield Guineas when I was in high school and it won…

Over 30yrs later and we’ve come full circle! pic.twitter.com/mFzfd9i0FL

— Tony G (@TonyGuoga) October 19, 2025

Describing himself as “an entrepreneur and venture capitalist empowering emerging tech and blockchain innovation”, Guoga recently declared his personal fortune to be $300 million.

Bloom the First Cup Chasing Poker Millionaire

Tony G will not be the first Late Night Poker star turned entrepreneur with millionaire status to have a runner in the Melbourne Cup. Tony Bloom, best known as the owner and chairman of Brighton & Hove Albion, saw his Stratum contest the race in his colours in 2020.

Initially employed by BetVictor (then called Victor Chandler), Bloom founded online betting site, PremierBet, and made his fortune via a clandestine football betting syndicate and a betting consultancy firm called Starlizard.

Bloom has enjoyed considerable success as a racehorse owner. Energumene, three times successful at the Punchestown Festival and a dual-winner of the Queen Mother Champion Chase, would rate his finest horse.

At the poker tables, Bloom reached the final table of three Ladbrokes Poker Million events in the first decade of the 2000s and has won almost $4 million from tournament placings. His list of results dates back to the World Series of Poker in 1994.