ShareDid he or didn’t he? One of the biggest questions in poker – whether or not Dan Bilzerian won $100million playing poker – has received an emphatic “Yes!” from fellow bearded poker crusher, Daniel Negreanu...
Polarising poker amateur Bilzerian has long been considered a joke in the community, his claims of crushing the highest stakes private games met by scorn and disbelief.
However, Negreanu believes the self-styled King of Instagram with a love of fast cars, guns and abusing women did indeed make his fortune from poker.
“Maybe I know more about it than you because I know people who play in private games with him that can attest to it being true,” DNegs responded to naysayers on Twitter.
Bilzerian himself has often claimed he made his fortune at cards rather than being the trust-fund baby many believe him to be.
“The bulk of my career I leaned on the whole trust fund thing and had everyone thinking I was a trust fund idiot…and if people want to believe that I really don’t give a f**k,” Bilzerian told The Wolf of Wall Street podcast host, Jordan Belfort.
Bilzerian added: “My thing was I made my money playing poker and my trust fund didn’t kick in until I was 35, and I didn’t even cash it until I was 39.”
Bilzerian’s father, jailed corporate raider-turned-stock market manipulator, Paul Bilzerian, has long been considered the pot of gold behind Bilzerian’s very public playboy lifestyle.
However, “Blitz” himself claims it was people such as billionaire businessman Alec Gores who funded everything, losing between $40 and $50million in private games, some of which had buy-ins as high as $10million.
Gores privately disputes his claimed losses year leading Bilzerian to publicly challenge him to a $100million heads-up match to settle their dispute.
Negreanu explains why nobody wants to admit to losing to Bilzerian: “Have you ever heard a wealthy businessman openly discuss their poker losses, to who, and the amounts? No. Literally never.”
DNegs added in a series of tweets: “Like what, write a press release saying “Yes I am one of the suckers who lost $20 million to Dan Bilzerian. What is in it for them exactly, outside of public humiliation?”
Such humiliation is what led Cirque du Soleil founder, Guy Laliberte, to give up the game after losing an eye-watering $32million in online games against the world’s elite.
Poker Twitter, like any other sphere of the Elon Musk-owned platform, has its share of experts, complete ignoramuses, trolls and all sorts inbetween.
Many fail to see how someone as bad at poker as Bilzerian is could win such vast sums. The answer, of course, is simple, as Negreanu explained:
“Who is saying he is “such a good player?” You are putting words in people’s mouths. You don’t have to be a good player to beat awful players. You just need to be less awful than they are.”
What do you think? Are Bilzerian’s of winning $100million at poker claims realistic? Should the poker community care? Answers on our social media!
