ShareCanadian rapper Drake has probably made more high stakes gambling headlines than anyone over the last couple of years.
From multi-million dollar roulette sessions to seven figure sports betting on fight sports; he’s done it all.
So why have we never seen him at a high-stakes poker table? It’s perplexing and there’s no clear answer given his love for gambling.
Earlier this year, it was reported that Drake is paid $100 million per year to endorse the crypto-friendly online casino Stake. For a firm that is thought to have earned $2.7bn in revenue during 2022, this is small change for the wide promotion it gets.
Compared with 2021, Stake improved more than 100% from revenue of $1.2bn and massively from the $105m in 2020. So we can safely say Drake has his feet under the table at one of the world’s true gambling behemoths.
There’s no way that the 37-year-old could enjoy blowing off steam on a roulette table more than winning some monster pots against some of the high-stakes community.
As a rapper he must love the attention he gets and he’ll get a lot more of that in the poker world if he ever rocks up with a seven-figure stack and sits down with the likes of Phil Ivey.
Maybe he's just never even been asked and all it would take would be an invitation from PokerGO or such.
Is the Drake Curse Keeping Him Away?
Another reason we might never have seen Drake at a poker table is the infamous “Drake Curse”.
For those of you who are not familiar with Drake’s sports betting exploits, he has placed some real stinkers in the past and lost an absolute fortune.
Only a month ago he lost an $800k bet on Logan Paul to beat MMA fighter Dillon Danis in a boxing bout. Paul was disqualified which meant the bet was void on a technicality.
But it all started a decade ago when he started betting on the Kentucky college basketball program which he was part of.
By 2015 he got rinsed after Serena Williams lost in the semi-final of the US Open to Roberta Vinci who was given no hope of a result.
Then Conor McGregor lost to Khabib Nurmagomedov when the Irishman was at the peak of his powers.
More recently, he wagered $350,000 for Jake Paul to beat professional boxer Tommy Fury, brother of World Champion Tyson. That went wrong badly.
And there have been many more bets tainted by the Drake Curse.
So, maybe this is the real reason we’ve yet to see Drake in a high-stakes battle.
