Expert review by Gemma Heathcote.
The championship is honourable and, in our case, it is also lucrative. We would like to bring a list of the wealthiest poker players to your attention. This game can be considered international, and its best players become legends and add their names to history.
It is worth mentioning that in online poker, your status, country or age don’t matter as long as it’s legal. This game values the mindset, stubbornness, preparation, and a little luck. The people we are going to talk about today are quite often blessed by luck.This rating contains players with more than 75 million dollars earned through the game of poker. Let’s find out about them and their biggest victories.
The top spot in today’s top is taken by the famous Dan Bilzerian. A real celebrity with Armenian roots, who became a citizen of Armenia in 2018, having received citizenship in his ancestral homeland. Not all of his fortune consists of winnings in games, but today he is the richest poker player.
According to his own words, poker earnings are over 200 million US dollars. 2014 was the luckiest year for him, but some of his colleagues tend to think that it is overrated because he inherited a lot from his well-to-do parents. He prefers to play at the highest stakes and always has something charming to him. Dan is not only a poker player but an actor too.
Second on our list today is Phil Ivey, nicknamed “The Tiger Woods of Poker”. He is a professional poker player, his accomplishments include ten bracelets of WSOP World Series of Poker (only Phil Hellmuth had more), the first place in the World Poker Tour and the record of reaching nine final tables.
He earned more than 100 million dollars throughout his career. Ivey has been into poker since his childhood, playing for the first time when he was an eight-year-old boy. His love for poker only grew over the years. Phil used a fake ID card to enter the casino but was caught. His record prize money was $250 thousand in 2014 at the Aussie Millions LK Boutique AU competition. He successfully participates in live tournaments andtillays online poker.
Better known as Sam Farha or Mister Cool, this professional player is in third place on our list. His main achievement is the second place taken at the World Series of Poker in 2013. His accomplishments include three WSOP bracelets. A native of Beirut, Lebanon, he is rightfully recognised as one of the best players in the Middle East.
He has won three WSOP bracelets throughout his career. Sam started with small stakes and then earned the largest prize of more than 488 thousand US dollars in 2010 at the Omaha Hi-Low Split-8 tournament or Better Championship from the $10,000 buy-in at the World Series of Poker. Today, Sam Farha’s total income earned by playing poker amounts to approximately $100 million.
Californian Chris Ferguson, nicknamed “Jesus”, which he received because of his long hair and beard, is ranked fourth in today’s list of the richest poker players. His father introduced him to this game, according to Chris himself, it became their shared entertainment and influenced the further success of Ferguson Jr. at a professional level.
One of the most striking victories of this player is the prize money of $1.5 million at the Main Event of the WSOP 2000. The amount does not seem huge in comparison with today’s prize sizes, but let’s note that Ferguson took part in over 90 tournaments, winning impressive amounts of money. According to analysts, to date, Chris Ferguson’s total bank is more than 80 million US dollars.
A dark spot on his reputation and the end of the player’s career was the situation when he was accused of being engaged in a Ponzi scheme on the poker website Full Tilt Poker, which was closed down after the scandal. The directors of the site scammed customers, taking 444 million dollars money to themselves and the firm’s owners.
On the fifth but very honourable place is the name of a real poker legend, Doyle Brunson. Firstly, he is the oldest member of the Poker Hall of Fame, being there since 1988. His son is also a member of the Poker Hall of Fame since October 2016. Doyle was born in Longworth, Texas, and due to persistence and physical ability, he entered college and decided to build a basketball career. He wasn’t able to succeed in sports due to a knee injury, which left him with a cane for life.
Doyle was one of the first to play poker big, taking the game to a whole new level. In 1976 he beat Jesse Alto with a ten and two of spades and did the same to Gary Berland the following year. Now the combination of a ten and two of spades is called “Doyle’s Hand”. His total amount of poker winnings amounted to $75 million.
One of Doyle’s nicknames is “Big Papa”, not only because of his height and venerable age. His career was almost 60 years long, he wrote and published the book called Super System, which is seen as one of the best poker books. Doyle Brunson’s accomplishments include ten golden WSOP bracelets, the same as Phil Ivey mentioned above, and two big victories in the main tournament, and winning once at such a level of competition for 90 per cent of those willing remains an impossible dream.
To sum up, let’s note once again how different people with different fates can get onto the list of the richest people and favourites of luck. Some have got a big legacy and a good platform for a breakthrough, and some, having been injured, lost their dream and career in the NBA but achieved stunning success in a completely different sphere.
The history of poker in particular and of gambling, in general, is full of records and oddities, strange bets, and legendary players. Those who lost all their money and those who became real legends. The history of the game has significantly changed from the day of the first poker tournament to now, being filled with new events and names.