It costs a whopping $12million to play a years’ worth of the poker world’s biggest buy-in events says Daniel Negreanu. According to Negreanu, only three players cleared that number in winnings last year.
The GGPoker ambassador outlined the changes over the years, stating: “You need to cash for $12 million+ to turn a profit if you play all the Triton, WSOP, and other high rollers.”
He then named the three players who hit that target in 2024…
- Adrian Mateos $13,109,217
- Patrik Antonius $12,488,048
- Alejandro Lococo $12,287,737
In 1999 if you traveled the world playing the highest stakes tournaments, you couldn’t spend more than $250,000.
In 2013 that number rose to roughly $1.2 million.
In 2025, that number is roughly $12 million.
You need to cash for $12 million+ to turn a profit if you play all…
— Daniel Negreanu (@RealKidPoker) April 19, 2025
Admitting that: “Not everyone will hit every stop,” Negreanu adds: “I think spending $10 million is reasonable considering every Triton stop will run you about $2 million in buy ins.”
Those who made $10million+ in cashes last year:
- Alex Foxen $11,593,726
- Jonathan Tamayo $10,298,455 (a $10m WSOP Main Event win)
- Daniel Dvoress $10,298,200
In addition, DNegs homework shows that “40 players cashed for more than $5 million, 121 players cashed for more than $2 million and “a whopping 259 players cashed for over $1 million in 2024”.
Of course, selling and swapping action makes a dent in almost every players’ profit/loss margins. Negreanu states: “…if you see a pro who played them all cash for $7 million in a year, likely losing $3-5 million, they didn’t actually lose that much if anything at all.”
Negreanu’s plan for making poker profitable? Lower your stakes…
“If you want to make a good living as a tournament player, your best bet is to focus on low to mid stakes buy in tourneys.
- Low defined as: $1500 and below Midstakes: $2k-$10k.”
Others from the nosebleed stakes MTT world were quick to pipe up, Adrian Mateos chief among them:
Daniel, in my opinion only 3/7 players spend over 10m$ in buy ins anually.
To be able to spend that amount you cant miss any stop and play NLH, PLO and short deck.
Also need to be agressive with rebuys.
Last year i played mostly all the stops and spend way lower that number.…— Adrián Mateos Díaz (@Amadi_17) April 19, 2025
Sam Greenwood also pulled up his Canadian colleague on a couple of points:
- “If they only sell at markup, they can lose $3-5 million, but still show a profit personally” They can also win millions and lose money personally.
- “No one playing these rates to have an ROI over $5 million in any given year.” No one thinks their yearly EV is close to $5M.
Sean Winter threw in a joking: “Shit, I’m down 23m past 3 years. I was wondering where it all went.”
Of course, it’s almost impossible to know how well the highrollers of the poker community are really doing, with Negreanu’s annual financial revelations most definitely the exception rather than the norm:
The year 2023 was the most brutal year in Negreanu’s life, the final total a loss of $2,228,174.
His post this weekend did prompt Josh Arieh to reveal his 2024 buy-ins, although his schedule didn’t include any big SHR buy-ins.
“I spent 1.2m in entry fees and I didn’t play a NL higher than $10k,” tweeted Arieh, and a quick scan of his Hendon Mob listing reveals a touch over $1.5million in cashes.
As Daniel has been trying to tell us for the past years, Hendon Mob listings may be very interesting, but it’s really only showing half of the picture at most.
With DNegs planning on playing 53 out of the 100 bracelet events at the upcoming World Series of Poker, it will be interesting to see if and how much profit he makes from his busy Vegas summer!
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