First up he claimed to have won more money than the Jungleman, Dan Cates, and this week it is Doug Polk who he outguns with his poker winnings. Who is the mystery crusher? Phil Hellmuth? Daniel Negreanu? Nope, it’s none other than Dan Bilzerian!
The self-styled King of Instagram known for his billionaire playboy lifestyle made the claims this week when interviewed by Veronica Brill.
Forty-year-old Armenian-American Bilzerian stated of Polk: “He can jerk off with solvers, and maybe he’s the best f***ing online guru, or whatever. But I’ve won more money.”
Bilzerian’s poker career has been a mish-mash of highstakes private games and occasional forays into the televised celebrity games that most poker fans will have seen him in.
Quite how good a player he is has been debated widely, and Polk was one of those who ripped Dan’s game to shreds back in 2018…
This week, however, Bilzerian hit back when Brill asked his thoughts on Polk’s criticism.
“I didn’t care about his review then, and I don’t care about it now,” Bilzerian, now a GGPoker ambassador, told Brill.
“It was always to my benefit for people to think I was a stupid guy. That I was a rich trust fund idiot.”
“So I kind of leaned into that, and it made me tons of money…I never wanted people to think I was good, so the more Doug Polks of the world running around talking about how shitty I was, the more games I’d get into.”
“I built my poker career on idiots like him thinking that I was bad,” Bilzerian told the whistleblower in the Mike Postle case. “At the end of the day, the scoreboard in poker is your bank account.
“So I’m much better than Doug Polk. I’ve won way more money than he has. He can jerk off with solvers, and maybe he’s the best f***ing online guru, or whatever. But I’ve won more money.”
Doug Polk, who is now back doing poker videos as we revealed earlier this week, isn’t the only top-name pro who has faced Bilzerian’s ire.
Daniel “Jungleman” Cates fell foul of the guns’n’models social media sensation in 2019…
Wasn't it because of social media that you became famous in the first place?
— Daniel Cates 🇺🇸 🌎 (@junglemandan) March 13, 2019
Bilzerian hit back by making the same claims as he hit Polk with this week…
Definitely won more money than your ass in poker, that’s a fact
— Dan Bilzerian (@DanBilzerian) March 14, 2019
Cates and Bilzerian came to blows again last year when Jungleman was outed by the man known by the nickname “Blitz” as being the pro behind an online app “scandal”.
Cates was accused of ghosting an amateur in a private home game that Bill Perkins was playing in, later “apologizing” after a fashion: “I thought since many on the site were using pros to play for them (which was clear by the uniquely high level of play) at the time, it felt acceptable for me to be playing,” said Cates.
My defense for @DanBilzerian 's accusations https://t.co/EdD3yTsout
— Daniel Cates 🇺🇸 🌎 (@junglemandan) May 27, 2020
Back to the here and now, and Bilzerian did admit to Brill in the 2nd of their part interview on GGPoker that he couldn’t compete with today’s “solver generation”, but insists that’s not his plan anyway – and he is smart enough that if he wanted to, he could!
“Define “compete. Can I play against the top pros today and win? No. But that’s not what I’m trying to do.”
He added: “Sure, I’m as smart as most of those guys, I could probably do it if I wanted to. But I don’t think there’s a big edge in eking out a small win online.”
Bilzerian explained his thinking further: “You know, you’re playing against a bunch of pros and they don’t play if you’re better than them, or if they don’t think they have an edge. Even if you do get better, you don’t get action…so…what’s the point.”
When asked about his ideal table, Dan states with a smile: “A bunch of Saudis who don’t know what beats what!” and then follows up with a remarkable, almost unbelievable story.
Apparently, at the Bellagio in 2008, he won a $½million pot in Bobby’s Room. “The floor guy had to go out to the blackjack table…or… whatever the fuck it was, the gift shop, and buy a card that ranked poker hands so that the guy knew my full house beat his flush.”
And that, if it is true, is how Bilzerian has made upwards of $50million at poker. More than Doug Polk, that’s for sure!
You can watch the full interview with Brill and Bilzerian below…
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