Dan Bilzerian gave a glimpse into the biggest cash game he ever played, which had a $10,000,000 buy-in in the Wolf of Wall Street Interview.
Much of what is discussed is a rehash of what the poker community knows anyway but there’s always interesting snippets of new information to give a different perspective on things.
The most interesting part was his claim to have regularly played in high stakes cash games with a $10,000,000 million buy-in.
Jordan Belfort kicks off the meat of the interview by asking for clarification that Dan Bilzerian really did make his fortune from gambling, long before he was handed a trust fund.
He admits that he was a guy who was happy to take the free money and never wanted praise for doing it the hard way.
“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.”
“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.”
He even claims that he got his jet three years before he got his trust fund!
Bilzerian then clarifies that it was the whole trust fund angle that broke down the barrier to entry to play in games with what he terms “rich idiots.”
Do you believe him?
$10,000,000 Buy-in Cash Games and a $36 Million Pot
Jordan Belfort then steers the questioning to what Dan Bilzerian thinks about his own level of play.
“How would you rate yourself as a 1-10 actual skills-based player? Where would you put yourself on a skills-based continuum?”
With a 10 being the best pros in the world, Bilzerian’s answer might shock more than a few readers.
“When I was in my heyday of playing…2010-2012…I would say I was probably…if you factor in like table image, understanding other people, how they’re going to play against you, exploiting them in spots…”
“…being able to get maximum value out of your hands, being able to get people to play really poorly against you…if you factor all that in and not just straight fundamentals, I would say that was a 9 or a 10!”
There you have it; Dan Bilzerian reckons he was among the very best poker players on the planet. But it doesn’t end there.
He also claims to have been one of the first players in the world to play a loose-aggressive style. He does at least admit that he is now a 4-5 on Belfort’s scale.
When asked about the biggest pot he ever played, Dan Bilzerian reckons it could have been as much as $36 million as he had at least $18 million chips in front of him, but it sounds like the river bet was called and he collected $10 million profit.
He makes it sound as if this was perfectly normal for him to be playing for those sums. He admits that he could easily have gone broke with just a few losing sessions in a row as the games were $5-10 million buy-in.
Again: do you believe him?
Playing these games with what he reports as a $50m million net worth isn’t just risky, it’s downright irresponsible and a sure way to the poorhouse if it really happened.
We look forward to seeing if Dan Bilzerian’s $50 million buy-in heads-up match against billionaire Alec Gores ever gets off the ground.
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