Even if you believe Bilzerian's story prior to the large HU matches probably only about 20% of his bankroll came from his own personal play. Before the private games he never claims to make real outrageous amounts (1 $400k month bodog which was way out of the norm and 1 $10k->$186k run at bellagio in a month) which if these were such a notable amount to him means even with those runs he likely made well under $1m/year from 2003 to 2008 in online and bellagio games until he started the quasi-legal private games where he was able to run it up at much higher stakes in other ways. He states that he made significant amount of $$ running private games ($100k days weekly for years), freerolling sports bets by getting a sharp betters action down (30% of $17m), taking action of good players in exchange for getting them in the games (could be from $2m to $10m+ easily depending on the games), taking action of a mandarin speaking pro who got access to insanely good macau games ($10m+ possible), bellande staking in super soft high stakes games, crypto runup, etc ... none of these things are his own personal poker play, of course, but all seems pretty believable imo. Of course all of that would be much easier to accomplish with a secret $10m being injected from his dad but I don't think it's necessary.

Dad made like 100M+ over his career as a stock trader. Sec said dad violated some security law and had to pay back like 60M. Dad didn't pay back and filed bankruptcy. Sec or fbi or someone said dad moved money to offshore trusts. Dad claims that's ridiculous. Some years roll by, and son wins like 100M in untracked private poker games, having just a little known previous poker success. It seems like a decent cover story to get the money back in circulation, when it's probably not trivial to get 100m out of offshore trusts back into circulation (assuming SEC was right in their allegation). It's also possible he won that much with basically no help from his dad, because it is possible to win basically unlimited money in private games and he was probably competent enough to absolutely crush whales. We will probably never know, but it certainly seems at least a little fishy if you ask me.

When did he ever crush on-line heads-up games for years???

I thought it was a closed case that he's playing around with Daddy's money.

Most players that get money from dad are huge whale donators that never win $70 million in a year.

On a single untracked site?

The majority of larger sites and networks(cash and tournaments) were tracked in that era. Disregard the aspect of him winning millions in these private games.

You'd think someone who built from zero would have something better to say than I won $400k in a month on an untracked site and ran up $180k at bellagio in 3 weeks.

I don't think anyone doubts there likely some millionaires who managed to hustle billionaires out of tens of millions.

Polk belongs in the top 0.1% of poker players and you re saying he's a failure because he isn't top 0.01%.

Well he said his username was blitz[something] on Bodog

What do we know about this?

Bodog was tracked at least for tournaments back before it was Bovada

His name was blitzforce on Bodog. There are old forum posts talking about him going on big runs etc.

I assume that this is him on Stars (same name, played HU):

https://i.imgur.com/BgMEQnp.png

Looks like he won over 60% of his heads-up SNGs over tiny sample-size (34 SNGs). Everything points towards him being a competent heads-up player at the time IMO. But, obviously, poker was a very different game back then.

Dan Bilzerian? In what world? Back in the day he even admitted to being a losing player online. Obviously with the usual caveats of "everybody cheating, internet nerds, online isn't the real thing, yadayadayada".

Yeah, that's what about to post. The whole discussion about how his dad couldn't give him cash, because he had to wire him the money was a red herring. If dad had hidden the money in offshore accounts, there are ways to give him access. For example, Dad sets up an offshore corporation, gives Dan a corporate card, tells him to go wild with it.

If Dans tells us that for a long time he was pretending to be a rich trust fund kid so as to take whales' money, why shouldn't we suspect that because of the delicate nature of his wealth he was pretending to be making tons of money off poker?

Speaking of which, while I cannot say it's impossible he made the money he claims, I find it hard to believe that Bilzerian is essentially the most winning player in the word, or at worst a top 5 poker winner. It's hard to believe anyone has made so much money. Perhaps my imagination or my knowledge of the truly rich is failing me.

Having said that, I came into the podcast thinking that Bilzerian was a shallow idiot appealing to 16 year old libidos and I came away with a far more favorable impression of him.

I definitely felt at times that I was hassled or that he was playing a long con, not because I thought he was lying, but because I thought like he was throwing off red herrings. He does appear to be at least somewhat intelligent and have a certain degree of honesty which allows him to be self-aware about the insecurities that drive a lot of the shallow minded behavior. He also did manage to put Doug -who's I was joking defense didn't seem very strong- on the backfoot by insisting that Doug had misrepresented him.

Bilzerian might be a fun guy to hang around. Still not entirely convinced he made tens of millions playing poker.

where/when did he say this? i assume he stopped winning at some point (and would be a massive loser today). But that doesn't contradict the claim of winning big in early 2000s

not too much. nothing new here nor here. also mentioned here and here. i sent PM to the people mentioning having played blitzforce asking them to come by and give their opinion on his play and whatever else.
edit: only one of the posters i contacted is still active (last activity was yesterday), the others haven't logged in for years.

i'm guessing PTR's records are long gone so unless dan contacts bodog and requests old hand histories and presents the results to the public without doctoring them, we'll never know. if he does choose to do this and successfully retrieves the hands, he'll have to video record his computer screen as he opens the e-mail then imports the hands into tracking software and showing the bottom line, otherwise allegations of nefarious behavior will be eminent. so yeah, this will not happen unless there's a (monetary) incentive for dan to do this. doug?

Doug is likeable, funny and seems like an honest guy.

Blizz is a blowhard douchenozzle.

These are the facts of the case and they are undisputed.

Doug appeals to 16 year olds with that low brow humor. If he was truly as likeable as you think he is then he really should have had no problem getting into juicy private games, regardless of how much of a crusher he purported himself to be.

At worst he could have hosted his own private games, which btw is an under-discussed topic regarding Bilzerian's wealth accumulation.

Wow this interview is kind of hostile.

Doug sounds like a prosecutor. How much did you make on each site and when lol

I don't know why people care so much.

A lucky guy won a bunch of money. People win the lottery who cares!

No top player in the world thinks Dan is a top world class player.

And if he wants to prove that is, just play now and beat the top guys.

Doug is obviously a naturally gifted logical thinker but he makes a lot of embarrassingly simple logical errors. He should take some courses in philosophy IMO.

Aren't they both multi millionaires? I just don't see a loser in this debate. They both are winners in life. They just have a different way of going about it and it created a little friction which is entertaining to watch. I just don't see how anyone can lose here including the audience. I enjoyed listening to 2 successful people that do it in a different way. I learned a lot from both.

truth

It feels like the same people who think Dan Bilzerian made all his money playing poker are the same people who think Mike Postle is innocent 'cos theres no proof he cheated' and are the same people who think Craig White is Satoshi 'which he could prove easily if he wanted to he just chooses not to and that isn't suspicious at all'

It's 'just a coincidence' his dad's many millions from wall street happened to go missing, then just after that Dan becomes the 'most winning player ever' in 'untracked private games' and happens to win many millions of dollars as a professional poker player despite not being a top player

And yes, I understand he's probably won some money since in private games. But to think he's 'self made' from 'poker winnings' is absolutely hilarious. The probability of that has to be something like one in a million that he never got a cent of his dad's money etc

And he got lucky because IIRC it was the one where the Lakers were losing by a LOT to Portland and came back to win the final game in 2000. It was the game with the famous alley oop to Shaq. They had a LOT of money on that game IIRC although I didn't remember it being pooled money but I could just be forgetting.

The idea that a bad, fishy player can make money simply by finding great games and worse players is fundamentally flawed because there are almost always going to be sharks in those games or at least good players. So, if you are bad player, the good players are going to relieve you of your money. You would also have to have good money to get into those games but how could you earn that money if you were bad? It's just flawed and stupid.

Most obvious conclusion for me after watching the video was that Dan has had some huge heads up wins vs rich guys (this was corroborated by Doug).

That kind of blew me away.

The next obvious thing for me is that Dan lies and obfuscates, which means he probably is hiding some kind of shady activity (could be for his dad, or something else).

But he's clearly not a dumb guy and probably is a winning player if he selects well, which he claims to.

Doug was not well prepared enough for the interview but it was still super entertaining and Doug is creating a very interesting brand by bringing on people he has beef with.

If you watch the video, Dan explains that good players aren't allowed into the big games with celebrity/businessman whales. Why is it hard for people to comprehend that whales like to play with other whales and private games are controlled to allow this to happen?

And, Dan built his bankroll online in the 2003-2008 time period when basically everyone was godawful at poker, then used that bankroll to transition into big live games. So skill assessments based on today's online environment are hardly relevant to the story Dan is telling.

He says in the video that he cashed in his trust fund in 2019 and that it wasn't a lot (1-2 mil) relative to his net worth. He has documentation etc.

Do you guys maybe wanna just watch the video before posting?

Guys, I just wanted to let you know that I won $2200 tonight playing 2/5NL.
Which if you extrapolate that out, means I win $800,000 year if I play daily