Ayyyyy great pick. I just watched something about him, too – might have been a cutaway thing on an old High Stakes Poker episode.

As for Andy Beal, does anyone recall the net loss he incurred? I'm too lazy to pore through my copy of The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King. Some half-assed internet research is giving me $16 million as the most frequent answer, but that number appears to be the one final session with Ivey. i.e. if Beal was (say) up by $10 million going in, then his net was -$6 million. If he was already down by $10 million when sat down with Ivey, then obviously his net loss was almost $24 milly.

Anyway, I also don't count Beal as a degenerate gambler, at least in terms of the way I think of that term. For starters, he was very aware of what he was getting into, knew full well the skill level of his opponents, hoped he could neutralize the skill gap by raising the stakes to the point of discomfort (for the Corporation members, not him), then decided to call it quits once he ended up losing. All of that strikes me as being in full control, which is something a degen gambler does not have.

And to reiterate what borg and 29offutgshove already noted, an eight-figure loss is a fraction of a percentage point of his net worth (which Forbes lists as $11.5 billion as of this post). Take your own net worth, then divide it by 850. If you lost that amount playing poker, would anyone suddenly worry you have a serious problem? Realistically, the most degenerate gamblers are probably people we've never heard of, simply because the amounts of money at stake are too small to notice or garner any public attention. But obviously those cases are less fun for this thread.

Finally, if anyone is interested in a somewhat amusing case of gambling degeneracy, go look up an old acquaintance of my parents. A woman named Toshi van Blitter got caught up in two different lawsuits arising from her gambling losses in the 1980s. I can't remember the exact details, but in one of the cases, her defense was that the casino did not help her get better at the game. It was such a ridiculous case that it made some headlines at the time, and I think might have been mentioned during SNL's Weekend Update.

1. Viffer

/thread

Wonder has urubu got anything good to say about trueteller and Hillary Duff tho?

How could this have happened in 1949 when Binion's Horseshoe didn't open until 1951?

Yea it’s kinda annoying people talking about what they don’t know but whatever, it’s internet lol

Have to hate him… dude is the best player ever AND happens to be the luckiest. How the **** ?!? lol

Seriously, I just hope he has an accident or something . lol no, he seems nice.

Btw once I met a girl from Instagram. Her friends play poker… so she ask me my poker nickname. Few days later she asked me why I hate Hilary duff LOL

Seen viffer leave a 10k stack at 20/40 NL at commerce for an hour circa 2006 to go **** a hook. If that’s not degen idk what is.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Sam Grizzle or Eskimo Clark yet.

That's hilarious

I once was eating a cheeseburger but after a while I started hearing a funny sound so I looked around and urubu22 had started eating it from the other side. Trust no one.

Blom is the greatest poker degenerate imo if only because we were fortunate enough to get to witness the entirety of his run in real time. The viewing spectacle that was his degeneracy on Full Tilt added to the excitement. There might be some more crazy stories out there but they are mostly second hand stories at this point and not only that but all those stories seem less impressive than bloms run to me, which many of us got front row seats for and have the exact figures of how it went down.

Its not like he just crushed holdem Heads Up for a while.... He won an insane amount of big MTTs online and live, one live with an insanely good herocall, and whenever he feels like playing some poker, people line up to get him into the next wsop event, or whatever...

Dont we all miss deepstacked Heads Up Poker on full tilt, somehow?...

I mean, I guess he may no longer be a degenerate but he certainly was one when he was younger…

There is a sense in which Stu Ungar qualifies.

Yeah I'm chiming in late but IMO Stu Ungar/ discussion over.

Neymar.

Grinder?

Tom Dwan, Rampage, Stu Ungar, gus Hansen, Sean Perry

Teddy "Ice Man" Monroe

And

Mikki Mase

Cyril Mouly

insert bad MS paint picture here

A fun angle on this is to think about the biggest degenerates you've known personally and played with. After I got out of a semi-degenerate phase in my 20s, I moved into a part-time, very pleasant playing schedule. We all probably know those that basically destroyed their lives or finances with it, but I often marveled at those that were well off in life, yet would seemingly destroy their quality of life with their poker lifestyle. It's so easy to devise a pleasant schedule once your initial jones wears off a bit.

****ing banger of a comment, 10 outta 10 would read again.

Wow, that deal is terrible. He definitely made the right decision in the end.

It was a long time ago, but I think I was there in person. Your 2+2 ID here says, "Toupee Jay.' If Jay is your actual name and you are from southern California, then we talked during that event and I saw that QQ bust out hand. Afterwards you looked like you had been stabbed.