Dan Bilzerian knows how to get attention whether it be in real life or in the media. Bilzerian built his Instagram following to over 32.6 million subscribers by posting pictures of his travels with scantily clad women, exotic vacations, arsenal of guns and piles of cash.
The poker community has a love-hate relationship with Bilzerian who claims to have made millions of dollars playing high stakes poker. A lot of poker players don’t believe Bilzerian’s claims as they don’t have any record of his winnings nor do they know who he played high stakes poker with.
The Setup
Bilzerian came out with a new book called The Setup in which he shares more details about some of his high stakes poker games and also puts down the names of some of his opponents. One opponent that he did mention in the book was Israeli billionaire Alec Gores. Bilzerian also went on a couple of podcasts in October to promote his books and discuss his wins and losses playing high stakes poker.
Bilzerian shares details of how he would visit the $50 million Californian mansion of Gores and buy-in for $500,000 each and play $2,000/$4,000 no-limit hold’em battle. The first session saw Bilzerian walk away with $1.6 million in profit.
Gores is not a professional poker player but likes playing high stakes poker. The 68 year old billionaire has made his wealth from The Gores Group which is a private equity firm. Gores made headlines nearly a decade ago when he was part of the high stakes group of poker players that were involved in Molly’s Game.
He is also reported to have won $50 million playing Andy Beal, the author of The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time.
Gores Challenges Bilzerian
Gores wasn’t very happy to see Bilzerian mention his name in his book and keep talking about him on the podcasts. He is reported to have sent Bilzerian a text messaged and challenged him to the biggest high stakes poker game in history. Initially, Bilzerian was challenged to a $25 million heads up game and he accepted.
Gores would later double the stakes to $50 million each, bringing the total prize pool to $100 million. Bilzerian claims that since Gores has challenged him twice, the prize pool might end up going to $100 million each. Those are big numbers and a lot of poker players are going to dismiss this as a publicity stunt.
Bilzerian claims that this is a serious proposal as he has already informed Gores that he has raised his side of the money as his backers have confirmed. Bilzerian wants this high stakes poker game to take place at the Aria in Las Vegas. He has asked Gores to wire his side of the buy-in to the Aria and he will do the same.
Bilzerian Wants PPV
Bilzerian says he wants this high stakes poker game to be a pay-per-view event so that he can also make money of the PPV. It would also silence his critics who have doubted his claims of winning millions at high stakes poker and show them that these huge cash games do really take place behind closed doors
There is no confirmation as of now as to when this potential high stakes poker game will take place but rumours suggest that it could very well take place once the 2021 World Series of Poker (WSOP) at the Rio comes to an end. The 2021 WSOP will conclude on Nov 23 which means this high stakes match could take place in Dec 2021.
