Dan Bilzerian: ‘Poker Players Are Kind of a Degenerate Group’
Colorful poker pro Dan Bilzerian gave few details on that $10.8 million session he tweeted about recently other than that it was a $5,000-$10,000 no-limit event. But in an exclusive Card Player interview, Bilzerian talks about how he got into poker and readily admits there is "nothing normal about winning or losing $10 million in a single night".
“It is crazy no matter how much money you have, especially when you start giving to charity and you realize how many people you could help out with that kind of money. Even if you had $1 billion, $10 million is a lot.”
Bilzerian has become a bit of an Internet sensation. He was profiled in a major online publication for his popular Intagram antics. The poker pro also makes an appearance in the highly acclaimed film “Lone Survivor”.
When asked what he thought of the poker player community as a whole, Bilzerian told CardPlayer:
“Well, it’s kind of a degenerate group. I mean, people who play poker professionally; it kind of takes a special type of person to do that. You have to be able to take a real kick in the nuts, and your life is stressful all the time. It is really hard to be a professional poker player and not go broke. The problem is that when they are winning, they feel like they are going to continue winning at the same rate and when they are losing they want to win their money back.
“Also, once you play big it’s really hard to drop down in stakes. Let’s say your bankroll is $1 million and you go play a game with a buy-in of $100,000. If you lose two or three buy-ins…there are a lot of guys who have done that. Now they lost a third of their net worth, or a fifth or whatever it is, and now it’s really difficult for them to go back and grind at smaller games because they are chasing that loss. And just because they have $1 million doesn’t mean they have $1 million to play with.
“They should be budgeting for whatever expenses they have. But they don’t do that and that’s why professional poker players go broke. If you look at Tom Dwan, he went broke; Phil Ivey just went broke. All these really talented guys who made a bunch of money end up pissing it all away. There is not a long list of professional poker players who don’t go broke. It’s crazy.”
- Ace King, Gambling911.com
