Estimated net worths of poker pros:
One of the most common questions on poker forums is how much money the best poker pros have. We decided it would be fun to estimate (or more like questimate) the net worth of some of these most famous poker players. Something to note at first is that these days most of the poker pros money comes from outside playing poker. Especially tournament poker actually plays quite small part in poker pros net worth, as the buyin fees and taxes take such a huge amount of their winnings.
Phil Ivey
It is safe to assume that almost everyone who follows poker considers Phil Ivey to be the best poker player. Even though Phil Ivey is still a young man (Born in 1976) he has been playing the biggest live cash games for around 10 years. And based on what we have read and heard he has also been very successful in the $4000/$8000 mixed game as well as in special highstakes headsup matches. For example he used to regularly play $10,000/$20,000 limit holdem headsup against Lyle Berman.
Also for the past few years Phil Ivey has been absolutely destroying the biggest online cash games. So we would estimate that Phil Ivey has made at least tens of millions from playing poker. However this is not even where most of his money comes from. It is said that Phil Ivey is maybe the biggest owner of Full Tilt Poker – which is estimated to be worth at least hundreds of millions. According to recent lawsuit by Clonie Gowen it might be worth billions. Thus we can safely assume that Phil Ivey’s net worth is more than $100million. This is even though Phil is known of his high spending lifestyle which includes playing highstakes casino games such as craps and blackjack and flying on private planes.
Phil Ivey has made big part of his massive fortune by playing poker against players who are worse than him. He current plays at Full Tilt Poker
Tony G (Antanas Guoga)
Tony G is mostly known of his constantly running mouth that comes up with the most obscure insults such as “On your bike Russian”. However he appears to be also quite good poker player having won several major poker tournaments. ?It is hard to estimate how much money Tony G has made from playing poker. He has often spoken about playing in really highstakes games in some exotic locations such as Moscow, Russia and in the Mediterranean. According to him multi million dollar pots are common in those games. However we believe that instead of actually playing poker most of his money comes from being major owner of multiple big internet poker information sites (such as PokerWorks). It should be safe to assume that he is worth tens of millions.
Patrik Antonius
Patrik Antonius is a Finnish poker pro who is considered to be one of absolute best cash game players in the world. He is currently one of the biggest online poker winners in 2009 and few years back he used to be regular player in the biggest Las Vegas cash games before moving to Monaco. It is rumored that when Patrik Antonius made sponsor deal with Full Tilt Poker he became also part owner of the site. Even if he owns just 0.5% of the company his stocks are worth several million. We would estimate Patrik Antonius to be worth around $20 million at the moment.
Patrik Antonius currently plays online poker at Full Tilt Poker.
Daniel Negreanu
Daniel Negreanu has been lately playing ministakes poker online and even though he claims it is simply a challenge for himself to try to run $10 to $100,000 some people speculate that he is actually broke or busto. Obviously no-one thinks he only has $10 left, but some say that this he is under contract with PokerStars that forces him to play x number of hours each month at their site and he simply cant afford the big cash games. Those people also claim that Daniel Negreanu lost all his moneys playing highstakes poker games, and indeed at least in the highstakes games that have been on TV he hasn’t done very well. However something to understand about Daniel Negreanu is that he is involved in lot of poker related business. He is the face of online poker coaching site, he has written several popular poker books, has big sponrsoship deal with PokerStars and is also involved in other businesses. We estimate Daniel Negreanu to be worth more than $10million.
Daniel Negreanu is a key member of Team PokerStars Pro. You can watch and play with Daniel at PokerStars
Some other estimates:
Howard Lederer: $100million+ Believed to be the other big owner of Full Tilt Poker alongside Phil Ivey.
Barry Greenstein: $15million. Played the biggest cash games for a long time, wrote a poker book, owner of a few internet poker websites. Some say that Barry Greenstein made a fortune from outside poker when a company at which he worked was sold. However he has denied this multiple times, saying he didn’t make any kind of big money from the sale.
Jamie Gold: $2million. No major success after his WSOP win. Jamie Gold supposedly had to pay big part of his WSOP winnings to other people. He signed a sponsorship deal while ago.
Gus Hansen: $20million+. No one except himself knows how he did in the big game back when he used to play them regularly. Some say Gus Hansen went broke in those games. Gus Hansen major owner in poker site called PokerChamps that was sold for around $10million to BetFair. Gus halso written a poker book. As well as he supposedly owns part of FullTiltPoker.
Johnny Chan: $10million+. Johnny Chan is one the most famous poker players having won 10 World Series of Poker bracelets. These days Johnny Chan seems to mostly focus on poker related businesses and has invested heavily in few companies. He was the face of Chan Poker online poker site for a while and is now involved with All-in Energy Drink.
Doyle Brunson: $75million+. Doyle Brunson has been playing the biggest poker cash games longer than anyone else in the world. He is still believed to be one of the most successful players in the big game. Doyle Brunson also used to do highstakes sports betting with Chip Reese. As well as this, Doyle has written several highly popular poker books and is involved with online poker site DoylesRoom.
