Greatest Poker Degenerates Of All Time
Who do you think the Greatest Poker Degenerates of all time are? The guys who made millions playing poker and went on to blow all or most of it on crazy gambling binges, insane lifestyle choices and basically an overall degenerate way of life. Here are my choices:
-Stu Unger
-Mike Matusow
-Tom Dwan
-Shawn Sheikhan
-Eric Lindgren
-Gus Hansen
Nick "The Greek" Dandalos surely should get a mention.
Managed to lose an estimated $2-4m Heads up to Johnny Moss in 1949 (roughly $25m-$50m in today's money)
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
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I can see how it's annoying for false details mentioned which make you look bad. For some reason I thought that's what happened (that you complained on 2p2). I think all these top gamblers/degens get some exaggerated stories about them, due to the myth/legend of your personalities, and it's hard to remember exactly what happened when recalling something from a long time ago. It's good to see you have nothing bad to say about Ben. Classy move imo. Although pretending like it was a joke is a bit
Wonder has urubu got anything good to say about trueteller and Hillary Duff tho? 😃
The million dollar game in a nutshell. watching degens fight over $1k if they only have 10k is way more interesting than watching games where everyone sold pieces.
I can see how it's annoying for false details mentioned which make you look bad. For some reason I thought that's what happened (that you complained on 2p2). I think all these top gamblers/degens get some exaggerated stories about them, due to the myth/legend of your personalities, and it's hard to remember exactly what happened when recalling something from a long time ago. It's good to see you have nothing bad to say about Ben. Classy move imo. Although pretending like it was a joke is a bit
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
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Sam Grizzle or Eskimo Clark yet.
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.
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.
My Mo Ibrahim story. In my very first WSOP tournament I made it to the final table. It was the 2003 2K Limit Hold'em event. When it got down to the final five players Ibrahim had about half the chips in play and the rest of us had nearly equal stacks. We all took a break to discuss a deal. After several minutes of discussion we agreed that Mo would get second money of 145K (First paid 290K) and we would get 100K each. Mo agreed and we were all very happy. Then Huck Seed and Ted Forrest entered t
Wow, that deal is terrible. He definitely made the right decision in the end.
My Mo Ibrahim story. In my very first WSOP tournament I made it to the final table. It was the 2003 2K Limit Hold'em event. When it got down to the final five players Ibrahim had about half the chips in play and the rest of us had nearly equal stacks. We all took a break to discuss a deal. After several minutes of discussion we agreed that Mo would get second money of 145K (First paid 290K) and we would get 100K each. Mo agreed and we were all very happy. Then Huck Seed and Ted Forrest entered t
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.
