27 minutes ago, fkthesystem said: He literally stated multiple times in his last few months of videos that he isnt allowed to record his playing in most bookmakers anymore. Paddy power and william are a couple of them. Even bingo halls and Casinos, too. I didnt say he is the sole reason.

1. Big Gambling Losses
2. Big Poker Losses

If I lost $100 per week at poker it wouldn’t really affect my life. If I lost $1000 then I’d have some explaining to do and… if I had it to lose! – I spewed $10,000 I’d be in serious trouble with my girl, my bank manager and countless others! For some players, however, even that $10k is simply pocket change – enough to pay for a weekend away somewhere or even fuel for their private jet!

With Daniel Negreanu recently explaining how losing $1million would be “like, whatever” and David Williams laughing about his $5k to almost a $million and then back to -$250k all in the space of one ‘degen’ weekend at the tables, I thought we should take a look at the top 5 of poker’s biggest losers – and then laugh or cry depending on your take!

Viktor ‘Isildur1’ Blom

• Big Wins & Losses of Celebrity Gamblers With so much money to burn, celebrities attract a lot of attention with their ridiculous gambling winnings (and losses). Walk through Caesars Palace in Las Vegas and you might run into big name celebs like Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, or Ashton Kutcher betting thousands of dollars on their favorite card.
• Hey man, your story hits very close to home for me. I also had big wins, and was care free when I started. I play blackjack which is a much different beast than poker,but still gambling. At my best point I was up 45k in profit with very little losses to my name. I've now been trying to quit. At this point in time I have my rent money.

Let’s start with the smallest of our losses, a paltry $4.2 million give or take a few dollars! The loser? None other than Viktor ‘Isildur1’ Blom, the Swedish online sensation who had ruled the nosebleed stakes in the late noughties, crushing the likes of Tom ‘durrrr’ Dwan for $4million .

As Phil Galfond describes it:

'Isildur went on to challenge himself in ways that we still have never seen in online poker. Seared in my memory is the image of him nine-tabling $500/1000 against Dwan, Ivey, and Antonius all at the same time.”

All well and good, but when Blom finally crashed it was horrible to watch and sparked huge controversy in the poker world. In December of 2009 he played a match against Brian Hastings and had almost his entire bankroll wiped out in the space of five hours on Full Tilt poker, a $4.2million downswing which was unthinkable for the all-conquering Swede.

And then it hit the news – Townsend had collaborated with both Brian Hastings and Cole South, exchanging and discussing hand histories against Blom and new strategies to wipe the Swede out. Blom was devastated and didn’t play for several months after this. Hastings may have been over $4million richer but to this very day is looked upon with disgust by many poker fans and players for his unethical play.

How Poker Players Suffer Big Losses By 'Reverse Manufacturing' This article first appeared in Poker Digest magazine. Most players, even serious one, suffer much greater poker losses than they should. That makes me sad, so I’ll try to fix it. One reason is that their losses are 'reversed manufactured.' Now there’s a fancy term. He gulps down a cup of ginseng tea and slams $500k on the table, loses. Another bet, this time $600k, loses again. Three more hands continued the same way until he reduced his bet to $300k and he finally wins one hand. He is furious that he lost all his big bets and his only win was his “small” bet.

Back to Galfond for a final word from when he eventually met Blom in person:

'My impression from talking to him was that he genuinely doesn’t care about the money. I know some people say they don’t care… but they care. I’m not sure Viktor does. He plays poker because he has fun playing and he enjoys the competition.”

Phil Ivey

There can’t be a single poker player on the planet who doesn’t know about Phil Ivey and his gambling excesses, although to be fair to the man these excesses have brought him a fortune estimated by some at $100million!

In recent years, however, his one-time legendary skills on the virtual felt – basically a licence to print money for Ivey – have failed him and in 2014 and 2015 he was the biggest online loser in the game.

Hundreds of sessions and hundreds of thousands of hands brought nothing but woe and misery to Ivey as he dropped $2,481,266 on PokerStars and $1,250,806 on Full Tilt in 2015, to add to his $2.3milliondownswing the previous year.

Now when you have $100million to your name and can still rake in money from the endorsements, live tournament winnings and big Macau cash games – not to mention the sport betting, baccarat and other loves of Ivey’s life – then a few million might not mean so much to you. But even so, it must have hurt Phil’s pride if not his wallet to be known as the year’s biggest loser!

Gus Hansen

Moving up the losing stakes a bit we find ourselves at the door of the Great Dane, Gus Hansen – a firm favorite of the fans and unfortunately a man who would become a firm favorite of the other high stakes kings!

His amazing run on Full Tilt prior to Black Friday in 2011 had seen Denmark’s long-time number two amass over $8million – but this turned into a horrible $20.7million loss over the next two and a half years. His online play never seemed to recover after the Black Friday shutdown, his re-appearance resulting in massive losses, while his live play was good but unspectacular during the same period.

The reason? Well according to the man himself:

Big Gambling Losses

'If you should rate my table selection it would be about the worst that has ever been seen. Also, my tilt factor is about the worst in the world and my stubbornness is about the worst. It's obvious that some of these factors have weighed in a led to bad my results.'

Never a good combination – even less so when you’re facing some of the all-time greats of the high stakes community. Gus is back on the comeback trail now, but the memory of this massive loss still haunts him. He stated honestly:

'One has to be honest and say that sometimes somebody catches up to you and sometimes somebody surpasses you.'

Guy Laliberte

Big Poker Losses

When a ‘whale’ comes along, the sharks sharpen their teeth in anticipation! This is what happened to ‘poor’ Guy Laliberte, the Cirque du Soleil founder who managed to spew a phenomenal $28million on the online tables.

Of course the term whale is only relative – Guy being a decent poker player by most standards – but pitted against the world’s best he was shark-food. The billionaire appeared under a variety of names on Full Tilt back in 2008 and 2009 - including 'noatima’, ‘patatino’ and ‘LadyMarmalade’ - but word soon got out and he was ruthlessly targeted by the big boys.

In an interview he confessed to having been “bent over” but “provided the Vaseline himself,” adding that:

'I should have remembered that I am a dinosaur on the internet. The story of Full Tilt is clear. I have been totally ripped off. And by people I knew personally. They played with uncovered bank accounts and paid no money.”

Laliberte claims there would often be two or three “scam artists” playing against him at any one time, finding himself “squeezed out of pots” by the alleged collusion of his opponents. He said:

'I was an idiot. I was drawn like a school boy.”

Andy Beal

Even Guy’s enormous poker losses are nothing compared to those of Andy Beal, the billionaire banker, businessman and mathematician. Beal not only lost $16million in his challenge match against ‘The Corporation’ but also allegedly lost up to $50million in private home games!

The famous and riveting book - ‘The Professor, The Banker and The Suicide King’ by Michael Craig - chronicles the first of the matches between Beal and the Corporation (a pool of the world’s best players including Jennifer Harman, Chip Reese, Doyle Brunson and Ted Forrest) which Beal emerged from over $13million ahead. However, in a later ‘rematch’ Phil Ivey “proceeded to embarrass Beal and emerged from the tables having won $16.6 million”.

The other, even bigger, losses which Beal is alleged to have accrued were in games with Tobey Maguire and Beal’s fellow billionaire Alec Gores. Although undocumented, Maguire is known for his love of high stakes private games and was one of the prime movers behind Molly’s Game, which will soon begin filming as a Hollywood movie.

So, my $100 or thousand bucks pales into significance when we see just how much these players have spewed over the years, but I’m not sure it’ll work as a defense with my girlfriend next time I bust out my local cash game 2 or 3 buy-ins down however!

If you’ve ever gambled, it’s a near certainty that you’ve suffered plenty of crushing losses. A dramatic last second layup that leaves you one-point shy of covering, that garbage time touchdown that pushes it from the under to the over, the dealer somehow getting a blackjack on your biggest hand…the list goes on.

If you feel like you’ve been a victim of bad betting karma, you aren’t alone. In this article, I’ll lay out 5 examples of betting losses that will help you feel better about your own.

1 – The GOAT Goes Down

Michael Jordan is undoubtedly (sorry, LeBron people) the greatest basketball player of all-time. His relentless competitiveness was an invaluable asset for his game throughout his career. Unfortunately, this same competitive spirit didn’t always help outside the lines.

A golf-lover and gambler, Michael Jordan was known to wager huge amounts of money on the course despite not being the most talented player. His betting buddy Richard Esquinas recounted one time he’ll remember more than any other.

How did he get down that much in the first place? By placing historically-high bets on each hole, of course. It’s been said that it was no big deal for him to throw down $100,000 on a single hole.

While MJ never backed down to anyone, perhaps golf was not his best game. As it stands today he’s worth more than a billion dollars, so I’d say he can lose a few more $100,000 holes and still come out okay.

2 – Rap Battle

Long-time producer, music executive, and rapper Birdman is an avid sports bettor. Unfortunately for him, betting on the Super Bowl has been somewhat of a challenge.

As a New England Patriots fan, he certainly had good reason to be feeling confident about his chances going into Super Bowl XLVI. He was so confident, in fact, that he was prepared to put down $5 million on the game. One sportsbook challenged him to do it but he backed down.

Instead, he placed a $1 million wager on the game. This time he didn’t place it with a sportsbook, but rather went head to head with fellow rapper 50 Cent.

The game ended with a New York Giants victory and 50 Cent took the million from Birdman. And his bad luck did not stop there.

In Super Bowl LII, which featured the Patriots and the Eagles, Birdman challenged another rapper to raise the stakes. He bet AR-Ab $100,000 that the Pats would take down the Eagles.

Of the many comeback drives Brady put together over the years, this would not be one of them. Birdman lost the $100k, and presumably has stopped betting other rappers.

3 – The Whale of Whales

Over the years I’ve read about plenty of high-rollers who have suffered big losses. These people are the ones who keep casinos in business, and the ones who act as a warning to others that gambling can end very badly.

One such man was Terrance Watanabe. An American businessman who had developed quite the fortune, in the hundreds of millions, also had a penchant for taking risks in Las Vegas. Unfortunately for Terrance, he wasn’t a very good gambler.

Most casino whales prefer to play games where some skill is involved, such as blackjack or baccarat. Not Terrance Watanabe. He actually preferred to wager his money on games that were purely based on chance.

Casino management, who were probably his biggest fans, referred to him as a “house player.” This means that he actually liked playing the games that had a higher house edge. Meaning he was betting on games that he knew were tipped in the casino’s favor.

Now before I get into the exact dollar figures Mr. Watanabe burned through, it’s important to get some context on his mindset during all of this. Today, he claims that he is a compulsive gambler, and that casinos like Caesars Palace knowingly took advantage of him and his condition.

Additionally, he has alleged that casinos provided him with drugs and alcohol in order to keep him gambling, and losing, as long as possible. Somewhat surprisingly, the gambling regulators actually took his side and fined Caesars Palace $225,000 for their misconduct.

That fine might seem significant, but when you consider the amount of money Terrance Watanabe lost, it’s a drop in the ocean. The final total of his losses added up to nearly $112 million per the Wall Street Journal.

4 – Vegas Dave

With a nickname like Vegas Dave, one has to assume that big losses are just going to be part of the experience. This sports bettor, whose actual name was Dave Oancea, was known for being showy with his gambling on social media.

Unfortunately for Vegas Dave, he was about to get a big dose of harsh reality in 2016. He took a $1 million bet on female MMA fighter Miesha Tate at UFC 200. As Tate squared off against Amanda Nunes, things went south quickly for both Tate and Dave.

It only took a little more than three minutes for Tate to fall to Nunes, costing Dave a cool million dollars. Following the defeat, his social media posts seemed to focus more on his concern for the health of Tate, who had broken her nose during the fight.

I’m sure that playing off a million dollar loss as the second thing on your worry list sounds good, but my guess is that the loss hurt more than any broken nose.

5 – The Daredevil

The betting losses described above are significant, but ultimately nothing that really surprises anyone. To find something a bit more unique, let me take you back to the good old days of 1883.

Daredevil, and self-professed compulsive gambler Matthew Webb had built a name for himself after becoming the first man ever to swim across the English Channel.

Webb was unique in that he was able to make enough money to support himself by betting against the public on swimming challenges that he would perform. For example, he once won a bunch of money by swimming for 74 hours straight.

Although he was British, he spent quite a bit of time in America as well. In 1881, he took up residence in America and won a few challenges that paid him fairly well, but it wasn’t quite enough to fully support himself at that time. So, he did what any reasonable gambler would do – he put his life on the line and bet on himself.

This time, he decided to take bets on whether or not he could swim through the whirlpool found at Niagara Falls. The dollar figure he would receive if able to complete the challenge was $10,000. Keep in mind this was pre-1900, and that amount of money was enough to last him awhile. It would be roughly worth $400,000 today.

On July 24^th, 1883, Webb dove in to attempt the challenge. He was never seen again.

Conclusion

As long as gambling is available, you can bet there will be individuals who are willing to risk it all in hopes of a huge payout. In Matthew Webb’s case, he paid the debt with his life.

These examples of extreme gamblers should make everyone else aware just how quickly things can turn for the worst if you aren’t careful. My guess is that these people weren’t exactly keeping a close eye on their bankroll.

Although you probably won’t ever have $100 million to lose, let these people be a cautionary tale to always bet within your means.