Dan Bilzerian is a world-famous social media influencer. On top of that, he is also a good poker player which allowed him to become a GGPoker ambassador. Bilzerian claims that most of his current finances came from playing poker. Furthermore, he claims to have won tens of millions of dollars playing this game. He recently shared this information in his autobiography book, The Setup which has recently come out. Bilzerian also announced some of this information on the recent episode of Logan Paul’s podcast “Impaulsive”. However, what has sparked a lot of controversies is the fact that Dan Bilzerian said that most of it came from billionaire Alec Gores.
Unsurprisingly, Alec Gores was upset about Dan Bilzerian’s actions. He claims that it violated his privacy, as Bilzerian publicly named him on in a popular autobiography. As a response, Alec Gores has decided to settle this issue at the poker table. On his Instagram, he challenged the Armenian-American businessman for a heads-up poker match, which has the potential to become the highest stakes heads-up poker match in history.
The Highest Stakes Heads-Up Poker Match Ever
Dan Bilzerian shared some of the details regarding this match-up on Logan Paul’s “Impaulsive” podcast. Bilzerian claimed that the total prize pool will be $100,000,000 and consequently, each player will have to do a $50 million buy-in. Undoubtedly, a match-up of such magnitude is going to go down in history as one of the biggest heads-up plays ever. Here is was Dan Bilzerian said on the podcast regarding this poker duel.
“That guy Alec [Gores], he saw my podcast and he text me, I said I beat him for like $40-$50 million, and he’s like, ‘oh, the number wasn’t that high. He’s like, ‘I wanna play you heads-up, let’s see who has the bigger balls for $25 million apiece. I (said to Alec) I’ll play you for $25 million at the Aria if you wanna wire money over. And then he was like, ‘I don’t wanna play you unless it’s for at least $50 million.’ I was like, ‘I’ll wire in $50 million to the Aria in 10 days if you wanna play, and we can televise it if you want. And so he’s challenged me twice, so I think we might play for $100 million.”
It is important to note that Bilzerian did not disclose Gores’s full name at the podcast. However, he has done so in his autobiography book and it also mentioned some of the profits made from their sessions. What’s even more exciting is the fact that there are rumors going around that Dan Bilzerian has already secured his funds for this huge heads-up game. Now, the ball is in Gores’s court and he needs to secure his $50 million in order to play.
Who is Alec Gores?
Alec Gores is a well-known 68-year-old Israeli billionaire who has made a fortune through leveraged buyouts of technology firms. Originally from Israel, Gores and his parents moved to the US in 1968. In 1987, Gores founded a private equity firm The Gores Group. In December 2019 it has made 120 transactions and had over $630 million in assets. Alec Gores has a net worth of around $3 billion.
Gores was part of a scandal when the hedge fund manager Brad Ruderman was caught participating in underground gambling in the late 2000s. He was using money from the investors with over $25 million in his Ponzi scheme. Subsequently, some of this money was won by poker players and Alec Gores was one of them. Allegedly, Gores has won $445,000 in this underground casino. With more and more pressure building up from the law, Gores settled for 45 cents on the dollar and refused to admit any of his wrongdoings. As Gores commented at the time:
“It’s not worth Alec’s time. He’s running funds with $4 billion under management, so it’s not worth the legal fees.”
Interestingly enough, Alec Gores had many influential opponents in the “Molly’s Game” such as an actor Toby Maguire and Texas banker Andy Beal.
Bilzerian’s Autobiography
In his recently released autobiography “The Setup”, Dan Bilzerian goes into detail to describe his match-up against Alec Gores. According to him, Gores approached him on social media with an offer to play at the multibillionaire’s house for a session of $2,000/$4,000 No-Limit Hold’em. The buy-ins for this match-up would be $500,000. By the end of the session, Bilzerian was leading by $1.6 million in profit. According to Bilzerian, he continues to win over and over again with stakes eventually rising all the way up to $10,000/$25,000.
On top of that, Bilzerian backs up his wild story against Alec Gores with some evidence such as photos. Bilzerian goes on further to describe how in one of the games he was up nearly $9 million. At that moment, Alec Gores suggested making a high card flip worth $3.3 million. In other words, each player is dealt just one card, and whoever gets the highest one wins. The total pot for this gamble was $6.6 million. Bilzerian had a 4 while Gores flipped a 7 which allegedly allowed him to win the $6.6 million. Here is what Dan Bilzerian says in “The Setup”.
“I played it off and gave him a fist bump before the dealer pushed him the pot. While losing a $6.6 million flip took the wind out of my sails, this was still the biggest win I’d ever had (up to that point), and I walked away with $5,500,000 (in profits).”
When Will the Match-Up Take Place?
At this point in time, it is still hard to tell with 100% confidence whether this huge heads-up match-up will actually take place. However, since it is rumored that Dan Bilzerian has already secured his funds, we just need to wait for Alec Gores’s response. Here is what Dan Bilzerian had to say about the organizational aspect of the duel:
“I want to Pay-Per-View the mother****r. It would be the biggest poker game ever played. And the beauty of that is it like shuts the f**k up everybody that was talking s**t like you can’t win this much money in poker.”
The exact details on the date and the location of the match-up have not been made public yet. However, some rumors suggest that this battle is likely to take place before this year is over. PokerGO Studio would be a good choice as it has hosted publicized heads-up matches such a Phil Hellmuth vs Tom Dwan.
