Dan Bilzerian Asks for $170k in Travel Costs for Poker Tournament

09:59
25 Jul

Dan Bilzerian has left Joe Rogan looking like a cheap date after it was revealed the former GGPoker ambassador asked the site for $170,000 in travel expenses to play a poker tournament...more than three times Rogan’s costs for appearing on comedy podcast Flagrant...

American podcaster and YouTuber Adam22 revealed Bilzerian’s incredible demands while discussing the Joe Rogan story on a recent episode of “No Jumper.”

With stand-up comedian and “Flagrant” host Andrew Schulz explaining the $50,000 expenses for Rogan to appear on his show, Adam “Adam22” Grandmaison produced a staggering “hold my beer” moment.

“Fifty grand at a certain point when you’re living a certain way is not that much,” said the creator and host of pop culture-oriented podcast “No Jumper”. “I was talking to Dan Bilzerian about this poker tournament that he like, didn’t go to or whatever, because his sponsor was supposed to pay for his travel – they didn’t realise his travel was going to be $170,000 on his private jet! That became a very big issue...there are almost no poker tournaments in the world that are $170k to enter, so anything he does, he has to look at it in comparison to this outrageous cost. His attitude is, 'I didn’t buy this fucking jet to not use it'.”

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The GGPoker/Bilzerian partnership ended recently in acrimony, with the self-styled King of Instagram explaining that he didn’t “have the heart” to promote the online poker giant.

“I get offered so much money to do fucking promos. I just don't have the heart to do it,” said Bilzerian, whose GGPoker tenure was knee-deep in controversy from the outset.

That included calling Canadian pro Vanessa Kade a “hoe” (intended as a “ho”, and refusing to play the winner of his GGPoker Birthday Bash freeroll because it was a female, Alex O’Brien.

His misogyny aside, Bilzerian appears to have had multiple financial issues with GGPoker, revealing of the site promotion he was being paid $millions for:

“Initially, I tried to do it, you know what I mean, I did some posts and drove them a fuckload of traffic. But then they were supposed to give me a percentage of the people that I recruited, and you know, we had like 100,000 that we downloaded, there's like a lot of people. So, the numbers they were saying they were going to pay me was $millions a month.”

When that didn’t appear, Bilzerian says:

“So, we just agreed to kind of like end it, you know.”

Money has been at the heart of much of the Bilzerian story, with his riches alleged to have been the result of a trust fund set up by his criminal father.

Bilzerian has always refuted that idea, stating he won most of his money in highstakes private poker games against fellow wealthy amateurs.

He famously claimed to have won $40million from billionaire businessman Alec Gores, something Gores takes issue with, leading to Bilzerian issuing a $100million challenge.

Speaking to Logan Paul, Bilzerian said:

“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.”

As for the rest of the poker world, Bilzerian has little time for them.

“Most poker players are fucking nerds," Bilzerian told Adam22, who is also a poker enthusiast. "I don't really hangout with that many of them, I don't really want to associate with them. I shut most of them out of my fucking games. I never really let pros in.”