Cary Katz

Despite having earned around $12,000,000 in live tournament earnings, the Georgia-born poker enthusiast amassed the bulk of his wealth away from the table. He founded the College Loan Corporation (CLC) in 1999 – a company that has forked out more than $19 billion in loans for students. He also created Poker Central in 2015, which recently began offering a subscription-based streaming service for many big events such as the WSOP and the return of Poker After Dark. Cary was the driving force behind the establishment of the Super High Roller Bowl series, an annual tournament that attracts the very best poker players around with its large prize pool.

Onto Katz’s poker career: it is an extremely decorated one for a player that enjoys the game for recreational purposes only. If there’s a high roller event going on, expect Cary to make the trip over. Given that these events attract the strongest players in the game, his record is all the more impressive. In 2014, he reached the final table of the history-breaking Big One for One Drop event – a poker tournament that had a $1,000,000 buy-in. Edging past the bubble by just one place, Cary cashed in the event for $1,306,667. On his way to getting there, he was involved in the most talked-about hand of the event – when he freerolled Connor Drinan’s AdAc with his own AsAh after the board ran out with four hearts. In a truly surreal moment, Cary could only apologise as he busted the fellow American out with the same hand – a scene that gives Drinan the absolute trump card to any bad beat story.

Katz’s biggest cash to date came in the 2016 €1,000,000 Big One For One Drop in Monte Carlo. This time around, the American poker lover finished in fifth place for $1,929,203 – just four places off the $12,000,000+ that was awarded to the winner.

Before the year closed out, Cary won the $100,000 Aria Super High Roller 14 event for $733,000. Since then, he has won an additional two Aria high roller events – bringing his total number of trophies won in this series up to seven.

A happily married family-man with six children, Katz currently resides in Vegas which suits his love for poker action perfectly.