Check out the top 10 richest gamblers in the world

It is often said that the house always wins and for the most part it is. But every once in a while, a gambler has so much skill, courage, or money that they can turn the tables and make millions of dollars in the process. A lot of people enjoy the occasional vibration but there are some individuals who have made beating bookmakers their lifelong work. Read on to Premiumsoccertips article below to discover how they became the richest gamblers in the world and what they won in the process.

Top 10 richest gamblers in the world

1. Kerry Packer – $5 billion USD

Kerry Packer may have become Australia’s wealthiest individual through his family’s business empire, but he will always be remembered for his gambling exploits. This is because Packer always played big.

Part of playing this way involved losing enormous sums of money, and Packer is known to have experienced some astonishing losing streaks in his gambling career.

The most famous of these is a period of about 10 months from September 1999 to July 2000 when he lost around $40 million while gambling at both Crockford’s Casino in London and the Bellagio in Las Vegas.

Fortunately for Packer, he also occasionally had hot streaks. Perhaps his biggest gambling feat was in May 1995 when he won $20 million in just 40 minutes by playing multiple blackjack games worth $250,000 each at a time.

2. Tony Bloom – $1.5 billion USD

Like many who earned their wealth from the world of gambling, Tony Bloom is somewhat mysterious. What we do know is that he studied mathematics at the University of Manchester and began playing poker for entertainment.

Over the years, this hobby helped him earn around $2.5 million and enabled him to play in some major tournaments, including the World Poker Tour and Poker Million IX, where he finished second.

It was at the poker table that Bloom gave himself the nickname “Lizard” due to his cool-blooded playing style. However, most of Bloom’s wealth doesn’t come from poker. Instead, he earned millions by founding his own betting consultancy company, Starlizard. Reports suggest that Starlizard is one of the leading betting companies globally, placing millions of dollars in bets on football matches worldwide.

3. Bill Benter – $1 billion USD

Another mathematical genius who used his intelligence to amass a fortune through gambling is Bill Benter. Like many young gamblers, Benter started his career counting cards in Las Vegas before shifting his focus to horse racing in Hong Kong.

Teaming up with another gambler, Alan Woods, Benter began building an algorithm that could predict a horse’s winning chances with astonishing accuracy. After a few years of struggles and adjustments, his model eventually started earning him tens of millions of dollars annually.

Benter’s most famous win came when his model accurately predicted the Triple Trio, a famous betting event in Hong Kong where you have to predict the first three horses to cross the finish line in three separate races. Today, Benter has become a billionaire and spends his time teaching at universities and contributing to charitable activities worldwide.

4. Edward Thorp – $800 million USD

Behind Bill Benter is the man who inspired him to gamble in the first place, Edward Thorp, who invented card counting. Using his mathematical genius and technology, Thorp devised a way to reverse the house’s advantage in blackjack.

In the first weekend trying out this technique, he won $11,000, and after seeing its effectiveness, he decided to publish a book explaining his techniques.

Published in 1962, “Beat the Dealer” was a remarkable success with over 1 million copies sold. Thorp followed up his book by inventing the first wearable computer. This technology helped him increase his chances of winning at roulette. Applying his gambling skills to the stock market helped Thorp become increasingly wealthy, making him an extremely rich man since then.

5. Alan Woods – $500 million USD

Alan Woods was once a partner of Bill Benter and earned money in a similar way. Both started by counting cards and even worked in the same group.

Later, after being blacklisted by Las Vegas casinos, they turned their attention to horse racing in Hong Kong. After failing, Woods successfully created his own model similar to Benter’s.

However, he had to flee to the Philippines after his betting organization came under investigation by law enforcement agencies. Still betting from his own assets, Woods amassed a huge fortune of about half a billion dollars and closely collaborated with his former rival Zeljko Ranogajec.

6. Zeljko Ranogajec – $420 million USD

Known as “The Joker,” Zeljko Ranogajec is another extremely wealthy individual who earned money by becoming an advantage gambler. After turning a few hundred dollars into millions at the blackjack table, Ranogajec worked with Alan Woods before founding his own betting organization called Bankroll.

Primarily focused on horse racing, Ranogajec’s organization is said to place bets worth over $3 billion annually. Even when many of these bets don’t win, Ranogajec still makes money through discounted odds and rebates for his extremely large bets.

While Ranogajec prefers to keep himself private, the wealth he has built is not easily hidden. He is said to own an apartment at One Hyde Park, the world’s most expensive residential building. What’s even more astonishing is that the betting transactions made by his organization seem to account for about a third of Betfair Australia’s total activities.

7. Billy Walters – $200 million USD

Billy Walters is perhaps one of the most successful sports bettors in history. Walters himself holds a record claiming that he had only one losing season in 39 years of sports gambling.

Like many others on this list, Walters used analysis to offer more accurate odds than bookmakers, allowing him to win between 56-60% of the total bets he placed.

According to ESPN, Walters achieved most of his success in college-level sports, where bookmakers invest less time and resources into calculating their odds. Clearly, Walters has placed enormous bets on these minor teams, with one employee recalling a $250,000 bet he placed on a NCAA Division I basketball team, Old Dominion.

Unfortunately for Walters, his lucky streak came to an end when he was convicted of insider trading in the stock market. He was sentenced to five years in prison, serving only four years thanks to a pardon from former President Donald Trump.

8. Dan Bilzerian – $200 million USD

While most of the gamblers on this list made money through sports betting, Dan Bilzerian tends to favor poker. Most people will know Bilzerian for his antics on social media, where he flaunts a lavish lifestyle he claims to have earned through playing poker.

Interestingly, Bilzerian rarely plays in public games. In fact, one of his only recorded results was 180th place in the 2009 World Series of Poker event.

Bilzerian claims that he now only plays poker in private, underground games. And if you believe him, Bilzerian could make up to $50 million in just one night. Of course, there’s no way to prove this, but some professional gamblers believe it’s a possibility because Bilzerian is known for playing with super-rich individuals he feels confident he can beat.

9. David Walsh – $200 million USD

David Walsh first got into gambling by counting cards while studying at the University of Tasmania. Here, he met fellow student Zeljko Ranogajec, and the two quickly decided to try their luck at blackjack in Las Vegas.

When Walsh returned to Tasmania, he began building his own software to predict horse race outcomes. This would become an important part of the technology for Ranogajec’s Bankroll organization.

According to Ranogajec, in these early days, Walsh would be the one to perform all the mathematical calculations for the organization due to his intellectual aptitude. Walsh combined this intelligence with courage and once purchased a lottery ticket worth $11 million to win a jackpot of $60 million. Today, Walsh spends much of his time on the underground art museum he built in Tasmania.

10. Phil Ivey – $100 million USD

Unlike Dan Bilzerian, there’s no questioning Phil Ivey’s poker-playing abilities. Many consider him one of the best players in the world, and he has the accolades to prove it, including World Poker Tour titles and 10 World Series of Poker bracelets.

These wins come with prize money in the millions, but Ivey also earned a huge sum through poker games with billionaires like banker Andy Beal. According to some stories, Ivey is said to have beaten Beal with a staggering $16.6 million in one session.

Conclude

Thus, through the above article, we have seen that the richest gamblers in the world have used skill, strategy and intelligence to make great fortunes from gambling. However, it is also important to remember that gambling can bring great opportunities but also comes with high risks and legal consequences. It is important to approach gambling responsibly and deliberately, and to see it as a form of entertainment, not just a means to make a profit.

See also: Top 10 best sports bettors in the world to admire