Casino games are popular across the globe, in which people travel hundreds of miles each year to attend some of the most glamorous casinos in places like Vegas, Monte Carlo and London. As online casinos have gradually become more frequent, there are now more people than ever across the world that can access and play these games, where there are so many options on offer from Slingo Bingo to poker, blackjack, video slots and more.
Not only do people play for enjoyment, but many players now also play as a professional career where they are making a living from it. Some even go on to make millions and live a life of fame and fortune if they commit to it enough.
Below, we’ll take a look at some of the world’s most celebrated famous casino players, how much they are worth, and what games they are playing.
Martin Jacobson
First up in our casino player hall of fame is Swedish poker player, Martin Jacobson. Jacobson was surprisingly a military chef in a previous career, before a job offer that fell through spurred him to make the move to become a professional poker player.
Since then, Jacobson has achieved great success in the professional casino playing world, in which he’s gone on to win the World Series of Poker in 2014, walking away with a grand total of $10,000,000; the fifth largest single payout in poker history.
Jacobson’s total winnings are said to be $17,000,000. Rumour has it that he has won money at 39 World Series events, which can be considered a huge achievement. What’s most impressive is that this poker playing star doesn’t keep all the winnings to himself as he is a member of a charity called ‘Raising for Effective Giving’, in which he donates 2% of gross tournament winnings and 3% of profits from cash games each year.
Kerry Packer
Kerry Packer is an Australian professional casino gamer, best known for playing blackjack. While he has inherited a fortune through his family’s business empire, Packer has also made quite a name for himself by being one of the world’s most daring casino gamers. While this has worked out for him many times, he’s also known for having some of the biggest losses in history too.
The most famous of these unfortunate events occurred between September 1999 and July 2000 when he lost a staggering $40 million playing in both Crockford’s casino, London and the Bellagio in Las Vegas.
Fortunately for Packer, he has also had some wildly lucky winning streaks too, in which he is said to have once won $20 million in just 40 minutes by playing several games of high stakes blackjack where $250,000 was on the line.
It goes to show that sometimes large risks pay off, although you have to be willing to accept you can lose it all in a moment too.
Tony Bloom
Poker is a game of risk, of which everyone knows you have to be willing to roll the dice if you’re going to go for the jackpot. However, it’s also a game of calculated risk and if you can work out the odds of a game then you have a much better chance of staying in favor. This is all too easy for mathematics graduate Tony Bloom.
Nicknamed ‘The Lizard’ due to his cold blooded style of playing, Bloom got into playing professional poker while studying at Manchester University. Since then, he has gone on to compete in major tournaments like the World Poker Tour and Poker Million IX, where he was a runner up.
His largest winnings are said to be around $2.5 million in one sitting.
Bill Benter
Bill Benter is intriguingly another math genius who began his professional casino gaming career while counting cards in Vegas of all places. He later turned his attention to horse racing in Hong Kong, where he teamed up with another gamer called Alan Woods to invent an algorithm that could predict a horse’s chance of winning with incredible accuracy.
His invention slowly began to make money and over time, he earned tens of millions of dollars per year. His most famous bet was on the Triple Trio, in which his algorithm helped him to land a jackpot by predicting the first three horses to cross the line in three different races.
While he has now retired from the professional casino world, Benter gives lectures at universities throughout the world, while also giving to a number of charitable causes.
Overall, it’s eye opening to see how the online iGaming world can be so successful to those who put their mind to it and pursue a career as a professional gamer. While a lot can be at steak, the odds are sometimes in your favor.
