• Richest Professional Gamblers Books
• How Much Do Professional Gamblers Make
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• Who Is The Richest Gambler
• Richest Pro Gamblers
• How Much Money Do Professional Gamblers Make
• Richest Professional Gamblers

Phil Bull made a massive amount of money from betting, but not only was he a successful. Tell us a little about yourself (Where are you from? How old are you? Where did you go to school?

We’ve all tried it, haven’t we? Chipping in a small amount of money, maybe five bucks, and hoping that we’ll get a jackpot in return. Sometimes we get something, but usually, we don’t. We all know that even the best online casino games come with the odds tilted in the casino’s favor. We’re fighting against the odds regardless of whether we’re trying to beat the dealer in a card game or if we’re playing real money slots. As a result, we ostensibly have to have bags of luck if we want to have any chance of playing casino games for real money and coming out with more money than we’ve walked in with. But is it really like that?

If we look at people who have managed to make a living out of gambling, it seems that they just keep winning and keep getting more money. So much so that many of them earn millions. It would be strange if that was purely down to luck. There’s more to it. Before we go into who they are, let’s see how the richest gamblers make the most of real money casino games.

Best Way You Can Play Casino Games for Real Money

The first thing you need to know about gambling is which games you should play. The truth is, they don’t come with the same chances of winning, so your game selection is the primary step that can take you in the right or the wrong direction. For instance, most players start playing online slots when they begin gambling. And that’s fine; after all, slots are popular as much as they are due to their simplicity and the lack of a learning curve. Since there’s no way for you to influence around, you completely rely on luck, which makes slots games of chance.

But, if you look at what the richest gamblers do, you’ll see that they don’t play slots at all. You see, while gambling naturally has an element of luck to it, winning thousands of dollars on a consistent level can’t be a fluke. Most of them are either poker players, or they play other games of skill, such as blackjack and baccarat.

The thing is, when you play casino games for real money, you want to give yourself the best chance to affect the outcome, and you can do that with games like poker. Poker is a game heavily reliant on maths, and if you’re skilled enough, you can better predict what will happen. If you excel at it and become one of the best, tons of chips will soon be going your way.

Richest professional gamblers spend years and years playing card games and perfecting their strategies. That’s why they will be able to tell if you’re bluffing or you have a stronger hand, something you would have no idea about when you just start playing. Let’s check out who they are.

Richest Gamblers

So, who are they? How does someone go from entering a casino for the first time with an almost-empty credit card account to receiving tens of millions in prize money? Did they also spend their early days chasing casino bonus offers so that they could win real money without spending any? We’ll go over each player’s career, be it in poker tournaments or sports betting. But first, let’s announce them; here’s our list of the five richest professional gamblers:

• Bill Benter
• Zeljko Ranogajec
• Phil Ivey
• Chris Ferguson
• Edward Thorp

Bill Benter

A Blackjack Hall of Famer, Bill Benter used to be a professor of maths before he started practicing blackjack card counting. After years of practicing, Benter became so efficient with it that casinos started banning him from playing due to the fact that he would almost always win.

Since he wasn’t a welcome sight anymore, he turned to horse races and developed a model that allowed him to predict racing outcomes better. Afterward, Benter created a program to help other bettors with placing bets. Estimates say that Benter cashes in $100 million every year.

Zeljko Ranogajec

Coming from a family of Croatian immigrants, the Australian dropped out of college to earn a fortune playing blackjack. With a photographic memory and a great understanding of maths, Ranogajec was soon earning large sums of money.

He became great at it, and just like Benter, casinos across Australia banned him from playing, which forced Ranogajec to go into earning other gaming experiences, mainly keno and horse racing. Ranogajec holds a record for winning $7.5 million on keno.

Despite his riches, Ranogajec was never one for fame and would rarely give interviews. Subsequently, there have been many rumors and reports of his net worth, with some claiming he earns over $1 billion a year!

This is probably not true, and Ranogajec himself said that reports had inflated that number. Still, in 2019, an Australian finance magazine estimated Ranogajec’s net worth at $600 million AU.

Phil Ivey

Known as the Tiger Woods of poker, Ivey is the first player on our list who made his fortune playing the game. A Poker Hall of Famer, Ivey has ten bracelets from the World Series of Poker (youngest to do so), as well as one title from the World Poker Tour.

He is one of the best players in history when it comes to prize money earnings. His net worth is $100 million, which mainly comes from playing online and casino tournaments.

Chris Ferguson

Ferguson has a Ph.D. in computer science from UCLA. As one of the founders of Full Tilt Poker, Ferguson saw his net worth reach great heights, but he also saw it plummet after a scandal shed light on the fact that owners were taking out customers’ money for personal reasons.

Still, Ferguson came into the position of founding one of the major gambling websites by playing poker successfully and getting himself six WSOP bracelets. Ferguson’s current net worth is $80 million.

Edward Thorp

With a Ph.D. in maths, it’s no wonder Thorp was able to rake in vast amounts of dollars from gambling. In fact, it was Thorp who invented the strategy we now call card counting. Before he joined the gambling world, Thorp was a professor of mathematics and was the first one to use a computer machine to develop a card game strategy. With his card counting methods, which tilted the house edge in his favor,

Thorp was soon on his way to casinos across the United States, mainly Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe, and Reno. His book on card counting was the first of its kind and is still regarded as the ultimate guide to this popular blackjack strategy.

Thorp went so far as to invent the portable computer to carry into casinos until they became banned in 1985. He used card counting also in backgammon and baccarat. After venturing into other financial markets, Thorp’s net worth is $800 million.

To sum it up, here’s a table of the five richest players, showing their estimated net worth and the games they play:

FAQ: Most Asked Questions About Real Money Gambling

Who is the richest gambler in the world?

Currently, it’s widely believed that Bill Benter is the richest gambler in the world. A maths professor, Benter started using his understanding of maths for gambling purposes. After spending years in training, Benter started visiting Las Vegas casinos playing blackjack using card counting.

Sometime later, casinos caught up with him and banned him from playing, which meant Benter would turn to sports betting, horse racing in particular. He developed software for betting, which allows him to earn money without him himself gambling. Estimates on his net worth range from $100 million to $10 billion annually!

Do professional gamblers make money?

Yes, they do! As their title would suggest, they are professional gamblers, meaning they think of gambling as a means of earning a living, just like a professional baker would think of running a bakery. Similarly, they have to see gambling not as a game you kill your time with, but an actual job that they devote a large portion of every day to.

You can’t be the best if you don’t practice, right? The very best of professional gamblers make tens of millions of dollars, but you don’t have to be the best to make great money. Currently, there are just under 2,000 players who have made over $1 million.

Does gambling make you rich?

The proper answer here is — it might! It’s all about how much you put into it and whether you do it wisely. If you just pop into a casino, sit at the first slot that you see, and start placing thousands of dollars per bet, it will do just the opposite. You have to make sure you’re doing the right thing, such as focusing on games of skill (poker, blackjack) rather than games of chance (slots, lottery). The most important thing, however, is not to get caught up in that wealth-hunting because you can end up creating financial problems and developing an addiction.

Do gamblers ever win?

Yes, they do. They do it often, actually! The problem is, casinos win more frequently than gamblers. You see, the way casinos are set up (i.e., the way real money casino games are set up) is that the house always has a mathematical advantage and will always remain on top in the long term. If it weren’t so, there would be no casinos. But, that doesn’t mean you can’t win at all, it just depends on how you go about it.

For instance, when you play poker, you compete against other players, and you don’t have a house edge to worry about. This way, you only have to be better than all the other players (yes, sounds hard, but with enough practice, you can do it). Casinos make most of their profits off of inexperienced slot players, while seasoned gamblers can tilt the winning percentage in their favor.

How much do professional gamblers make?

At the time of writing this, there were exactly 1,997 poker players who have earned $1 million or more in prize money. That’s a great piece of information for anyone who would try to make it professional and needs something to motivate them. It’s hard to make it pro; you have to devote your time and energy to learning the specifics of a game and then getting the experience to make better decisions.

But, as the number above suggests, it’s highly doable. Richest professional gamblers are worth over $100 million, and there are almost 90 players who’ve hit the $10-million mark.

What games can you play for real money?

Well, all of the casino games are available for you to play them with real money, that’s kind of their purpose. The real question is: which games should you play for real money? Casino games don’t come with equal chances of winning, and it takes some snooping around to figure out which are more generous towards the player than others. Generally, we can divide games into games of chance and games of skill.

As you can guess, the later ones will give you better chances of winning real money, but they’re more difficult, and it takes practice to become good at them. Alternatively, games of chance are easier to grasp, but you will rely entirely on luck, which means that your night could go either way.

What is real money gaming?

The definition of it would be any gaming in which you wager real money on the outcome of an in-game event. To put it simply, if it’s a game you can win or lose real money on, it will fall under this category. Some equate it to gambling in general, and although it’s not really the same (some types of real money gaming wouldn’t be characterized as gambling), we usually talk about casino gaming in this instance.

So, anytime you bet real money on slots, blackjack, roulette, or any other casino game, you’ll be conducting real money gaming. There’s a possibility to play casino games for real money without wagering any of your own. You can do this by utilizing some of the many online casino bonuses that are on offer.

Richest Professional Gamblers Books

This list was originally published in January 2010, last update was January 2020, let is know in the comments if you think anyone should be added.

Phil Bull

Phil Bull made a massive amount of money from betting, but not only was he a successful gambler he was also a breeder, owner, writer and publisher. It is estimated he made millions during his career.

In 1948 he launched the now internationally renowned organisation Timeform.

Phil had a shrewd attitude towards betting. He looked at the season as a whole and his form study was the same for every race.

How To Make A Book by Phil Bull
Phil Bull: The Biography by Howard Wright

JP McManus

Multi millionaire JP McManus is a renowned gambler and race horse owner.

Originally from Limerick in Ireland, McManus started betting as a schoolboy before working in his family’s plant hire business. He had his own betting stand for a while at Limerick’s greyhound track and it wasn’t long before he moved into owning horses as well as betting and laying. These days JP owns the largest number of National Hunt’s horses.

His first ‘big’ win (rumoured to be around £250,000) was at Cheltenham with a horse called Mister Donovan who was 2nd favourite but ended up winning the race. He also won over £1 million from famous Scottish bookie Freddie Williams in 2006 at Cheltenham.

Although McManus is a high level gambler a large part of his wealth is said to have come from international financing and money dealing which he overseas from his base in Geneva.

Still a big player and maybe he should be at the top of this list as he is still very active. If there is a book to read about JP let me know in the comments, I’d love to read it.

Alex Bird

The late Alex Bird made a considerable amount of money from betting after the war. It is estimated he had an annual turnover of £2 million from gambling.

His interest in gambling began when he was a child. He learned a lot from his father who was a bookmaker. However, he decided there was more money to be made from the other side and he become one of Britain’s most well known professional punters of all time.

Bird had several methods for getting one over on the bookies but his most famous was probably his success on betting on photo finishes which in those days took about 5 minutes to develop. This process earned him a fortune over a period of around 20 years and only stopped when the modernisation of technology meant there was no longer the delay in photo developing.

Alex Bird made his own mind up when it come to betting and rarely listened to anyone – he stuck to his rules and systems. Even now, almost 30 years after his death, there are current systems available that are based on the practices he used.

His biggest bet was on the well known horse Mill Reef at Gimcrack. The season after this Mill Reef won the Derby, again backed by Bird who had by then backed 7 Derby winners in 8 years.

One of his last bets was on a horse called Final Shot in 1990 when it won the Ayr Gold Cup.

Patrick Veitch

Patrick Veitch is one of Britain’s most successful gamblers who has won over £10 million from betting.

At just 15 years of age this mathematical genius got a place at Cambridge although he never completed his degree, instead he turned to gambling and started his own tipping line.

By his mid 20s Patrick Veitch was already making a lot of money but then came a turning point in his life. He become the target of a criminal and was forced to live in hiding for many months putting his career on hold and leaving him broke. However, following this episode he become more successful than ever and was soon making £1 million a year from his strategic betting methods.

Veitch is a strong believer that there is no short cut when it comes to betting – the only way to win is by working hard at it to get it right.

It is very rare to see Patrick at the races. He uses agents to place his bets and spends most of his time watching and analysing events from his computer.

Harry Findlay

Harry Findlay is a larger than life gambler who has not only made a fortune but also lost a fortune from gambling over the years.

He has always had a love for greyhounds and worked with them for a while after leaving school. Then aged just 20 Findlay spent 11 months in prison convicted of credit card fraud.

These days bets from his home office which is fully equipped with a number of TV screens and monitors often with different sporting events on at the same time.

As well as being a professional gambler Harry is also an owner. He jointly owns the 2008 Cheltenham Gold Cup winner, Denman who also won two Hennessy Gold Cups. Big Fella Thanks was another of his co-owned horses who he named after his beloved greyhound 1999 Coursing Derby winning Big Fella.

Barney Curley

Barney Curley is a professional gambler and trainer from Northern Ireland who has a reputation for being one of racing’s most colourful characters.

During his childhood he watched his Father run up huge gambling debts but still took up betting himself.

In 1975 he famously organised one of the biggest betting scams of all time – Yellow Sam which made him over £300,000. He has also appeared in court for illegal lottery after raffling his mansion for £1.5 million.

More recently Barney organised big coups in 2010 and 2014 and 2016.

Terry Ramsden

Terry Ramsden originally made his fortune from investment company Glen International in the 80s. He was worth millions and, amongst other things, owned a string of race horses.

He was also well known for his betting and in 1985 won £2 million on one horse. The following year he had another big win on Motivator in the 1986 Coral Golden Hurdle Final.

Towards the end of the 80s however, Ramsden’s company collapsed and he started losing massive amounts on bets – he reportedly lost £1 million on one bet alone. This lead to him going bust at which time he fled to America. He had won but also lost millions of pounds.

In the late 1990s he was jailed for concealing assets during his bankruptcy – one of which was rumoured to be a £70,000 plus win on the horses.

Despite returning to public life a few years later Ramsden has failed to recreate his earlier success and has since been involved in a number of arguments over money.

Pro gambler or rich man who lost it all on the horses? Many think the latter but he was a big player all the same.

Dave Nevison

Dave Nevison became a professional gambler in 1993 after he lost his job working as a currency trader in the City.

How Much Do Professional Gamblers Make

He now has an estimated six figure income made up largely from gambling but also from journalism columns he writes. Dave has also written 2 books and has his own horse racing tipping service.

A Bloody Good Winner: Life As A Professional Gambler by Dave Nevison
No Easy Money: A Gambler’s Diary by Dave Nevison

Alan Potts

At the age of just 14 Alan Potts started betting on horse racing and become a full time professional gambler after being made redundant from his office job in 1991.

He has admitted it took him many years to become a regular winner and despite making an estimated £50,000 a year from betting in the past, he has also suffered losing runs. Although he is also an owner, author and pundit Potts’ main source of income is from gambling.

In 1999 he jointly formed The Golden Anorak Partnership and this is the banner under which his horses now run.

Alan has written 2 books and also wrote for the betting exchange WBX until it closed in 2015.

Against The Crowd by Alan Potts
The Inside Track by Alan Potts

Clive Holt

Richest Professional Gamblers Sports

Legendary punter Clive Holt was first shown that money could be made from betting by his father who kept a couple of greyhounds during the 1960s.

In the early part of 1975 Clive decided he was ready to quit his job working for the Electricity Board and take up gambling on a full time basis.

He started out using a fairly random approach dictated by his finances and he kept no proper records of bets he had placed. He soon made the decision to start recording his bets and this was the first of two business methods he implemented in order to make a better profit. The second was to setup a betting bank.

His first bet was £67 to £30 on Western Jewel who won comfortably and within 6 weeks he had made more money than he was earning in a year working in electricity. Over the years, although rarely winning more than £1,000 at a time, Holt’s profits from betting provided a lifestyle of luxury cars, exotic holidays and a listed country house with acres of land.

A number of books have been written by Clive Holt who was also the man behind Fineform.

Profitable Winners Always Back Winners
Be A Successful Punter
Fineform Winners Guide
Profitable Betting Strategies

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