Top 10 Poker Money Winners

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A freeroll is a poker tournament that doesn't cost real money to enter, but awards a real prize to the top finisher(s). Usually it's cash, but it can be a tournament entry or other prizes. Freerolls are a popular promotion at online poker sites to either reward active players or entice new players to sign up and enter a free tournament. At number 10 on this list of the richest poker players is Antonio Esfandiari, one of the best-known players on the poker circuit. The former magician managed to win three World Series of Poker. So video poker is a very special exception to the casino rule and proper video poker strategy can really set you apart from your fellow casino patrons throwing their money away on low-odds games. And it's not far-fetched to believe you can learn how to win almost every session.

WSOP TitlesWPT TitlesEPT TitlesPoker Earnings
1Erik Seidel810$21,499,344
2Phil Ivey910$17,649,220
3John Juanda500$15,113,768
4Allen Cunningham500$12,031,743
5Carlos Mortensen230$11,598,083
6Gus Hansen140$11,240,678
7JC Tran210$10,416,658
8Erick Lindgren220$9,881,849
9Mike Matusow400$8,974,373
10Chris Ferguson500$8,281,926
11Vanessa Selbst200$8,018,466
12Paul Wasicka000$7,896,100
13Huck Seed500$7,582,816
14David Benyamine110$7,047,146
15Howard Lederer220$6,571,538
16Gavin Smith110$5,959,186
17Kathy Liebert000$5,929,521
18Andy Bloch100$5,415,383
19John Cernuto300$5,352,640
20Roland de Wolfe111$5,330,556
21Robert Mizrachi100$4,498,967
22Andy Black000$4,432,368
23Annie Duke100$4,270,549
24Lee Watkinson100$4,146,149
25Jeff Madsen300$4,054,686
26Annette Obrestad100$3,910,678
27Vanessa Rousso001$3,513,841
28Max Pescatori200$3,322,683
29Phil Gordon010$2,786,896
30Jennifer Harman200$2,697,533
31Joanne Liu000$2,678,069
32Greg Mueller200$2,621,740
33Liv Boeree001$2,281,097
34Tom Dwan000$2,213,937
35Sandra Naujoks001$1,789,239
36Victoria Coren001$1,745,178
37Clonie Gowen010$1,639,064
38Viktor Blom000$1,527,299
39Eddy Scharf200$1,327,119
40Erica Schoenberg000$848,458
41Aaron Bartley000$215,777

The Lucrative Game of Poker

There is a lot of money to be made in the poker world. You can see that just from our rankings above, with players who have tournament poker earnings of 10 or 20 million dollars. It is possible to rack up a sizeable personal fortune if you have the skills to regularly win poker events, or even if you have a good run at one large poker event and walk away with a monstrous and sometimes outrageous prize.

This is very different to the old days of poker, where winners of large tournaments would still walk away with very good prizes, but would be more like a few hundred thousand dollars rather than the many millions of today’s game.

This is largely due to the influx of poker players over the past decade, with the transition of the sport to a game played behind closed doors, into a main stream sport that is televised and shown all over the world. Some of the large events in the poker calendar attract fields of thousands of players, and the more players, the bigger the prize pool.

The World Series of Poker Main Event

The World Series of Poker main event still offers one of the biggest prizes in poker. This is due to the massive field generated by the tournament. The field, which ranges from 6,000 to 9,000 each year has to be split over a number of starting days, as the full field cannot fit into the massive WSOP tournament space at the Rio, in Las Vegas.

The huge fields are partly driven by the prestige of the being the headline poker event of the year, but also by the quantity of people who qualify for the event via smaller buy in online satellite tournaments run by online poker sites.

Of course these huge fields are all paying $10,000 to enter the tournament which generates a outrageous prize pool. The biggest was in 2006 with a prize pool of $82.5million and a first prize of $12million.

Money

The WSOP One Drop – Biggest Prize in Poker

In 2012, the World Series of Poker introduce a new event. It was a high rollers $1million buy in tournament which was 4 times the next biggest buy in tournament. The event attracted the biggest professional poker players in the sport together with other wealthy people including at least 2 billionaires.

There were 48 entrants, and eventual winner Antonio Esfandiari took home a 1st place prize of $18.3million, with even 2nd placed Sam Trickett taking home a sizeable $10million.

2020

The event generated a massive amount of Buzz in the poker world and in the main stream press, culminating in the biggest spectacle the poker world has ever seen, with a broadcast on ESPN, showgirls and piles and piles of cash.

Online Poker – The Internet Poker Millionaire

Top 10 poker money winners 2019Top 10 Poker Money Winners

Top 10 Poker Money Winners Winning

Online Poker allows anybody to sit at their computer, or on their tablet on the sofa and play online poker. The rise in popularity of online poker has lead to regular high payout tournaments where players can enter for quite a modest fee and win prizes of hundreds of thousands, or even millions.

Top 10 Poker Money Winners No Deposit

Regular tournaments take place at the big online poker sites, such as the Pokerstars Sunday Million which takes place every Sunday night, with a guaranteed prize pool of $1million for a relatively small buy in of $215. This guarantee is usually smashed and a much larger prize pool results. Many similar weekly tournaments take place but this is the largest.

Top 10 Poker Money Winners 2019

There are also Online Tournament Series which regularly occur and mirror the festival feel of the World Series of Poker by running a series of events, of varying buy in amounts and various formats of poker. The biggest two of these are the World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) run by Pokerstars which in 2013 had a guaranteed prize pool of $40million over 66 events and the Full Tilt Online Poker Series (FTOPS) run by Full Tilt Poker.