Dan Bilzerian Claims to Have Pioneered LAG Playing Style in Poker
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Love him or hate him, it is hard to argue that the controversial figure that is Dan Bilzerian attracts viewers in droves.
The self-proclaimed King of Instagram often rubs people the wrong way by depicting his lavish lifestyle across social media where he seemingly spends his time shooting military-grade weapons, hanging out with models, driving luxury cars, and traveling the planet without a care in the world.
Bilzerian is not one to shy away from the public when it comes to talking about himself, but it is quite rare for him to talk about poker, despite the fact he claims to have won tens of millions from the game.
Bilzerian Opens up on the True Geordie Podcast
Last week, the 115th edition of the True Geordie Podcast had Bilzerian as a guest and the YouTube video has already been viewed more than 602,000 times. It was during this podcast that Bilzerian claimed to not care about what the poker community thinks of him, that he beat a fellow player for $54 million and that he was a pioneer of the loose-aggressive (LAG) style of poker.
"I let people think that I had a big trust fund and that’s how I got all my money because that allowed me to get into those really good games."
Although the majority of the nearly 84-minute interview is spent talking about Bilzerian’s lifestyle, his love for women, taking “magic mushrooms” to chill out, and other areas of his life, the hosts do touch on Bilzerian’s “poker career.”
There are many rumors about how Bilzerian got his apparent wealth, including him having a substantial trust fund. Bilzerian revealed that the trust fund story is not true but he allowed the rumors to continue circling as it helped him get into massive cash games.
“I never wanted to be the guy on TV showing everyone how good I was. I wanted to be the guy who they thought sucked who could play with the rich guys. It was the one thing in my life that wasn’t about ego, it was about my bank account, and that’s the scoreboard in poker.”
“I let people think that I had a big trust fund and that’s how I got all my money because that allowed me to get into those really good games.”
Bilzerian Doesn't Care What the Poker Community Thinks
The host brought up a possible sore subject for Bilezrian stating someone on YouTube, who we believe to be Doug Polk, had said Bilzerian was not any good at poker. Bilzerian, after all, only has one live poker tournament cash on his Hendon Mob profile, a 180th place finish in the 2009 World Series of Poker Main Event for $36,626. When asked how the poker community felt about his poker ability, he replied in a typical Bilzerian style.
I wanted to be the rich idiot, I didn't want to be the guy that hung out with poker players. I didn’t want people to think that I was good.
“I don’t give a f*ck, I don’t hang out with those motherfu**ers, I couldn’t care less!”
“I didn’t try to be a grinder, I did my grinding in college, played online and all that shit, but I kind of moved on from that. For me, it was getting into games with celebrities, producers, and hedge fund guys. I didn’t want to be associated with poker players, didn’t want to hang out with them, not even be seen with them.”
It seems a strange thing to say from a man who was once one of the ambassadors for the failed online poker site Victory Poker. Not associating with poker players and acting blasé about his poker skills was apparently all an act on Bilzerian’s part.
“I wanted to be the rich idiot, I didn't want to be the guy that hung out with poker players. I didn’t want people to think that I was good.”
Bilzerian's Outlandish Claims
Bilzerian went on to make a couple outlandish claims. The first was that when he first started playing in the super high-stakes private cash games, he was one of the first players to adopt a loose-aggressive style of play. Indeed, Bilzerian even laid claim to being a pioneer of the LAG style!
“When I first started playing poker, I was one of the first guys who played loose-aggressive and that’s the adopted style nowadays and I was one of the first people that pioneered that. It was good for me for multiple reasons, because I played more hands so gave more action, it allowed me to get into more pots with the bad players and have more chances to exploit them, have more chances to get paid off on big hands, and be less predictable; there’s a whole bunch of reasons.”
"I was one of the first guys who played loose-aggressive and that’s the adopted style nowadays and I was one of the first people that pioneered that."
This LAG style brought him instant success, if Bilzerian is to be believed, because his second huge claim is that he beat one opponent for $54 million in a single game during 2015, something he describes as his Scarface moment, referring to the 1983 movie where drug lord Tony Montana finds himself with so much money he doesn't know what to do with it.
“I beat this one dude for $54 million and that was like my Scarface moment. We were taking in more money than we could spend, we had bags of cash, I was making money from gambling and sports betting, I had money coming in from every fu*king direction.”
Not Well-Received
The full interview is quite candid and Bilzerian never ducked any question — he even revealed he may one day try to become the President of the United States. The episode has attracted unprecedented negative comments for the True Geordie Podcast, with more than 3,200 dislikes.
True Geordie even took the step of creating a new video responding to the negativity from their 1.56 million followers where he addressed comments about Bilzerian’s misogyny and the fact True Geordie’s followers felt Bilzerian was not pressed enough on some of the key issues brought up in the interview.
We may never know if Bilzerian’s claims are true but one thing is for sure, the multi-millionaire playboy will always be somewhat linked to the game of poker — for better or worse.
