Are High Roller Poker Tournament Earnings ‘Fake’ Like Mike Matusow Claims?

All those massive scores in five-figure buy-in tournaments, they’re just a “mirage” and “fake,” so said Mike Matusow last summer.

“The Mouth” was echoing statements made by Daniel Negreanu a few months earlier. Both poker legends, in short, suggested that many of the biggest winners in the high roller events don’t actually make much, if any, profit. Dylan Linde may have inadevertently given that take some water to stand on Monday when he tweeted out an accusation against high-stakes star David Peters, who has nearly $50 million in The Hendon Mob live tournament cashes.

Linde, however, declined to provide evidence of these claims to PokerNews. But he said that “Complete receipts are in existence.” Peters has not responded to a request for comment.

In summation, Linde claims Peters agreed to buy a Triton Poker staking package last year, which ended up being a $50,000 loss, and has only paid back about half of that debt, refusing to pay the rest. The tweetstorm went Poker X viral and generated numerous responses from poker players questioning if these high-profile high rollers are actually winning players.

But the tweets also brought out comments from some of the top tournament players in the world, who defended multi-table tournament crushers.

Arieh, Deeb aren’t Buying It

Josh Arieh and Shaun Deeb, who’ve combined to win Player of the Year three of the past seven years at the World Series of Poker (WSOP), defended those who crush MTT’s. Both longtime poker players and potential future Poker Hall of Famers gave a response to the critical comments.

Deeb guesses that Peters isn’t a losing tournament player, but instead has financial struggles outside poker. Arieh took offense to poker fans using the Peters issue as some sort of proof that all MTT players can’t pay off their debts.

“I read today that mtt players earn about as much as McDonald employees. I can almost guarantee that DP’s struggling isn’t from his inability to be profitable at poker, and more to do with other gambling /investing,” Arieh wrote.

Chidwick’s Poker Earnings

Most high rollers don’t share profit/loss charts publicly. Negreanu and a couple others are the rare exceptions. But, in most cases, the only data the public can pull is cashes racked up on The Hendon Mob, which doesn’t include total buy-ins.

Stephen Chidwick, however, gave the poker world a bit of a glimpse into how much money he’s actually made in tournaments during a Reddit Q & A session last year. The British poker legend with $76 million in live tournament cashes at the time, shocked Redditors when, after being asked a question about how much of his earnings are profit, he said his profits are somewhere in the $5-$10 million range after accounting for various expenses.

Chidwick didn’t go into detail explaining his backer arrangements, travel expenses, and other costs associated with being a professional poker tournament player. But the answer surprised many who assumed he’d made more than the figure he threw out.

What Seth Davies Said About High Roller Earnings

The basis behind Matusow’s argument is that, he claims, the high rollers are all playing on someone else’s dime (i.e. a backer) and not their own money. He even went so far as to say many of them either have no skin in the game or only a small percentage of each buy-in.

Seth Davies, in an interview with PokerNews’ Connor Richards a few months back, had a different take.

“You have all these annoying negative people on Twitter that have no idea what they’re talking about, and they’re completely wrong. Almost every high-stakes regular that I know has very big pieces of themselves in all of these — 50% is very common, not 5%. Most of the high-stakes regs I know in the biggest tournaments they play, they have 50% of themselves. So, you had these very, kind of bitter, annoying, negative people forming public opinion in a way,” Davies said, not specifically referring to Matusow or anyone in particular.

Davies, who has $45 million in live tournament cashes, felt he needed to stand up for himself and his peers against those who think high rollers only have a small chunk of their own action. He made a 15-minute YouTube video in February discussing his six-week $10 million poker upswing last year, which included $7.4 million in buy-ins. The PokerNews interview will come out within the coming weeks.