Who has won the most money in poker? The highest-earing player in all tournaments is Justin Bonomo, who has won a massive $43 million is his tournament career. He is followed by Daniel Negreanu. According to a press release by Caesars.com, “since 1970, the World Series of Poker has awarded more than $3.29 billion in prize money. The event attracted 187,298 entrants from 118 different. If you’re new to online poker you may have seen the terms such as Free No Deposit Bonus, Free Money or Freeroll Tournaments. If you would like to get a Free Online Poker No Deposit Bonus, or play Freeroll tournaments and win money without having to pay a single cent, then read on – getting your hands on free poker money is quite simple. Millennial Money How a 24-year-old who makes $100,000 and lives with her parents spends her money. Annie won more than $4 million in tournament poker before retiring from the game in 2012.

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Do you get frustrated playing poker tournaments? You play all the time and it seems like you never cash. And even when you do, you cash the minimum. Every once in a while you get teased with a deep run only to run Kings into Aces – resulting in another broken mouse.

Well as you gain experience, you learn that in order to be successful as a poker player you need to get comfortable with running bad. This is even more prevalent if you are a poker tournament specialist. But no matter how experienced you are, these bad runs can test you and make you question your skill level. This is especially true if you are an amateur poker player who only plays a handful of tournaments a week. You can actually go months without cashing and this duration of time in between cashes can skew your view of reality and affect your play.

Now if you read enough poker forums and websites you will hear about all the online tournament pros who are regularly taking down five and six-figure cashes. They paint this picture of guys constantly making final tables and raking in mounds of cash. You may even be a bit jealous and wonder, “what do those guys have that I don’t?” Well, I’m hoping this article will help answer that question and provide some much needed perspective on the topics of volume and variance.

Amateur Poker Players vs. Pros

Amateurs – For the purpose of this article, an amateur player is someone who plays about 1-3 times per week, usually at night. They have a “real job” and may have a family or are in college full time, so they can only put in part-time hours. But make no mistake, this player is serious about the game and spends time on poker forums, watching training videos, etc. Since we’re talking about tournament poker, the amateur in this article plays mostly large field no-limit hold’em tournaments. They may be a winning player, break even or maybe a slight loser in the game thus far in their career.

Pros – A professional is someone who plays online poker for their sole source of income. For this article, we are using those who specialize in large field online poker tournaments.

The Stats

Before reading too deep into these numbers, keep in mind that the purpose of this article is to provide perspective into your own results by comparing them to the results of other players. It is not meant to be a scientific study.

The numbers below represent an average of 10 players from each category and use results from both Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars from 2010. The pro stats were taken from 1/1/10 until 8/22/10 and the amateur stats were taken from 1/1/10 until 9/20/10. They only include tournaments with over 180 players.

* Pro stats were taken from a ranking of the top 10 online tournament players. Amateur stats were taken from a sample of 10 amateur players who volunteered their screen name for use in this study.

**Avg. Played/Day is based on a 5 day week, but also only includes playing 2 sites. Actual volume per day may be larger for those who play more than 2 sites and less than 5 days a week.

What Do These Stats Mean?

As you can see, the pros are not these mythical beasts who cash all the time and final table every tournament. Media attention can sometimes give off a false reality as it only highlights their wins and never mentions how many losses it took to get there.

The realities are:

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• Even the top pros only win tournaments less than 1% of the time. For some it was as low as 0.60%. So this means they are winning only 1 out of every 100 times. Of course variance doesn’t always come on schedule and they can go 200-300 tournaments without a win.
• Top pros only final table around 3% of the time. Some are as low as 2%.
• Top pros are only cashing about 13% of the time. This means they lose money 87% of the time they play! In fact, amateurs cash more often than pros. The difference is that when pros do cash, they cash deep more often.
• Pros have massive downswings like everyone else. In fact, becasue of the volume they play, they have had longer non-cash streaks.

Why have the pros averaged a $400,000 profit this year before September? It is in their ability to close tournaments. There is a reason why their ROI is 58% higher. Let’s look at the stats:

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• Pros make 1/3 more final tables than amateur poker players.
• At a 9 person final table, the average of hitting top 3 should be 33%. Pros are hitting this 43.61% of the time.
• Of the times they cash, pros are final tabling almost twice as often as amateurs (23.9% compared to 12.8%).
• Pros finish in the top 3 almost 3x as often as amateurs.
• Volume, volume, volume. Let’s not forget that pros play all day, every day. This is their job. They have a distinct advantage of overcoming bad variance much quicker and also seeing “the long run” of making profitable decisions quicker.

Keep in mind that the group of amateurs used were volunteers from various poker forums. While not all were winning players, the fact that they study the game says they likely have better results than an average amateur. Also, because of their volume size an individual amateur’s skills may be better or worse than their results show.

Improving Your Game

How can you use these stats to improve your game?

Add More Tables

Get outside of your 1-3 tabling comfort zone and simply add a couple more tables. I know the argument is that it’s harder to make reads, but the volume you put in will make up for that. In addition, this extra volume means you are playing more hands and will result in improving your game even faster. This extra experience will more than make up for the short-term loss of a perfect read.

Play More Days

Just try to add 1 more day per week. Don’t be lazy. If you currently play 7 tournaments a day, adding 1 more day x 52 weeks = 364 more tournaments/year. Even at the amateur ROI average above of 20% and average buy-in of $30, that means an extra $2,184 in profit.

Stop Caring About Individual Tournaments

It’s easy to expend emotional energy in any single poker tournament. You’re trying to win of course. But the odds are that you’re not going to. In fact, you’re only going to cash about 15% of the time. All you can do is focus on making good decisions and the variance will work itself out in the end.

Play for the Win

There’s a reason why amateurs cash more than pros. They care more about it and tighten up near the bubble. But you will miss out on valuable opportunities to accumulate chips if you are playing just to cash. In addition, you can’t fear busting or making a mistake when you get deep. In order to make real money playing poker tournaments, you have to trust your instincts and play to win.

If you’ve ever grown frustrated playing poker tournaments, don’t sweat it. Keep in perspective that even the best players in the world don’t win that often. The only way to balance out negative variance is to put in enough volume where your skill can prevail.

Good luck at the tables.

By Donovan Panone

Donovan started playing poker in 2004 and is an experienced tournament and cash game player who has a passion for teaching and helping others improve their game.

1. Great, revealing article. Stats like these are very encouraging. Thanks, Donovan

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The tournament poker landscape has seen a major shift in recent years, with the rise and proliferation of the super high roller circuit completely changing the way live tournament performance is evaluated. With multiple tournament buy-ins of $25,000 or higher each and every month, the top players in the game have never had more access to small-field events that feature massive paydays up for grabs.

The growth of the super high roller circuit has made a big impact on poker’s all-time money list. With the game’s top players able to accumulate seven-figure scores at a previously unthinkable rate, the top 20 on the live tournament earnings list has been almost entirely overhauled in recent years.

At the start of 2013, when high roller events were just beginning to become more common, the top 20 on the all-time money list looked as follows:

The list was topped by Antonio Esfandiari, who surged to the number one spot after winning the first-ever $1 million buy-in poker tournament in 2012, while the runner-up in that event Sam Trickett occupied the second-place spot. Much of the rest of the list is dominated by the biggest stars of the early 2000’s poker boom, including Phil Ivey,Phil Hellmuth, John Juanda, Michael Mizrachi, and Scotty Nguyen. The list was also overrun with modern-era World Series of Poker main event winners, including Jamie Gold, Joe Hachem, Jonathan Duhamel, Carlos Mortensen, and Greg Merson.

Only one player had surpassed the $20 million mark in earnings by the start of 2013, and three players inside the top 20 had accumulated less than $10 million total.

As of today, a player with exactly $10 million in live tournament earnings would only sit in 72nd place on the list! Four players have cashed for more than $10 million so far this year alone, and only one player inside the top 20 has less than $20 million in career earnings, with Isaac Haxton sitting just outside that mark with $19,666,117.

Here’s a look at the current all-time money list:

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Only seven players from the 2013 list are still among the top 20, in Daniel Negreanu, Erik Seidel, Antonio Esfandiari, Phil Ivey, John Juanda, Phil Hellmuth, and Sam Trickett. All of these players remain inside the top 20 as a result of having added several million in earnings since 2013. The leading amount of money won at the start of 2013 ($23,496,079) would only be good for 13th place today.

Fedor Holz is one of many young high roller regulars inside the current top 20 who were essentially nowhere near the top of the list at the start of 2013. In fact, Holz had only made one live tournament cash by that time, for $19,288. He now sits in fourth place with $32,992,603.

With $43,449,427 in lifetime live earnings, Justin Bonomo is the current leader on the all-time money list. Bonomo is having an incredible 2018, having won 10 titles and cashed for more than $25.2 million so far this year. That is the most money won by any player in a calendar year, eclipsing the $22 million that Dan Colman won in 2014.

With it now being possible for multiple players to cash for eight figures in a single year, it seems likely that the of the all-time money list will see plenty of fluctuation moving forward. Phil Hellmuth lamented how the super high rollers have changed the top of the leaderboard during a sideline interview at the 2018 Super High Roller Bowl, which Justin Bonomo went on to win for $5 million. That event was the one that saw Bonomo take the top spot on the money list, and he had a response to Hellmuth’s comments after emerging victorious.

“The all-time money list is definitely not a clear ranking of the best player in the world right now, but it still means a lot,” said Bonomo. “Some guys say, ‘Oh, that’s just all about who plays the most high rollers.’ Well, I’m sorry to break it to you, Phil Hellmuth, but the people playing these high rollers are the best players in the world, and that’s why we are at the top of the list. Sure, somebody who plays more of these events will have an advantage [at accruing earnings], but it really does entail competing against the best players in the world nearly every single day, and I am proud of how I’ve done.”

While super high rollers might have once seemed like an unsustainable trend, with more than five years of growth it seems increasingly likely that these events will continue to take place for years to come.

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