Dan Bilzerian is an American venture capitalist, actor and gambler who has a net worth of $199 million.
Bilzerian was born in Tampa Bay, Florida on December 7, 1980. Dan’s father, Paul Bilzerian, was a prominent private equity/corporate takeover specialist in the 1980s.
By the time Paul Bilzerian was 36 years old he had already earned a self-made $40 million fortune. Unfortunately, in 1988 Paul was indicted for tax and security fraud. Dan was eight years old at the time. The elder Bilzerian declared bankruptcy in 2001 claiming just $15,000 in assets and more than $140 million worth of debt. Dan’s mother is named Terri Steffen. He has a brother named Adam. At their peak the family lived in the largest home in Tampa, a 28,000 square foot mansion with 10 bedrooms. This house was foreclosed on in 2016 after Paul relocated to the Caribbean to escape arrest.
Before their father was indicted, he reportedly set up trust funds for both Dan and Adam. It’s unclear how much of these funds have contributed to Dan’s present-day opulent lifestyle or whether any of those funds were potentially ill-gotten in Paul’s alleged tax and security frauds.
Dan Bilzerian’s Early Life and Poker Career:
Dan joined the Navy in 1999. In 2000, Bilzerian went on to undergo SEAL training, and completed two hell weeks, but he was kicked out of the program a few weeks before graduation after having a disagreement with one of his administrators. The disagreement reportedly involved a safety violation on the gun range. After leaving the Navy Dan enrolled at the University of Florida where he majored in Criminology and Business.
In 2009, at the age of 29, Dan started playing poker professionally. He finished in 180th place at the 2009 World Series of Poker Main Event. This would turn out to be his most successful officially sanctioned poker event. His winnings topped $36,000. Today Dan is reputed to be a very good poker player. Though his official career winnings at sanctioned events are relatively small, he claims to have won millions, and even tens of millions, in private events. During one particularly legendary event Dan reportedly won $12.8 million. $10.8 million playing a single game of heads-up, no-limit hold’em, at stakes of $5,000-$10,000.
After winning, he immediately took a private jet to Mexico to celebrate. In that year alone, 2014, he claims to have won $50 million playing poker. He also has lost more than $3 million on at least three different occasions. He was named the “Funniest Poker Player on Twitter” by Bluff Magazine, and is also the co-founder of Victory Poker.
In addition to his poker playing, he has also appeared in the films, “Olympus Has Fallen”, “Lone Survivor”, “The Other Woman”, and “Equalizer”. He ended up suing the producers of Lone Survivor complaining that he had loaned the company $1 million in exchange for a minimum of 8 minutes of screen time and 80 words of dialogue. In the final version of the film his role ended up being less than one minute with just one quick line of dialogue. His lawsuit sought $1.2 million, his original loan amount plus 20%.
Dan Bilzerian has received a level of notoriety recently thanks to his Instagram uploads (he has over 26 million followers) which chronicle an amazing playboy lifestyle that would make Hugh Hefner himself envious. His lifestyle is so insane that Dan has had three heart attacks before the age of 32.
Dan Bilzerian Real Estate: Dan has lived most of the last decade in the Hollywood Hills, Bel Air and Las Vegas. For tax purposes Dan’s primary residence is Las Vegas, Nevada. In 2014 he purchased a 5-bedroom home in Summerlin South for $4.1 million. He sold that house in 2017 for $5.1 million and then purchased a new house nearby for $10 million. In 2018 Dan rented an absolutely enormous Bel Air mansion for a reported $50,000 per month. He had been previously spending $39,000 per month to rent his home in the Hollywood Hills.
