Adam Bilzerian
- Adam Bilzerian is an American-born Nevisian poker player and writer, and the son of the convicted felon and takeover specialist Paul Bilzerian.
- Bilzerian (Armenian: Ադամ Պիլզերեան, born 1983) is an American-born Nevisian poker player and writer.
Adam Bilzerian net worth: If anyone ever wanted evidence to support the theory that gambling prowess is genetic, they need to look no further than the Bilzerian family.
While playboy Dan Bilzerian is by far the most famous gambler of the family (and more for his Instagram antics than his winnings), and father Paul is said to be fond of a good poker game, younger son Adam has also achieved significant success at the felt table over the years.
In the 2009 WSOP, where both Dan and Adam participated, Norman Chad called them the “Flying Bilzerian Brothers”, a nickname that since then stuck.
Adam Bilzerian’s fame goes beyond gambling; he’s also a controversial figure due to his political views and some of the life choices he has made. Let’s dive into the story of the mystery man of poker, and take a look at Adam Bilzerian’s likely net worth today.
Jul 07, 2020 Internet playboy Dan Bilzerian's company, Ignite International Brands, Ltd., managed to lose about $50 million last year and may not survive until the next Halloween party.
Early Career
Adam Bilzerian Twitter
Adam was born in 1983 and grew up in Tampa, Florida. He led an idyllic, privileged lifestyle up through his teenage years. The family’s house has been described as a mansion, half the size of Buckingham Palace. Its amenities included lake-front views, a swimming pool, a water slide, an indoor basketball court, a batting cage, and an imported volcanic rock mountain. Adam excelled at tennis as a youth and represented his high school in the sport.
All this changed when Adam’s father was sent to jail for market manipulation. The family filed for bankruptcy, and Paul was engaged in legal battles with the US government for the next 20 years over earnings that he had supposedly hidden.
During this upheaval, Adam attended Vanderbilt University, earning a B.A. in history and later an MBA from Macquarie University in Australia. He eventually transitioned into playing poker professionally.
Professional Poker Career
Due to his quiet nature and lack of interest in being part of the spotlight, many details about Adam Bilzerian’s life are hard to come by.
For example, no one quite knows exactly when he developed an interest in professional poker. Given the timeline of his arrival onto the professional poker scene, though, it’s highly likely that his brother Dan’s success is what piqued Adam’s interest.
Adam seems to prefer private games to highly-publicized, televised poker events. One of his most famous private games involved baseball icon Alex Rodriguez at the Bellagio in Las Vegas on an undisclosed date. Although Rodriguez ultimately lost to Bilzerian, he came in second and impressed Bilzerian with his skills.
As for his public gambling escapades, Adam has made some tidy sums over the years. He participated in the World Series of Poker (WSOP) in 2009, alongside his brother. Both came away with significant winnings. This fraternal achievement led sports commentator Norman Chad to dub them the “Flying Bilzerian Brothers.”
Adam also played and won money in 2010, 2015, and 2016 WSOP tournaments and the 2013 World Poker Tour Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic in Las Vegas.
His most recent public gambling event was the 2016 WSOP tournament.
Adam Bilzerian Achievements at a Glance
Adam Bilzerian Biggest Cashes
Adam Bilzerian Recent Earnings
Adam Bilzerian Net Worth
Adam Bilzerian’s net worth is estimated to be around $100 million. While he has certainly earned a sizeable chunk of that through his profitable poker career, many people suspect that part of it also comes from less reputable sources.
Adam’s father, Paul, set up trust funds for both of his children when they were young. When his legal troubles began with the US government, he claimed to have very few financial assets with which to repay the government. Many people believe that Paul used his children’s trust funds to hide large sums of money from the government and avoid repayment.
None of this has ever been proven, and all members of the Bilzerian family vehemently deny such accusations, but doubt remains about the veracity of their claims.
In addition to poker earnings and trust fund money, Adam has also earned money as an author.
He published a book in 2010 entitled, “America: Love It or Leave It: So, I Left.” The book detailed his experiences related to his father’s legal troubles and his disillusion with the US government. He also explained his frustration with the results of the 2004 presidential election and his subsequent decision to renounce his American citizenship.
While American nationalists accused the book of being a blatant attack on the country and its political system, it was received favorably by many others as a legitimate list of grievances against the failings of the US government. It certainly helped Adam Bilzerian’s net worth as well as causing a small political storm.
Personal Life
The US government’s treatment of Paul Bilzerian profoundly affected Adam. Whereas he had at one time dreamed of joining the Army to defend his country, Adam soon became bitter toward the government.
Adam Bilzerian Poker
Things came to a head in 2007 when he decided to move to St. Kitts and Nevis. He invested a significant amount of money on the island of Nevis and, in return, received citizenship the following year. He promptly renounced his American citizenship in protest of all that had happened to his family during the US government’s decades-long persecution of his father.
Adam now lives peacefully on Nevis with his wife and two children in their island abode.
Conclusion: The Mystery Man of Poker
Adam Bilzerian is a Nevisian professional poker player. He hails from a rich and famous family and has certainly benefited from his family’s wealth over the years.
Adam Bilzerian Wife
While he had a series of successes in the poker field between 2009 and 2016, he has mostly disappeared from the public eye since.
To date, Adam’s total live earnings amount to $877,687, and his All-Time Money List Best Rank sits at 1,599th, according to the Hendon Mob website.
Aside from his poker fame, Adam is also known for renouncing his American citizenship and writing a scathing book about the failings and poor decisions of the US Government.
Sources
Dan Bilzerian
You can’t choose your family, as the saying goes. But for Adam Bilzerian, brother of Dan Bilzerian and growing up in the same house, being the second son of the wealthy Armenian-American businessman Paul Bilzerian, he could choose his country.
Adam Bilzerian was a successful poker player, but after the FBI ‘raided’ Bilzerian Senior’s property in Florida under what one neighbor called pure intimidation, Adam Bilzerian started to think that he’d had enough of the supposed land of the free. So would it be Adam Bilzerian, poker player, or Adam Bilzerian, freedom fighter?
BILZERIAN BECOMES A NEVISIAN
Instead of sticking around in America, in 2007, Bilzerian decided to leave, bound for the tiny Barbadian island of St. Kitts and Nevis, eventually becoming a fully certificated Nevisian, and reneging his right to an American passport. Since then, Bilzerian has posted numerous creditable poker scores. Just who is Adam Bilzerian?
No-one knows Adam Bilzerian’s net worth exactly, but the younger Bilzerian has more live tournament results than his older, more Instagram famous brother Dan Bilzerian. Not only did Adam Bilzerian write and publish a book entitled America: Love It Or Leave It So I Leftabout his experiences of leaving behind his homeland of the U.S.A. after 24 years as a born and bred American citizen and Floridian, he wrote another, too. Published under the title America: Land of the Free, My Ass, it charts the constitutional anomalies that plague people to live at the behest of the government, or as Adam Bilzerian puts it: “This Is Not Your Founding Fathers’ United States”.
ADAM BILZERIAN AT THE FELT
While Bilzerian Junior is obviously an intelligent and thought-provoking person – and author – poker fans have always cherished his appearances at the felt. Bilzerian ran deep in the 2009 World Series of Poker Main Event, finishing an impressive $138,568, busting when he ran pocket tens into pocket kings with just six tables left in the biggest event on the poker calendar. That was the year Joe Cada won the Main Event, something the youngest-ever winner gloried in when he made a sensational deep run just this summer.
With both Bilzerian brothers involved in that event, it might have been easy to expect Adam Bilzerian to have played more, but as of December 2019, he has just $877,687 in live tournament results, ten cashes only, although five of these are from the World Series of Poker. Bilzerian’s biggest result was the $344,520 he won in 2014 in a $100,000-entry Super High Roller event which was eventually won by Dan Smith.
Return to the scene of the crime. #IveysRoom@ARIAPoker With Adam Bilzerian. pic.twitter.com/cZjrd0sEEy
— Jennifer Tilly (@JenniferTilly) December 21, 2014
OTHER RESULTS AND A BIG COMPLIMENT FROM A SHORTSTOP
Adam Bilzerian also won $246,000 when he finished as runner-up to Andrew Lichtenberger in an ARIA High Roller event in 2015. Bilzerian’s sole recorded win was in the $10,300-entry Chinese Poker event at the 2013 WPT Five Diamond festival. With Chinese Poker now a big part of the poker landscape, maybe the younger Bilzerian brother could return to one of the Chinese Poker events at the WSOP at the Rio in 2020. His most recent cash at the live felt was back in 2016.
The former New York Yankees’ shortstop, Major League Baseball legend Alex Rodriguez once said of Bilzerian at the Bellagio, “Alex busted everyone except me. He had an amazing run. He won about $20,000 and left with everyone’s money.”
Clearly, Adam Bilzerian learned how to win from his father and how to be ruthless with it, as Dan Bilzerian himself has demonstrated. While many poker fans have wondered what might happen if Dan Bilzerian became a tournament player for a living, it was obvious from tracking his results that Adam Bilzerian had it in him to do just as well at the felt, if not better.
WHERE NEXT FOR THE YOUNGEST BILZERIAN?
While he is still noted as both a poker player and private investor, Adam Bilzerian has disappeared off the poker map a little in the last few years, and by the looks of the photos that accompany his words back in November of last year when he wrote a blog discussing the ease with which he emigrated to St. Kitts & Nevis, it may not be too soon that he returns to the felt.
Adam Bilzerian would suit the smoldering tension of Poker After Dark, or maybe the intense competition of the U.S. Poker Open. That said, it’s ar likelier that we see him back at the World Series of Poker, and in 2020 you’ll be able to do so on PokerGO.
For WSOP highlights, live streams of the latest huge poker events and classic shos such as Poker After Dark on demand, sign up today and subscribe to PokerGO for 24/7 access to the best poker content in the world.