Famous Gamblers - And How They Got There

They are the world’s most famous gamblers - and we are here to briefly tease you with their story of self-reported success, well-documented public stunts, and ability to fascinate millions of people. Today, Casino Guru takes a look at a list of ten names that have completely upended how we experience gambling, and what we think we know about the activity.

Some of these people claim to have beaten roulette and that they can predict where the ball would land; others have been purportedly banned from every casino in the world, and others still argue that gambling is not really all that lucrative, even when they are presumably some of the richest gamblers in the world.

1. xQc

xQc, real name Félix Lengyel, is another prominent figure in the gambling industry, and he originally started as a streaming personality focused on competitive video gaming.

He quickly emerged as a gambling influencer in the 2020s, with multiple media outlets reporting in 2023 that he had signed an eye-watering $100-million deal with Kick.

Kick was an up-and-coming rival to Twitch, the Amazon-owned company that had banned gambling content, or at least specific gambling content.

Seeing an opportunity, Kick rapidly positioned itself as a more liberal alternative, allowing users to personally exclude themselves from seeing gambling content rather than blanket-banning such content.

xQc’s switch to Kick was then followed by regular streams of various gambling content. He remains a highly active gambling-centric streamer, but it is hard to pinpoint his exact net worth or gambling losses.

On the first point, he is said to be making $200,000 per Kick stream, and as to his gambling losses, in 2025 he said he had rolled over $3.6 billion in gambling, with 90% of his wagers losing.

2. Trainwrecks

Trainwrecks, or Trainwreck, as he is known online, is an American streamer, and he belongs to the same category as xQc, focusing exclusively on online gambling. This is a good thing too, as the streamer once said he had to stop streaming because of "concerns about his safety."

The streamer, whose real name is Tyler Faraz Niknam, is another Kick native, after he too abandoned Twitch in the wake of the gambling restrictions the platform placed.

Trainwreck’s relationship with Kick has also known its ups and downs, with the streamer talking about a digital revolt at one point, but never naming who fellow streamers and himself would be revolting against.

He famously forgone deals with affiliates, calling them a dishonest way of making money while streaming gambling.

3. Niko Tosa

Niko Tosa is an enigmatic gambler who has been beating casinos at roulette in the most uncanny and openly unperturbed way. Using Call Bets to place wagers in the last possible moment of a game of roulette, Niko Tosa has been able to secure large payouts from some major casinos around the world, and notably the Ritz Casino, which is how his name got out in the public.

He and his associates won more than £1.3 million at the property by simply using Call Bets in 2004, eventually wearing down the casino’s patience and getting arrested over alleged cheating.

Police could not prove anything, other than to establish that Niko Tosa and his associates had multiple passports and apparently traveled around the world, presumably to play at different casinos, using the exact daring strategy.

More than a decade after the Ritz events, a Bloomberg journalist finally secured an interview with the enigmatic gambler, which raised just as many questions as it answered.

4. Mikki Mase

Mikki Mase is one of the most controversial modern figures in gambling culture, largely because of the reputation he has built around his own claims. He presents himself as a highly skilled player, primarily focused on roulette and baccarat, and has repeatedly stated that he has been banned from all casinos in the world for his success at the tables.

According to Mase, he developed a strategy that allows him to consistently beat casino games, and he claims to have won $32 million across multiple venues before stepping away from active play before he retired. These claims, however, remain unverified and are widely debated within the gambling community.

After stepping back from high-stakes gambling, he has remained active in the industry through at least one business connected to betting and wagering services. Before his gambling persona, he has also been associated with work in addiction treatment facilities, with addiction also a part of his own struggles as a gambler.

5. Mr Hand Play

Mr Hand Play is more than a slots influencer or a gambler - it’s a brand that is meant to entertain, last, and importantly, grow. The influencer’s focus on slot content from live casinos has been built on friendly interactions between him and his more than 1.15 million YouTube followers, and he habitually supports other gamblers, landing him a reputation as a do-gooder.

Yet, designed as a business, Mr Hand Play has established a significant social media presence, with a strong reach on both Instagram and Facebook, accumulating hundreds of thousands of followers. He is easily one of the richest gamblers in the world, too.

Besides streaming, Mr Hand Play also runs a junket service called Mr Hand Pay Casino & Travel Inc, promoting trips to specific casinos, cruises, and other high-value and luxurious events.

The influencer similarly leverages his name recognition and sells merchandise, turning the Mr Hand Play brand into a multi-million media business, with the man’s own net worth anything between $5 million and $15 million.

You can find more about his exciting career, marital status, and business success in his dedicated profile piece on Casino Guru News.

6. Dan Bilzerian

Dan Bilzerian is a gambler known for his luxurious lifestyle, proclivity for beautiful women, outspoken-borderline-brash attitude, and his boastful claims of winning high-stakes poker games. While he has only ever won $36,626 based on his The Hendon Mob profile in live tournaments, the influencer has laid some serious claims about his poker exploits all the same.

Bilzerian’s brand, outside the women, posh locations, and cushy environs, is based on his private poker games, which often see millions gambled, in the man’s own words. He has self-reportedly made tens of millions of dollars in a single year, just by playing against others in those private games, too.

His claims about poker acumen and excellence have been questioned, and the mismatch between his lifestyle and recorded poker winnings has added tension.

However, the Instagrammable lifestyle of the brash poker player has often peeled away from people digging deeper, with onlookers fixated on the parties he throws, guns he collects, and multi-million yachts he appears on quite often.

7. NG Slot

NG Slot, AKA Narek Gharibyan, is among the most famous gamblers on YouTube, and normally has hundreds of thousands of views per video. He launched his channel back in February 2017, and has achieved breakout success over the years, now having more than 1.25 million subscribers on the Google-owned video sharing platform.

NG Slot takes a mix of live and edited footage of himself playing at casinos, which he visits two or three times a month. His channel on YouTube generates as much as $800,000 a year from ads revenue, but the gambler habitually spends up to $1,000,000 per trip shooting his content.

How does he fund it? NG Slot is actually a successful entrepreneur with businesses in both the United States and Europe, and while he advises against starting your own gambling YouTube channel, he has no intention of stopping any time soon.

8. Nemo Zhou

Nemo Zhou is another interesting famous gambler on this list. While not originally starting as a poker player, Nemo has been gradually making forays at the green felt and she has amassed live winnings, as well as won online games.

She is notably known as a FIDE Master and Woman Grandmaster in chess, and is in fact the youngest-ever Finnish national chess champion, winning the under-10 open section of the Finnish Youth Chess Championships at the age of five.

Because of her prodigy status - in the chess world at least - Nemo has amassed an avid following on YouTube with more than 586,000 subscribers as well as close to 567 million video views.

In her first live poker tournament, Nemo cruised through 69 celebrities and came out on top, winning $20,000 in the PokerGo-hosted event, dramatically going all-in at one point with 9, K against a pair of Aces, only to see the flop bring 2 K's and immediately boost her winning chances to close to 90%, which was not the only memorable play in that tournament.

9. Brian Christopher

Brian Christopher, or as most of his YouTuber followers and fans know him, BCSlots, is a prominent gambling industry influencer who has cultivated a loyal following and is a BetMGM ambassador, and he also hops on the occasional cruise.

With more than 2 million subscribers on YouTube, the content creator is a phenomenon in his own right, starting humbly as a person who went around casinos and filmed himself playing slots to someone who pops up at the occasional cruise liner for an exclusive event, and even has helped develop his exclusive games.

The player has shown a genuine interest in streaming live and enjoying the results, with his highest win on camera worth $80,000 and his estimated net worth sitting comfortably at at least $3,000,000.

BC is a beloved and highly prolific slot influencer who is also a BetMGM ambassador, with the pair habitually announcing slot events, and the YouTuber also releasing his own games.

10. Phil Ivey

Phil Ivey is certainly one of the best gamblers in the world, and while poker is practically a game of skill and not chance, the player has not minded the accolade. Phil Ivey has amassed more than $54,493,084 in live poker winnings, but he has also been an avid player in other games, too, including - somewhat infamously - baccarat.

His passion for baccarat is a well-established fact, and the poker ace was actually embroiled in a multi-continent-spanning scandal. Ivey allegedly "edge sorted" cards to gain an unfair advantage in baccarat games in the United Kingdom and the United States.

Ivey’s sharp poker skills allowed him to spot an imperfection in the cards used at baccarat tables, which made it easier for him to beat the house, as he had an idea of what was coming next. He was even denied winnings by the Crockfords casino in London, with a court in the UK eventually concluding that while edge sorting was not the same as cheating, it did constitute a "dishonest act."

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