How much does Dana White gamble and is he good at baccarat?

Dana White has not made his soft spot for gambling a secret. In fact, Dana White is almost synonymous with gambling, having been a regular at The Strip casinos, given that many of the Ultimate Fighting Championship fights are held in Las Vegas. Today, we take a look at Dana White’s gambling habits, his anecdotal losses, and his matter-of-fact approach to gambling as a whole.

White has few regrets if any when it comes to his gambling habits, having lost $3m one night when he was inebriated and could have sworn that the casino had only won $80,000. He also claims to have been at one point unofficially banned from casinos around Las Vegas. Despite all of this, White has remained involved with gambling as a popular pastime of his.

How much does Dana White win from gambling?

Dana White’s gambling habits are subject to some speculation, but the titbits he has dropped publicly are actually quite entertaining. For one, White is known to win a lot while gambling. He just seems to have a good thing going for him, as he likes to put it.

In fact, he appeared on the Full Send podcast in August 2024 and stated, matter-of-factly, as is his preferred way of expressing himself, that he had won $1m a night from Caesars Palace on the Las Vegas Strip.

He played at the property from early January through March, amassing anything between $26m and $27m in winnings. Dana White was not shy about this specific gambling exploit in particular and talked about it with a smile on his face.

Yet, a true and accurate account of his total gambling winnings, or losses for that matter, would be difficult to provide. Before this story, though, Dana White was known for another exploit at a Las Vegas casino, having won $7m in a single night.

Has Dana White lost a lot to gambling?

Dana White’s losses to gambling are not really known, although he has been happy to tell a few things about this as well. White has recounted several interesting and anecdotical stories about his gambling losses.

One had to do with his time visiting Rio Hotel & Casino, where he ended up booking one of two available suites and having a "real good time," as he put it. The boys and him were partying, had dinner, and some drinks, and then they decided to hit the gaming floors.

So, they did, and Dana White kept gambling and he kept drinking. He had little recollection of what had happened late into the night before the party decided to withdraw, but waking up the next morning, his instincts of a businessman kicked in, and he thought "These guys got me for $80,000, and I am going to get it back."

White was speculating at the time in his mind that he was too inebriated to play and the Rio knew about this, so he was intent to get his money back. However, they told him he had lost $3m upon calling his contact in the casino.

White was incredulous at the sum he had lost and argued that he had a limit on his credit with the casino and that it would be impossible for him to lose $3m in a single night of gambling.

The staffer told him that this was technically true, but that White had gone out of his way to call the General Manager of the casino and convince them – through a barrage of robust words it seemed – to lift the restriction, and they obliged.

The UFC boss recounted this rather embarrassing gambling situation on the Lex Fridman podcast in 2024, and it immediately became a regularly cited fact about White. As White put it at the time – it was a "lesson learned."

Yet this is hardly his only loss! In fact, Dana White claims to have lost even bigger sums of money. While he was playing at the Caesars and would eventually go on to win around $27m from the entire ordeal, he admitted that he also lost $8m in a single night playing high-stakes baccarat.

Dana White’s gambling losses are still subject to a lot of speculation, but all told, the UFC head honcho has been enjoying the activity for decades now and there is nothing to suggest that his finances have taken a hit. Dana White’s net worth is estimated at $500m.

What games does Dana White gamble on?

Dana White has been publicly known to gravitate towards two games. He has been playing both blackjack and baccarat, placing between $30,000 and $75,000 on single hands of blackjack and around $300,000 to $400,000 per hand of baccarat.

Blackjack and baccarat, and particularly high-stakes games, remain his preferred and go-to option for when he gambles. He has already mentioned once that he wished he could amp up his gambling to $1m per single hand, and that he would need a casino to grant him a $30m credit to do that, but there is hardly any property in the world that would acquiesce to such a peculiar demand.

Does Dana White have a gambling strategy to win?

Gambling influencer Mikki Mase has often bragged about his secret strategy that fetched him a ban from all Las Vegas casinos, and arguably all casinos around the world. While Mikki Mase has not really shared any details, other than to somewhat self-assuredly suggest that it would end the casino business as we know it if he released it, Dana White has not been coy about the exact stratagem he uses.

It's simple – he sits down at a game and plays three hands in a row. If he wins, he is all the richer, and if he loses – well, he stops right there and then (for the most part, as we already know White does go on extended gambling benders). So, it really comes down to this – you play three hands and you walk away no matter what.

There is one exception, blackjack. White tends to play longer when he sits down for a game of blackjack, but he is very well-disciplined and as soon as he is ahead, he just walks away from the table.

Is Dana White counting cards? We do not think so. After screening dozens of videos of the man playing blackjack on YouTube, it appears that White is following his intuition and simply quitting while he is ahead as a good gambler would do.

What is Dana White’s end game for gambling?

When it comes to professional or at least famous gamblers, we know about Mikki Mase, who has been banned from every casino in the world. For his part, Mikki Mase has been content with what he has, and has said that he is no longer gambling, nor does he want to.

Dana White, on the other hand, actually wants to achieve something. He has been betting up to $75,000 per blackjack hand, and he has been allowed to gamble as much as $350,000 - $400,000 per hand of blackjack at some of the premier Las Vegas casino destinations.

Yet, White isn’t quite satisfied with either option. He's hoping to find a casino that will let him bet $1 million per baccarat hand. If he does, he believes he can retire from gambling for good.

However, there's a catch: in 2022, White claimed he had been unofficially banned from casinos. By 2024, though, he was back in action on the Las Vegas Strip, suggesting that any ban was short-lived."

Dana White Gambling: Summing It Up!

White continues to frequenthigh-stakes tables, particularly on the Las Vegas Strip, viewing gambling as both a passion and a high-adrenaline challenge.

He has surely run into some roadblocks along the way, such as the unofficial ban he complained about in 2022 that stopped him from gambling for at least a while. However, by 2024 this ban seemed to have been lifted and Dana White was back gambling at the Las Vegas Strip.

Besides his frequent visits to the Las Vegas Strip, White has been also frequenting another establishment, the Red Rock Resort in Summerlin. His gambling exploits make for a good chat at various podcast appearances, and they are surely fun to keep track of yourself, we can bet!

Image credit Andrius Petrucenia (@Wikimedia @Flickr)