The days before Black Friday were well known as a lucrative time for players, but for those involved in online poker rooms, whether owning them or simply holding a stake, the potential for earning big money was far greater.
That fact was underlined this week by a story about Doyle Brunson.
Doyle Brunson turns down $230 million for DoylesRoom
The poker legend tweeted that DoylesRoom, the online poker room of which he owned half had been the subject of a $230 million bid during the height of the online poker boom.
Be sure and include a certain person who turned down a $230,000,000 offer for a card room that had his name on it. In one day, it was worthless. This person who had a 50% ownership has recurring nightmares about it. https://t.co/r3VGUlN2jp
— Doyle Brunson (@TexDolly) February 13, 2018
Brunson could have sold the poker room and banked the huge sum of money, but he instead turned the offer down. The site subsequently faded away in the aftermath of Black Friday, along with any value it might have. Brunson says he still has nightmares about his decision to refuse the offer, but he certainly isn’t alone in having missed out on a golden opportunity.
Daniel Negreanu and Full Contact Poker
Daniel Negreanu is another star of the game who missed out on a huge payday, having apparently been offered $170 million for his website Full Contact Poker. Telling his story on a podcast, he spoke of the offer landing on the table just six months after he started the website, only to be pulled three days later when it became clear that the US government were going after the online poker industry.
“I built up [my website Full Contact Poker] from nothing, all basically with my own money,” Negreanu confessed “And within six months I had an offer to sell it for $170 million. Literally three days later, this thing called UIGEA happened, so they pulled the plug on the offer.”
Mike Sexton loses $500m selling partypoker shares
In many ways, WPT commentator and poker legend Mike Sexton lost out on more money the Negreanu and Brunson combined. Sexton received a number of shares in partypoker when he was involved in it’s early development, and as the site gained traction and became a rising online website, he cashed out for $15 million. Sexton says that if he had just waited, he could have eventually sold them for $500 million. But, as he said to Joey Ingram during a podcast recently – “what’s $500 million here or there?”
Guest Mike Sexton || Poker Life Podcast
Article by Craig Bradshaw
