Doyle Brunson turned down $235-million offer because it wasn’t enough money

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Posted on: May 20, 2020 09:34 PDT

Dolly laments the time he rejected a massive sum to sell his online poker site, Doyle’s Room

Impressive poker history is what Doyle Brunson has. The retired poker player and two-time World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event champion played poker for 50 years and was the first player to ever collect over $1 million in poker payouts. He also launched his own online poker room, Doyle’s Room, and last week, in a Twitter exchange, he made it known that once - around a decade ago - he turned down a great offer made to sell the site. According to the response he gave to a question raised by Rounders and Billions co-creator Brian Koppelman, he rejected a $235-million deal to sell his online poker site just before Black Friday in 2011.

Koppelman's question was more directed to ask followers how much money a person needs to make to be considered financially rich, "I consider a person financially rich if they make ___ a year or have a net worth of ___,” he tweeted. For whatever reason, Brunson saw this as a good opportunity to vent his regret, and replied, "I've asked that many times. I turned down $235 million for Doyle’s Room before Black Friday that haunts me to this day. I thought it was going to be worth twice that and it would have been. How much do u need? What was I thinking of? 500k..20 million is my answer.”

This was an unfortunate coincidence for Brunson, who had no way of foreseeing what was about to happen to the online poker market. He confirmed that the late, great Paradise Poker was the site who made him that steep offer; however, some of those funds were going to be paid in stock, so he wasn't going to see the full amount in cash because of the eventual fallout caused by Black Friday. Doyle's moved around several software operators over the years, like Microgaming Network in 2007, then the Cake Poker Network in 2009. It was finally acquired by Americas Cardroom later in 2011 and he stopped all involvement with the site.