Poker’s All-Time Money List Hides Millions in Real-World Losses
A pro poker player’s Chapter 7 filing shows gross tournament cashes can mask heavy debt, buy-in costs and staking deals.
This article was produced with AI assistance and edited by the ON360 newsroom.
The world’s top tracker of professional poker earnings, The Hendon Mob All-Time Money List, records gross tournament winnings only, and a Florida bankruptcy filing this year shows how far that figure can sit from a player’s real bank balance. Maurice Hawkins, a 24-time WSOP Circuit gold-ring winner at the time with roughly $7.8 million in lifetime cashes on the database, filed for Chapter 7 liquidation on April 23, 2026, listing assets of between $500,000 and $1 million against liabilities of $100,000 to $500,000.
The case, filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Florida under case number 26-15116-EPK through attorney Michael A. Kaufman, was triggered by a poker-related debt. A backer named Randy Garcia had won a state-court judgment against Hawkins for $115,828, and the two had struck a repayment arrangement before the filing.
Gross winnings, not net worth
Hendon Mob itself warns that its numbers are, in its own words, “no more than notional gross recorded winnings” that “cannot even be relied upon as a true reflection of gross winnings and are not net of losses.” The database does not subtract buy-ins, travel costs, taxes, or the portion of a player’s action sold off to backers through staking deals.
Top-ranked Bryn Kenney sits at roughly $90.7 million in lifetime cashes. That figure looks staggering. But it says nothing about how much Kenney, or any player near the top of the list, actually kept.
Hall of Famer Daniel Negreanu, one of the few pros who publishes his own results, has put real dollar figures behind the gap. He estimated in April 2025 that a full elite tournament schedule now “costs over $12 million” in entry fees, up from about $1.2 million in 2013 and roughly $250,000 in the late 1990s.
By his own accounting, Negreanu is up about $13.1 million since 2013 against roughly $60.7 million in gross Hendon Mob cashes over that stretch. He also posted a $2.23 million loss in 2023. PokerNews has pegged his true lifetime net at $18 million to $22 million, a range Negreanu himself called fair.
Both players are still winning on paper
Hawkins has kept playing since the filing. He has since pushed his WSOP Circuit ring record to 26 and banked $76,380 in the 2026 WSOP Circuit Choctaw $1,100 mini-main event.
A separate public dispute this spring involved high roller David Peters over a $23,000 debt. Peters, too, has since kept winning. In July, he took the $10,000 six-handed no-limit hold’em championship in Las Vegas for his fifth career WSOP bracelet and a $1,001,391 payday.
The pattern is consistent. Public wins keep landing on the scoreboard while entry fees, staking obligations and debt sit off it entirely. A player who spends $12.5 million on buy-ins in a year and cashes for $12 million still sees a $12 million addition to their lifetime total, even as their actual bank account falls by half a million dollars.
For Ontario players following the live and online poker circuit, the takeaway is straightforward: headline tournament winnings are not disposable income, and even celebrated pros can carry six-figure debt behind a seven- or eight-figure career total. Regulated Ontario operators are required to offer deposit limits, time-outs and self-exclusion tools, and players who feel their play is being driven by chasing losses rather than results can contact ConnexOntario for free, confidential support.