Reputation is everything in poker, and one of the worst things you can do as a professional poker player is not to pay your poker debts. While players like 24-time WSOP Circuit ring winner Maurice Hawkins have constantly been in the news for not paying his backers, the poker community was stunned when mixed games legend Dylan Linde accused serial high roller David Peters of failing to pay him back for action that he bought at Triton Jeju in September.
On Monday night, Linde outed Peters in a series of six tweets while also accusing him of being involved in “other bad debts and bad business deals.”
The stunning details
David Peters is one of the winningest poker players of all time, with nearly $50 million in career live tournament earnings, which ranks 14th on poker’s all-time money list. He’s one of poker’s all-time grinders as well, with over 400 live cashes since his first cash in 2006. We would have assumed that Peters owed Linde a huge sum of money.
However, Peters is accused of owing Linde just under $23,000, which shocked the poker world, considering Peters regularly plays six-figure buy-in events.
According to Linde, David Peters had a decent piece of Linde’s career-best $2,146,414 score in last year’s $50,000 WSOP Pot-Limit Omaha High Roller – 43 times the buy-in. According to Linde, he paid Peters “a large amount, in cash, a couple days later.”
Linde continues to claim that Peters bought a hefty chunk of action for Linde’s two Main Events at Triton Jeju, which resulted in a $50,000 loss. Peters went on to tell Linde that they would settle up at the PokerGO Poker Masters. Despite this taking place immediately after Triton Jeju in Las Vegas, where Peters lives, Peters didn’t play the series.
Linde stated that Peters told him they would meet up at the North American Poker Tour (NAPT) stop in Las Vegas about a month later, but also didn’t show up. Linde asked Peters to settle the debt in full before WSOP Paradise. While Peters reportedly asked Linde for his wire info, no money ever came through.
Alleged liquidity issues
According to Linde, David Peters told him that he was “trying to free up liquidity” on several occasions until Linde threatened to out him for the failed payment, giving him a February deadline.
Linde received “$12,000 and change” before February and extended the deadline. Peters reportedly gave him another $15,000 on April 1st and told Linde that he “cannot pay the remaining balance.”
The mixed-games wizard said he felt obligated to
David Peters: A bad Triton Jeju and relative obscurity
After the 2025 World Series of Poker, David Peters went to Triton Jeju and played $630,000 worth of events, not including rebuys, and only cashed one of his nine events: a seventh-place finish in the $40,000 Mystery Bounty for $158,000.
In addition to the $50,000 in action owed to Linde, we know that Peters lost at least $500,000 before we account for action bought, sold, and rebuys. Considering that it’s at a Triton Poker Series tour stop, $500,000 isn’t the best result, but it shouldn’t be anything close to a career-ender for somebody who regularly plays the stop.
Despite being one of the biggest grinders on the planet, Peters only has two cashes after that: a min-cash in the $1,100 WPT Prime event in Las Vegas in December and a $13,800 score for finishing 35th in the $5,000 WPT Championship in Las Vegas.
This was the first time that Peters failed to play WSOP Paradise since the series started. Peters also skipped out on the March Triton stop in Jeju, the first Triton series he has missed since 2024.
According to Triton Poker data, over his three Triton stops in 2025, Peters bought into 28 events for a total of $1,735,000 before rebuys. Peters cashed six of those events for $1,474,000 for a $261,000 loss. This loss, of course, is much higher than that, as he surely had rebuys into many of those events.
Poker players react
Many top poker pros, including Shaun Deeb and Josh Arieh, believe Peters’ money issues are likely due to massive crypto losses.
Deeb also responded to the slew of Twitter trolls, who falsely accused tournament players as a whole of being broke.
Deeb said on Twitter: “As sad as the dpeters story is, I always laugh at all the comments crapping on high-stakes MTT pros. I’m going to guess his money issues are way more likely due to massive crypto losses, not lack of poker winnings.
“There is so much more honesty and wealth generated from MTTs than anyone realizes, than any other form of poker. Sorry, it’s just the truth. You are breakeven because you suck, not because everyone else is also breakeven or worse.”
Arieh reiterated both of Deeb’s points, “almost guaranteeing” that Peters’ losses are either from gambling or bad investments.
David Peters has yet to comment on the matter.
