Neymar hoped to add a poker title to his litany of club and international soccer honors on Wednesday. Needless to say, it wasn’t in the cards for the Brazil superstar.
Neymar reached the final (virtual) table of the Super Tuesday High Roller event at the PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker 2025, competing for a top prize of $186,434. But facing off against poker professionals and at a severe chip disadvantage, the soccer star didn’t last long before bowing out of the tournament. He finished in last place out of the seven players.
The 33-year-old forward entered the round with the fewest chips of anyone, holding less than one-third of the chip leader’s total. Despite his disappointing showing on Day 2, he still took home $26,111 after a $10,300 buy-in — not bad for a day’s work playing poker on the internet.
Neymar has been a mainstay on the high-stakes poker circuit for many years, and he has expressed plans to play professionally after retiring from soccer. In 2022, he made his first in-person appearance at a World Series of Poker event in the United States, but was eliminated before the end of Day 1. Back in 2018, he even posted a photo on Instagram back in 2018 of himself playing poker at home while he was recovering from an injury … and while Paris Saint-Germain, his club at the time, were busy clinching the Ligue 1 title.
If that isn’t enough proof of his obsession with the game, he even named his first pet dog “Poker”!
After spending six seasons with PSG and two in Saudi Arabia with Al Hilal, the forward now captains his boyhood club, Santos, in the Brazilian Serie A. He has three goals in 12 appearances so far this season. However, he was left out of the latest Brazil squad by coach Carlo Ancelotti with the 2026 World Cup in North America fast approaching.
ESPN’s Doug Greenberg contributed to this report.
