Daily Mail – Sixty minutes later Daniel Tzvetkoff and a cohort of high rollers and hangers-on were partying in the Palm Hotel’s Playboy Mansion Suite. Tzvetkoff swigged Cristal champagne straight from the bottle and lounged in the infinity pool. Naked girls snorted cocaine off each other’s breasts and invited him to do the same.
Tzvetkoff was 25 years old. He could have anyone he wanted at the click of his fingers. He flew by private jet, drove Lamborghinis, Rolls Royces, Bentleys, Ferraris and more and his property portfolio was worth millions.
And on that September night in Vegas, 2008, he had no idea just how close to the sun he was flying or how catastrophically he would crash to earth.
Now, for the first time, a new book tells the story of the spectacular rise and fall of the Australian ‘programming geek’ who ‘built’ online poker in America…then tore it down.
James Leighton’s ‘Alligator Blood’ – a title taken from poker slang for a fearless player – tells how, within three years of that night in Las Vegas, Tzvetkoff was living in witness protection in Harlem, New York. Bankrupt, a target of the mob and under threat of imprisonment, he turned FBI informant to become the man behind online poker’s Black Friday.
