Question of the Day - 13 November 2025

It's spelled Terrance, he goes by Terry, and Watanabe has been getting some publicity lately, based on what's believed to be his first interview ever. He appeared on the YouTube channel Wager Talk TV, hosted by none other than Bill "Krackman" Krackomberger, whom we interviewed on our own YouTube channel, which you can access here (a two-part series; Bill loves to talk and has great stories). 

As for the $200 million, the amount varies, depending on who's telling the tale, but it's definitely in the nine figures. We've seen it as "low" as $127 million and as high as $350 million (the number posted at the top of the Krackman's interview with Watanabe).

The Wall Street Journal cites the $127 million loss for the year 2007, while numerous sources have estimated that Watanabe's losses added up to "more than $200 million" in the aggregate over several years. ABC News reported that Watanabe's wagers totaled $825 million in the fateful year of 2007, most of which was at the Rio and Caesars Palace. 

Any way you slice it, Terry Watanabe burned through an incredible amount of money in his relatively short whale career. He later filed a number of lawsuits claiming casinos enabled his gambling while intoxicated, not to mention his obvious degenerate-gambler tendencies and a reported addiction to opioids. So some figures we've seen have emerged from legal claims, rather than actual or audited financial records. 

If you'd like to see what's become of him, you can check out the Krackman's interview here (we suggest enabling the closed captions).  

And if you'd like to hear the whole sad tale, we wouldn't mind telling it -- if someone asks.