John Aglialoro

One result defines John Aglialoro's poker record: the 2004 United States Poker Championship Main Event in Atlantic City, won for $691,096. It is his only seven-figure-adjacent score and accounts for more than two thirds of everything he has cashed for in thirty-five years of tournament play.

The 2004 United States Poker Championship

The USPC was Atlantic City's flagship event, run at the Taj Mahal and televised in the period when American poker coverage was expanding fastest. Aglialoro took the $10,000 Main Event on 5 October 2004 for $691,096. Nine days earlier at the same festival he had also won a $500 Limit Hold'em event for $32,194, so the week produced both of his recorded tournament victories.

Before that: a 1994 World Series run

Ten years earlier Aglialoro finished 7th in the $10,000 No Limit Hold'em World Championship at the 25th World Series of Poker for $43,680 — a deep run in the Main Event at a time when the field was a few hundred players rather than several thousand. He had already placed 2nd in a $1,000 Seven Card Stud event at Amarillo Slim's Super Bowl of Poker in 1990, which is the earliest result on his record.

A businessman who plays, not a professional

Nineteen recorded cashes across thirty-five years is not a touring schedule. Aglialoro's working life was elsewhere: he chaired Cybex International, the commercial exercise-equipment manufacturer, from 1983 until its sale to Brunswick in 2016, co-founded UM Holdings in Haddonfield, New Jersey, and led EHE International for nearly three decades. He is separately known for buying the film rights to Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and financing the three films made from it between 2011 and 2014.

His appearances cluster around Atlantic City — the Borgata's Summer and Spring Opens, the CEO Poker Tour — with occasional trips to Las Vegas and one EPT Baden stud event in 2005. The most recent entry on his record is 221st in the WPT World Championship at Wynn Las Vegas in December 2025, for $19,600, which says he is still playing at 82.

Where he sits on the lists

$969,611 places him 3,815th on the all-time money list, 1,805th among American players and 72nd in New Jersey. His best-ever position on that list was 164th, reached shortly after the 2004 win — a reminder of how much the totals at the top have grown since.