The Setup

The Game Branson Couldn't Lose

Dan Bilzerian once beat Richard Branson at chess. They were on Necker Island, Branson's private slice of the British Virgin Islands, where a five-night stay runs eighty-five thousand dollars and the lawns are patrolled by eight-hundred-pound Galapagos tortoises. Bilzerian won the first game. Branson, a billionaire who has spent his life winning, could not let it stand. He demanded a rematch — but at speed chess, a faster format that happened to favor him. He won the second game, and he looked satisfied.

Bilzerian didn't care about the loss. He had noticed something bigger. Branson had built an entire island that worked exactly like that rigged rematch. Every interesting person on Earth wanted to meet him, so instead of chasing any of them, he made a paradise and let them come to him — and pay for the privilege. The whole place was an instrument tuned to Branson's advantage. As Bilzerian put it, his whole island was a setup.

That word is the spine of the book. The setup is the idea that you don't win by being the most talented person in the room or by grinding harder than everyone else. You win by engineering the room. You arrange your environment, your money, your reputation, and your willingness to walk away so that the odds tilt toward you before the game even starts. Bilzerian spent a decade and a fortune building the most extreme version of that idea anyone has attempted in public, and then spent the back half of the book discovering what it cost him. This is the story of both halves.

The Rules of the Setup

Before the houses and the islands, it's worth laying out the handful of rules Bilzerian runs on, because the lifestyle is really just these principles cranked to their loudest setting.