Poker is one of the most revered games in the world and there are various versions to it including online poker games such as baccarat. A lot of establishments have been cropping up to provide poker players with a venue for their games. Just like in every game, there are those who partake of poker as a way to pass time and once in awhile earn money but for others, this is a full-time job. Professional poker players participate in organized tournaments to allow them put their skills to test. Over time, there have been some legendary poker players who have managed to make a whole career for themselves out of poker. Such players include Phil Ivey and Daniel Negreanu who both have Master Classes to teach other eager and young hopefuls of their ways in the poker world.

Who is Daniel Negreanu?

Daniel Negreanu is a Romanian- Canadian professional poker player who was born on July 26th, 1974 in Toronto Canada to Annie and Constantine who were emigrants from Romania. The Negreanus had initially wanted to settle in the US but found themselves in Toronto.

Even at an early age, Daniel was very ambitious and even told his mother that he’d grow up to be rich. He attended the Pineway Public School in North York. While there, the principal had threatened to expel him because of his ill manners and ignoring school rules. Daniel learned how to play poker when he was 15 years old and by the time he was 16, he spent a considerable amount of time in pool halls playing cards. He dropped out of school, just some credits short of graduation, to pursue a life of poker playing at local charity casinos even earning the name Kid Poker due to his impressive poker skills.

After earning money from the illegal games he often partook in, he packed up and moved to Las Vegas at 22 to become a professional poker player. Some years later, he lost his money due to the various pleasures of the city of Vegas and had to move back home. Negreanu has won 6 WSOP bracelets and 2 World Poker Tour Championship titles. In 2014, Negreanu was recognized by Global Poker Index (GPI) which is an independent poker ranking service as the best poker player of the decade.

So how did Negreanu accumulate such wealth?

According to Casino, Daniel Negreanu is the 5th richest poker player in the world with a total of $50 million to his name. Most of his wealth has been earned through various poker tournaments including the World Series of Poker.

After he won in a WSOP tournament, the young poker player gained the courage to compete in other major tournaments. After he won at the US Poker Championship, he participated in another tournament that took place in Atlantic City where he won 2 prizes that amounted to a total of $379,000. Daniel’s first real win was in his first WSOP tournament which was accompanied by his first bracelet. He won a total of $169,000 in the Pot-Limit Hold’em Event in 1998 WSOP. This win saw him become the youngest bracelet winner in WSOP history. His most notable WSOP bracelet win has to be the 2013A No-Limit Hold’em main event where he won a total of $1, 038,825. In total, Negreanu has managed to get 6 WSOP bracelets and a WSOP circuit ring in 2006. Negreanu won the 4th annual British Columbia Poker Championships (BCPC) main event in November 2008 where he topped a field of over 650 players walking away with $229, 951 USD. In 2016, Negreanu won the cash prize of $1million in the 2016 Shark Cage tournament which was organized by PokerStars. Net. Negreanu’s total tournament winnings as of January 2020 exceed a whopping $42 million. $17 million of those winnings are from his 103 cash earnings from the WSOP tournaments.

• More than 22,000 responded to Negreanu's poll, with 65 percent guessing Negreanu's buy-ins were less than his total cashes for the year — in other words, that he enjoyed at least some profit.
• Daniel Negreanu Poker Results. Date ↓ Event Buy-in Place Winnings POY Pts. Dec 30, '20: $10,000 WSOP.com No-Limit Hold'em Main Event 2020 World Series of Poker: $10,000: 92.
• Daniel Negreanu has always loved a challenge. He knew that all the way back when he was a 16-year old in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was at that early stage when he started gambling, hustling fellow pool players, and playing poker. Negreanu has won more than $42 million in his career, but he didn’t get to where he is without failing first.

Doug Polk and Daniel Negreanu just completed another session of their grudge match on Jan 27, playing 560 hands. After booking two straight wins, which effectively reduced his massive deficit from $1 million to just over $500,000, Negreanu lost his most recent match against Polk,.

Other sources

From his poker skills, Negreanu has managed to branch out into a mentoring program where he runs a protégé program. His first protégé was Brian Fiddler. He began the program in 2006 using Full Contact Poker to launch a competition that would select a protégé. A year later, Negreanu ran his second protégé competition where Anthony Mak won. He also became the pro spokesperson for Poker Mountain which is an online poker site in 2005. He used the name Kid Poker to play at this online card room but decided to terminate partnership with the site due to emerging software issues which he felt would eventually lead to the site getting shutdown. Negreanu has also played poker on various poker TV shows such as Poker After Dark, Late Night Poker and High Stakes Poker. He also served as a stand-in-host and the commentator in the show the Ultimate Poker Challenge.

Negreanu also appeared in the reality show Rob and Amber: Against the Odds which aired on Fox where he mentored Rob Mariano in his quest to become a pro poker player in 2007. A year later, he released a book titled Power Hold’em Strategy which bore a close resemblance to Doyle Brunson’s Super/System due to its contributions from other renowned poker players such as Evelyn Ng’, Todd Brunson and Erick Lindgren. He is also featured in the poker video game that was released in 2006 called Stacked with Daniel Negreanu where he provides tips and hints on how to become an effective player. Negreanu is also an online tutor having tutored online as part of the Poker School Online.

According to Best Casino Sites, he has also created a Master Class where he teaches poker theories and plays through video. He has made notable appearances in movies such as the X Men Origins: Wolverine, the Grand and in Katy Perry’s music video Waking Up in Vegas all of which he played a poker player. He also appeared in the movie Lucky You and made a cameo on the CBC program Mr. D where he appeared as himself. Additionally, in September 2005, he posed for a PETA vegan campaign.

Day 33 was, to put it mildly, quite an eventful session between long-time rivals and foes, Daniel Negreanu and Doug Polk. The dormant rivalry heated up once again for the first time in months.

Heading into the High Stakes Feud, the fierce rivals were far from cordial with each other. Polk has taunted and tormented Negreanu for years. He even went so far as to purchase a billboard in 2018 outside the Rio in Las Vegas during the World Series of Poker to mock the then PokerStars ambassador.

The bitter feud continued right up until the heads-up challenge began in October. And then all of a sudden, the poker pros became cordial with each other, almost as if they had suddenly become best friends.

But it appears the honeymoon is over. After Day 30, in which Polk booked a $298,000 win, Negreanu complained about how unlucky he’s been getting. Polk took offense to those comments and claimed he’s the one who has been unlucky overall, and posted a video on Twitter of him doing a celebratory dance.

Negreanu then answered by winning $390,000 the following session, and then picked up a small win on Day 32. In the latter session, Polk began limping buttons to lower variance as he’s trying to ensure he holds on to win the challenge so that he also wins his massive side bets.

On Day 33 (Wednesday), however, the rivalry intensified when Negreanu began repeatedly tanking in response to the button limping. After the match, he said his reasoning was he needed to take extra time to think about his decisions now that Polk is using a different strategy.

Polk took issue with the tanking. He stopped the match after 30 minutes to communicate with Phil Galfond, who was designated as an intermediary for the challenge.

Galfond, who recently won his own heads-up poker battle against Chance Kornuth, was put in the position to determine if Negreanu could continue tanking or if he would be required to speed up the pace of play or face a penalty. Polk immediately took to Twitter to publicly trash his rival for the first time in quite some time.

“Completely pathetic showing from @RealKidPoker today Tanking 20 seconds to open, tanking 20 seconds to check flop, tanking every single decision in an effort to slow the game down to nothing. Total piece of s**t move,” the Upswing Poker founder wrote.

Back to the felt

Fifteen minutes after the players sought mediation, Galfond inevitably ruled no penalty would be enforced and that tanking is within the rules. But he also advised Negreanu to discontinue tanking in the spirit of competition.

Poker Player Daniel Negreanu

Negreanu obliged as the players returned to the felt. The tanking came to a stop, and so did Negreanu’s winning. Polk, who trailed early in the match by over $50,000, completely destroyed his opponent from that point on.

Negreanu may have lit a fire under his rival’s backside. The button limping from Polk also stopped, as he picked up the aggressiveness and dominated like he has throughout most of this challenge.

After the dust settled, and three hours of play complete, Polk ran up another $136,239 profit in 560 hands. The poker stars have now played 19,922 hands with Polk’s lead back up to $701,948 and 5,078 hands remaining.

Daniel Negreanu Poker Blog

The bitter, intense rivalry between two long-time foes is most definitely back. Will it remain that way, or will the players put it behind them and go back to being cordial? You’ll find out that answer on Day 34, which takes place Friday at 2:30 pm PT.

Negreanu Poker

Featured image: Twitter