27 Dec 2024 Love him or hate him, Daniel Negreanu helped change the game of real money poker. He was among the first generation of young superstars to take the game away from the older players. He has been more open with his followers about his private life than many celebrities, and he's honest about his mistakes. Here are 10 amazing Daniel Negreanu poker stories that you probably didn't know. #1: Daniel Negreanu Re-Buys 47 Times He may not have found it funny at the time, but the poker community was buzzing after Daniel Negreanu bought into the same event 48 times. Never one to shy away from saying what he thinks, Negreanu has produced a number of popular vlogs about his time at the WSOP. However, in 2009, it seems he was more intent on letting his money do the talking. Planning to win a bracelet that year, he re-entered a $1,000 tournament 47 times. That, on top of his original buy-in, meant he spent $48,000 to win the gold. To break even, he needed to finish in the top 10: not only did he fail that mission, he failed to make the money at all. To top things off, his old rival, Phil Hellmuth, went on to win that event. #2: Daniels’ Online Room - Full Contact Poker During the poker boom, Daniel Negreanu developed and worked on his own site, Full Contact Poker. In the beginning, there were a lot of websites popping out of nowhere. Negreanu saw this as a great opportunity to invest some money and create his own poker site. Once Daniel said he was a one-man marketing machine for Full Contact Poker. It reached a point where he would do up to 50 radio interviews in one day all across the United States and Canada. In six months' time, the site became successful enough to a point where a company offered him $170 million for the online poker room. However, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, or UIGEA, was signed into effect in October of 2006. The company quickly backed off, given that the UIGEA imposes severe banking restrictions on US-friendly poker sites. If the deal had gone through just a few months ago, Daniel Negreanu would have been $170 million richer. Negreanu's Full Contact Poker ceased being a real-money poker site in 2007 and is now used as the Canadian's personal blog and sounding board. #3: PokerStars Deal Fans know Daniel Negreanu and PokerStars go way back, but he could have been there from the beginning and chose not to be. Writing on his own blog, Steve Badger states that he was approached at a commerce casino tournament by Daniel Negreanu. Negreanu asked Steve if a Canadian acquaintance of his could contact Badger with a business proposition. The acquaintance was Isai Scheinberg, and the business became PokerStars.com. Thanks to Daniel turning Isai down, Steve Badger got the chance to help create what ended up being the largest poker site in the world. After the UIGEA, Negreanu signed a sponsorship deal with PokerStars in June of 2007. Part of the deal also included Full Contact Poker's players base integrated into PokerStars. But Kid Poker was still the main attraction of the deal. He became their greatest ambassador, showing up to all European poker tour events. Many pros came and went, but Daniel Negreanu was constant for 12 years up until 2019 when he finally decided to part ways with PokerStars. The main reason for the split-up was probably because he had gotten married that year and his life was headed to a new direction and he wanted to focus more on his family. Another likely reason for Negreanu splitting with Stars is that maybe he was tired of defending them. PokerStars had made some unpopular moves in recent years, including raising the rake and eliminating the Supernova Elite VIP level. #4: The Millionaire Matchmaker Show Daniel Negreanu is easily one of the most successful poker players of all time. However, in the past, he has been largely unsuccessful in the love department, which prompted him to go on Bravo's The Millionaire Matchmaker. This show, which had run for eight seasons, featured matchmaker Patti Stangler trying to hook up millionaires with potential soulmates. The beginning of the program involved Daniel Negreanu being sent to an astrologer who explained that Negreanu's previous heartbreaks were necessary in order for him to learn to trust people. After meeting with the astrologer, the 37-year-old headed to a mixer where he chatted with plenty of beautiful girls. Negreanu then selected one of these women to go on a date with. Dinner at a vegan restaurant, Russian dancing, and blackjack with a kiss topped off a memorable night out for the pair with Negreanu asking Lindsay to date him exclusively. They may have hit it off in Vegas, but the romance was short-lived. Regardless, it seemed as if Negreanu met a pretty quality girl and he enjoyed his time on the show. #5: Dating Life Negreanu has a long list of women in his dating history, and not only dating, but he was also in a marital relationship for a short time. He was briefly married to Michigan girl Lori Lynn Weber. He and Lori ended their marriage within two years of their wedding. After the marriage failed, the player was in a relationship with a fellow professional poker player, Evelyn Nguyen. Negreanu also dated the Hungarian beauty queen, Krisztina Polger, but the relationship didn't progress further. Instead, it came to light that he was dating Marissa Rodney, a stylist at Royalty's Hair and Makeup in Las Vegas in 2014. However, four years later, the relationship ended and Negreanu announced the breakup through his blog site in late June 2018. As for the route of their separation, he cited they were not compatible in their relationship. Before being in a relationship with Marissa Rodney, Negreanu shortly dated the poker hostess, Amanda Leatherman. Their relationship didn't work at the time, and they parted ways. But the breakup happened only to strengthen their bond. Negreanu reconnected with Amanda in 2018 and started dating. Thankfully, this time, the Toronto native didn't waste time and got on to one knee to proposed Leatherman in January of 2019. Four months after their engagement, the duo tied the knot on May 17, 2019 at Ranchos Palos Verdes, California. #6: Hearthstone Game Daniel is not the first one nor the last poker player to download the Hearthstone app. Negreanu said once he was about to go to a party when he began playing the app. Nearly six hours later, he realized he had missed the party. Hearthstone is a deceptively simple game. Players use cards to fight matches between heroes and minions. Who goes first and which character is played weighs heavily on the outcome of the game. The strategic component of the game obviously appeals to people like Negreanu. #7: WSOP Bracelet Bet It's not a secret to fans of Negreanu that he had been going through a bracelet drought. His last poker bracelet that he had won was in 2013. So in 2020, Daniel Negreanu was so confident in his poker game that he put his money where his mouth was and put up $1 million against eager gamblers that he will win a 2020 WSOP bracelet. Negreanu was giving odds of 2.5 to 1. It took minimal time for Negreanu to find some takers. The six-time bracelet winner sold off the entire amount to multiple players including Connor Drinan and Ali Imsirovich. He allowed each bettor to wager up to $100,000. Sadly, however, he failed to win any bracelet that year and lost the bracelet bet and $2.5 million. #8: High Stakes Poker Records When all the top-notch players like Tom Dwan, Doyle Brunson, and Phil Hellmuth take a seat, Daniel Negreanu should not be missing and so he was literally the only one who accompanied the TV show High Stakes Poker throughout all of its first six seasons. Unfortunately, Negreanu had a curse attached to him throughout all of the episodes. He lost an insane sum of money via complete blow-ups, misreads, horrifyingly awful suck-outs, etc. He ended up being the biggest loser in the history of high-stakes poker with a total loss of over $2 million in 881 hands. No one else lost more than $500,000. #9: Negreanu’s Golf Bets Daniel Negreanu shared some of his golf stories with the No Laying Up podcast. Not even picking up the game until his early 30s, Negreanu was making insane prop bets as soon as he could swing a club. One drunken night in Las Vegas, he blurted out that within a year, he could shoot 80 at TPC Summerlin from the back tees. This was a 7,000-yard course and Negreanu couldn't even play to a handicap yet at that time. So just to make it interesting, a wager of $550,000 was agreed on and Negreanu hit the practice range with much gusto. Eventually, the score started to come down and with perfect timing, the bet was successfully completed. On the last shot, he needed to sink a 6-foot putt. His knees gave out on the shot, but he sank the ball. There was also talk of losing big money to Phil Ivey, including $1.2 million in a single day. Negreanu's debts racked up to a total loss of $3 million eventually, but with the help of a skilled caddie and coach, Christian Sanchez, Negreanu won it all back (and even plus some more). #10: Attitude to Money Daniel Negreanu claims not to have much interest in money except as a means of keeping score. After he won $1.8 million at the Bellagio, he bought six videos and put the rest of the money in poker chips in a lockbox at the casino as if it were a bus station locker. The $1.1 million Negreanu won in Atlantic City was converted into $300,000 cash and $800,000 check. Back home in Las Vegas, Negreanu discovered he had left the check in his hotel room and that the maid had thrown it out and so Negreanu had to fly back the next day for another check. This article was written by Dennis «Dennis_Stets» based on a video from the Poker Bounty channel.
