Posts Tagged ‘Daniel Negreanu’

Daniel Negreanu picks well on Millionaire Matchmaker

Saturday, January 12th, 2013

A few weeks ago, we discussed how Daniel Negreanu was set to appear on the popular Bravo reality show “The Millionaire Matchmaker.” Well that day finally came as KidPoker sought out the advice of show host Patti Stangler in hopes of finding true love.

In the video introduction that he sent to Patti, Negreanu let her know that he’d dated a woman for four years, only to find out that “she’d been getting around” with other men. Because he was still hurt from this relationship, Stangler nicknamed him “Wounded Wally.”

Next up was an interesting trip to an astrologist, where the four-time WSOP champ learned that he wasn’t supposed to find his soulmate until at least 40 years old. The cosmic alignments must have been right in this case because Negreanu is 38 and still looking for that special lady.

After visiting the astrologist, Daniel went to a mixer that was set up by Stangler. The goal here was for Negreanu to meet a number of gorgeous women and find the one with an “Anna Farris” type of personality. He was eventually able to find one girl that met this ideal, and he took her on a date to Las Vegas.

The two seemed to hit it off right away as they checked out the set of a Vegas show and played blackjack. The latter actually led to the couple’s first kiss, and they only become more enamored with each other from here. Negreanu and his new blonde lover ended up spending a sexless night (at Patti’s request)  together at his Vegas house – thus sealing their perfect match. If you’re interested in seeing a few scenes from the episode, you can check out the video below:

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Daniel Negreanu appearing on Millionaire Matchmaker

Saturday, December 22nd, 2012

Daniel Negreanu has accomplished just about everything one could hope for in the poker world. However, the 38-year-old divorcee has yet to conquer love, and he’ll appear on Bravo’s Millionaire Matchmaker to try and find his soulmate.

Negreanu’s episode is appropriately entitled “Trying to Play the Cards Right,” and it will kick off the sixth season of Millionaire Matchmaker. While it’s unclear what all is going to happen in this episode, we do know that show host Patti Stangler sends the poker pro to an astrologist. You can check out a clip of him meeting the astrologist here.

As Negreanu says in the clip, he’s had bad experiences with astrologers in the past. However, he seems to like what the one on Millionaire Matchmaker has to say about his prospects of finding love. Based on the women that KidPoker normally goes after and hangs out with, we can only assume that any future love would involve an Asian woman.

It’ll certainly be interesting to see Negreanu’s latest appearance in front of the camera. The Toronto native has been in the movies Lucky You, The Grand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine as well as the Katy Perry music video “Waking Up in Vegas.”

As for his poker career, KidPoker has won $16,340,578 in live tournaments, which ranks him sixth all-time. Some of his most notable victories include four WSOP gold bracelets, the 2004 WPT Five Diamond Poker Classic, and the 2004 WPT Borgata Poker Open. He is also one of the faces of PokerStars – the world’s largest online poker site – and has faced some excellent internet players such as Viktor “Isildur1″ Blom and limit hold’em specialist “RUaBot.”

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Daniel Negreanu involved in Another Controversy

Sunday, November 25th, 2012

Famed poker pro Daniel Negreanu has never been one to back down from controversy. He was the most vocal pro when it came to bashing those who ran Full Tilt Poker intothe ground, and the Canadian has frequently ripped Annie Duke and her brother Howard Lederer. However, he recently found someone outside of the poker world to get into it with.

Negreanu’s new beef was with a Philadelphia high school basketball coach named Nicholas Cusato. While we’ve yet to uncover what exactly started their fight, we do know that it involved some pretty heavy twitter exchanges. Here’s an excerpt from one of their conversations:

‘Daniel NegreanuVerified ‏@RealKidPoker’

Sarah looks waaaay better as a blond. Yeah that’s right, I went from ‪#Survivor to ‪#TheChallenge and I’m not ashamed to admit it!

‪@RealKidPoker when are you gonna come out of the closet?

‪@NickyCusato interesting question. I guess if I did you’d show me the ropes? Or “the rope” Hahahahaha!

‪@RealKidPoker na I’d probably just knock your teeth down your throat with a left hook

‪@NickyCusato goosefraba bro. You need some anger management classes.

KidPoker doesn’t normally get into twitter fights like these with anybody outside of the poker world. But it’s not surprising that Negreanu decided to send a zinger back when the basketball coach questioned his sexuality. Other casual observers and poker forum users have also made comments about Negreanu being gay too – possibly because he’s pretty ‘metro’ and isn’t married at the age of 38.

But when looking at the fact that the Canadian frequently travels around the world and makes millions of dollars annually through poker, it’s not surprising that he’s still single.

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Justin Bonomo wins Monte Carlo Super High Roller and €1.64m

Thursday, April 26th, 2012

Justin Bonomo captured the biggest victory of his already-illustrious poker career after winning the 2012 Monte Carlo Super High Roller along with €1,640,000 ($2,165,217). It’s also worth mentioning that this huge cash vaulted Bonomo to the top of the 2012 money list. It wasn’t easy for “ZeeJustin” to pull all of this off though since he had to battle through a pro-heavy event.

Some of the pros involved included Jonathan Duhamel, Daniel Negreanu, Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, Phil Ivey and Patrik Antonius. Several of these players managed to make it into the money, but the tournament finale came down to Bonomo and Tobias Reinkemeier.

And despite the fact that Bonomo held a 6-1 chip advantage, Reinkemeier managed to keep things interesting by prolonging the seemingly obvious result. However, ZeeJustin was able to finally finish off the German while holding A-Q(o) against Reinkemeier’s pocket 4′s. Bonomo paired his ace on the board to take the hand along with the win.

With the EPT Monte Carlo Super High Roller title on his resume, Justin Bonomo has now earned $5,067,854 just in live tournaments alone. This doesn’t even include all of the money he’s made in online poker tournaments, online cash games, and live tourneys.

Some of his career highlights include finishing second in a 2008 WSOP $5k NLHE tournament ($230,159), winning a WSOP Circuit Caesars Palace event ($227,692), and finishing second in a 2011 WSOP $2,500 2-7 Triple Draw tournament ($117,305).

Going back to the EPT Monte Carlo Super High Roller, here’s a look at some of the other players who cashed in the event, including the pros we discussed before:

1st – Justin Bonomo, €1.64 million
2nd – Tobias Reinkemeier, €1.06 million
3rd – Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, €621,000
4th – Patrik Antonius, €443,000
5th – Masa Kagawa, €345,500
6th – Daniel Negreanu, €310,000

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WSOP $1 Million Buy-in to break Records

Friday, April 13th, 2012

What began as a vision several months ago has become reality since the WSOP $1 million buy-in tournament is definitely going to happen from July1st-3rd. Dubbed “The Big One for One Drop,” this tourney already has 30 players confirmed with some of the biggest names in poker having made a commitment.

But before we get into the confirmed players, it’s worth mentioning that this tournament is already guaranteed to set two records. First off, the WSOP $1 million buy-in tournament will feature the biggest buy-in ever; the previously largest tourney was the $250k Aussie Millions High Roller.

As for the second record, the 30 confirmed players and interesting prize pool distribution will see the winner walk away with almost $12.3 million of the prize pool. Assuming this happens as planned, it would easily beat the $12 million that Jamie Gold received for winning the 2006 WSOP Main Event.

With such a massive prize involved, it’s no wonder why the top names in poker will be entering this event. Some of those confirmed include Gus Hansen, Patrik Antonius, Erik Seidel, Daniel Negreanu, Johnny Chan, Tom Dwan, Tony G, Dan Shak, Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier and Jonathan Duhamel.

In addition to this stellar lineup of players, there will also be some prominent businessmen joining the tourney. These guys include Guy Laliberté, Bobby Baldwin (former player too), Phil Ruffin, Andy Beal, Sean O’Donnell, Richard Yong, Paul Phua and Arnaud Mimran.

The Big One for One Drop will see 10% of the buy-ins go towards Laliberté’s One Drop foundation, while a little under $27 million is available for the actual tourney. We still have plenty of time before July 1st, so both the number of participants and prize money could grow before the tournament starts. But even if it stays the same, we’re still in for quite a special event come WSOP time!

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Daniel Negreanu talks Full Tilt Poker, Erick Lindgren

Wednesday, March 14th, 2012

Daniel Negreanu came out with yet another interesting interview as he discussed several subjects including Full Tilt Poker (again), Annie Duke, Erick Lindgren being broke, and a rumor that Layne Flack owes him money. First on the itinerary was how Negreanu thinks that it’s wrong how so many scumbags in the poker industry can keep screwing up, yet get high-profile jobs.

He cited Annie Duke as an example by saying that she represented UB Poker, and when they went down in scandal, she got a commissioner job with the Epic Poker League. This is sure to keep up the long-running feud that he’s had with Duke over the years.

Moving along, KidPoker also dropped the bombshell that he highly doubts former Full Tilt Poker players will be paid. Furthermore, he says that players need to forget about their money because Bernard Tapie is not going to complete the much-discussed FTP deal. Instead, he thinks that Tapie is just trying to make excuses for why the deal can’t be completed, such as Full Tilt pros owing the site money.

Another hot topic that was brought up was the subject of Erick Lindgren being broke. Negreanu stayed away from bashing Lindgren too hard, and chose to focus on how players who can’t pay back debts aren’t necessarily bad people – especially if they borrow with the intent to pay back the cash. During this discussion, the interviewer brought up a rumor about Layne Flack owing Daniel Negreanu money, which KidPoker chose to ignore.

One final point worth mentioning here is that Negreanu doesn’t think publicly outing those who owe money is productive. Instead, he believes that this makes it harder for the debtor to get the necessary money needed to pay others back. You can listen to the whole interview here.

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Daniel Negreanu rants on Full Tilt Poker

Thursday, February 23rd, 2012

To those who follow Daniel Negreanu, it’s pretty clear that he hates two things in life: 1) the Lederer family, and 2) Full Tilt Poker. And lately, Negreanu has been ranting on both of these subjects in-depth through some recent video blogs that he has released.

Now the whole point of the video blogs isn’t to bash Full Tilt Poker because Negreanu also discussed his trip to Sao Paolo, Brazil for the recent LAPT event. However, the videos have gained the most attention for what Negreanu has to say about FTP and the former owners.

In the first blog, which was entitled “VBlog with some Real Talk,” much of the blog was centered on how Jason Somerville came out and said that he was gay. The Canadian was a big supporter of Somerville coming out, and said that he was proud of the New Yorker for admitting he was gay.

Moving on to Full Tilt Poker subject, KidPoker backed up earlier comments he had made about how somebody should take a baseball bat to Howard Lederer’s testicles. Negreanu continued his rant on the former FTP owner by saying that he and the other owners were “scumbags” for not speaking at all about the situation. He finished by saying that Lederer hides out like a “shameful little weasel,” and Full Tilt knew they had no money, yet still took player deposits.

The following week’s video blog contained some more rants on Howard Lederer as well as Chris Ferguson. Negreanu also talked about how Doyle Brunson made a mistake in defending these two in a recent blog post. He went as far as to relate Brunson’s post to the time when Barry Greenstein defended Russ Hamilton after the UB mess.

In any case, it’s nice to have a high-profile pro like Daniel Negreanu ranting against guys like Lederer and Ferguson because of how badly their company mismanaged player funds. Now that we’ve covered all of this, you can see the video blogs below.

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Daniel Negreanu back in Online Poker

Friday, August 26th, 2011

Like many people who live in the United States, Daniel Negreanu has not been able to play online poker at PokerStars. After all, the world’s largest online poker site pulled out of the American market following the US Department of Justice’s crackdown. Fortunately though, Negreanu was only kept out of the online games at PokerStars for a few months since he moved from Las Vegas to Canada.

Negreanu talked about the big move in his blog at FullContactPoker, and he began the post with the following:

It took a couple days, but I successfully set up shop in Toronto so that I can play on PokerStars again. I already had the Canadian passport, but just like everyone else, I needed to attain the necessary documents then wait for the call from PokerStars security to verify the phone number, and voila! I’m back in action! I jumped right into some $25-$50 PLO 6 max deep with ante games, and within 5 hands I lost my first buy in HAHA.

The last well-noted instance of Negreanu playing online poker was when he took on Viktor “Isildur1″ Blom in the PokerStars SuperStar Challenge; Kid Poker lost the first matchup after quickly blowing his $150k buy-in, but he came back to win a rematch after finishing with $25k more than Blom.

Getting back to the blog post, Negreanu got a little controversial as he discussed how little freedom the US is giving people by taking away online poker. The Toronto-born player wrote this excerpt about the subject:

During the Cold War, the “Big, Bad, Communist, U.S.S.R.” was seen as an oppressive regime, while the U.S.A. represented freedom. Who woulda thunk, that to enjoy the freedom of playing poker online you’d have to move away from Los Angeles and and head to Moscow. That’s just bizarre.

Poker has changed dramatically over the last 40 years, and in order to survive, you have to adapt to the newer forms of poker, as well as adapt to new locations. These days, that just means, stay away from the U.S. because poker is on life support, but there are tons, and tons, of games across the globe to choose from.

Seeing as how the US is still in the middle of working out possible poker legislation, it seems like Negreanu is making the right move by going to Toronto now.

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WSOP Fantasy Draft

Saturday, May 28th, 2011

The world of fantasy sports is no doubt intoxicating as millions of people worldwide spend hours trying to think of every possible angle to improve their team. This being said, where does fantasy poker fit into this equation?

While I love poker, it’s hard to see how one could get excited about fantasy poker since the game isn’t exactly something that you invite your buddies over to watch while downing a few beers. Instead, it is an activity that gains popularity from one thing – the fact that you can win major money doing it!

Sure it’s fun to check out the latest poker news and crazy happenings that are currently going on, but aside from this, extracurricular things like WSOP fantasy leagues will never have a following outside of the diehard players who have deep ties to the game. This being said, I can see how people like Daniel Negreanu can get into it as he and some other pros actually had a WSOP fantasy draft party at the Aria Casino, while they selected their dream lineups.

Kid Poker recently blogged about the draft on FullContactPoker, and the rules are as follows:

- League buy-in is $25,000
- Everybody gets 200 points to spend on players
- When players are announced, people bid on them with the points
- Every team must have 8 players

Now that we’ve covered the rules, here is a look at who got who in the draft as according to Negreanu:

Team #1 Joe Cassidy/Huck Seed
1: Tom Dwan 62
2: Vladimir Schemelev 33
3: Alexander Kostritsyn 58
4: Jennifer Harman 19
5: Sam Trickett 7
6: David Pham 1
7: Vitaly Lunkin 10
8: David Bach 1

Team #2 Barry Greenstein
1: Barry Greenstein 64
2: Phil Ivey 108
3: Chau Giang 19
4: John Pham 2
5: Ralph Perry 3
6: Ted Forrest 1
7: Joseph Serock 1
8: Jimmy Fricke 1

Team #3 Robert Mizrachi, Greg Meuller, Jared Bleznick, “Crazy” Mike
1. Daniel Alaei 80
2: Robert Mizrachi 51
3: Josh Arieh 26
4: Hoyt Corkins 5
5: Chad Brown 24
6: Marco Traniëllo 1
7: David Baker 5
8: Lee Goldman 1

Team #4 Justin “BoostedJ” Smith, Ashton Griffin
1. Justin “BoostedJ” Smith 64
2: Huck Seed 50
3: Ali Eslami 35
4: David Chiu 32
5: Farzad Bonyadi 3
6: Amnon Filippi 1
7: Eli Elezra 4
8: Mike “SirWatts” Watson 10

Team #5 Eugene Katchalov, Danny Alaei
1: Eugene Katchalov 72
2: Steve Sung 6
3: Matt Hawrlenko 32
4: Nikolai Evdakov 12
5: Pat Pezzin 14
6: Mikael Thuritz 28
7: Ville Wallbeck 15
8: Abe Mosseri 21

Team #6 Casey Katz
1: Erik Seidel 43
2: John Juanda 53
3: Michael Mizrachi 50
4: Carlos Mortensen 19
5: Annette Obrestad 1
6: Jason Somerville 1
7: David Singer 20
8: Eric Baldwin 13

Team #7 Scott Seiver, Justin Bonomo, Eric Froelich
1: Matt Glantz 58
2: Sorrel Mizzi 40
3: Justin Bonomo 43
4: Christian “charder30″ Harder 5
5: Jon “PearlJammed” Turner 13
6: Andrew Brown 9
7: John Monnette 11
8: Greg Mueller 21

Team #8 Jason Mercier, Jason Somerville
1: Michael Binger 45
2: Dan “djk123″ Kelly 36
3: Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier 18
4: David Oppenheim 6
5: Allen Bari 36
6: David “Bakes” Baker 40
7: Ben Lamb 15
8: Bryn Kenney 4

Team #9 James Bord, Toby Lewis
1: Nick Schulman 64
2: Scott Clements 45
3: Shaun Deeb 38
4: Luke Schwartz 1
5: Richard Ashby 28
6: Andy Bloch 6
7: Anthony Lellouche 1
8: James Bord 1

Team #10 Daniel Negreanu
1: Scott Seiver 73
2: Jason Mercier 74
3: Yuval Bronstein 18
4: Yueqi Zhu 5
5: Mike Matusow 12
6: Roland De Wolfe 1
7: Gavin Smith 1
8: Steve “MrSmokey1″ Billirakis 16

Team #11 Frank Kassela, Shaun Deeb
1. Daniel Negreanu 89
2: Frank Kassela 41
3: Dwyte Pilgrim 10
4: Alan Cunningham 25
5: Victor Ramdin 1
6: Rob Hollink 17
7: Thomas Koral 1
8: Dario Minieri 16

Team #12 Erick Lingdren, David Oppenhiem
1: Erick Lindgren 61
2: David Benyamine 58
3: Shawn Buchanan 63
4: Eric Froehlich 6
5: Shannon Shorr 1
6: Kirill Gerasimov 1
7: George “Jorj95″ Lind III 9
8: Brian Hastings 1

Team #13 Todd Brunson
1. Todd Brunson 40
2: Scotty Nguyen 35
3: Phil Hellmuth 38
4: Freddy Deeb 23
5: Allan Kessler 41
6: Chris Feguson 4
7: Minh Ly 1
8: Shun Uchida 1

Team #14 Mori Eskandani
1: Jeffrey Lisandro 50
2: Chris Bjorin 38
3: Men “The Master” Nguyen 27
4: Dan Heimiller 21
5: Tom Marchese 10
6: David Williams 14
7: Vanessa Selbst 5
8: Phil Galfond 35

Team #15 Vladimir Schmelev
1. Sebastien Sabic 40
2: Joe Cassidy 43
3: Brett Richey 37
4: Patrik Antonius 5
5: Jared Bleznick 8
6: “Crazy” Marco Johnson 43
7: Alex Kravchenko 21
8: Sergey “gipsy74″ Rybachenko 1

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Negreanu and Isildur1 Split SuperStar Showdown Matches

Monday, March 28th, 2011

In one of the most anticipated events in online poker history, Daniel Negreanu recently agreed to take Viktor “Isildur1″ Blom on in two PokerStars SuperStar Showdown matches. If you’re unfamiliar with this event, it involves Blom challenging a different player every so often to 2,500 hands of $50/$100 No-Limit Hold’em, and the players multi-table four tables. The one other rule in this challenge is that both players have a $150k bankroll, and the game ends once one player loses their $150k, or the 2,500 hands end.

Going into the first matchup with Negreanu on March 20th, Blom was 4-1 against challengers, and he was a big favorite over Negreanu. After all, Kid Poker made a name for himself in live tournaments, while Isildur1 is considered one of the top online cash players in the game. In any case, Blom won big in the first matchup after he took Negreanu’s entire $150k bankroll in a matter of 1,439 hands.

As Negreanu so hastily pointed out, Blom ran a lot better than him in all-in hands, but for the most part, Blom’s overly-aggressive style and Negreanu’s lack of multi-tabling experience did him in. So did Negreanu come back for a March 27th rematch after being beaten badly the first time around? Of course he did!

However, it’s likely that Negreanu was wishing he hadn’t come back since he was down by $130,000 at one point in the second game. Incredibly though, Negreanu fought his way back after being only $20k away from losing. Kid Poker evened the score at around 2,000 hands, and he battled back and forth with Blom from there on out. In the last 50 hands, Negreanu took control of the match for good and beat Isildur1 by $26,500.

As you might have guessed, Negreanu was ecstatic about his victory over one of the best young cash players in the game today.

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