Posts Tagged ‘Daniel Negreanu’

Daniel Negreanu fully agrees with PokerStars’ Changes

Monday, November 3rd, 2014

PokerStars has started to look like a completely different site over the past few months. They’ve dropped famous pros, increased rake for certain games, introduced Spin & Gos, added currency exchange rates and have reduced upper VIP rewards.

Obviously you don’t make all of these changes without ruffling a few feathers, which is exactly what’s happened in PokerStars’ case. Many regulars are outraged because some of the moves directly affect their bottom line. And they are pointing the finger directly at Amaya Gaming, which recently purchased Stars for $4.9 million.

But the company’s most-prominent sponsored player, Daniel Negreanu, thinks a little differently on the matter. Writing in his blog at FullContactPoker, Negreanu explained that many of PokerStars’ recent moves are meant to bring new players to the game, rather than gouge everybody for money. He also explains that most of these changes were coming before Amaya bought the site:

I wanted to clear up a few misconceptions about some of the recent changes at PokerStars and throw in my two cents. First of all, I think it’s really important to note that most of the recent changes were going to happen well before the new ownership group took over. The online poker landscape has changed over the last few years and many of these changes were inevitable in a competitive market for the company to continue to be the world leader. While I get it, nobody gets excited over rake increases, I think it’s really important to note that PokerStars remains the cheapest place to play online poker. The rake increases are still smaller than what the competition offer, and that’s before you account for the generous VIP programs.

It’s not hard to tell who’s side Negreanu is on after reading this post. So his opinion definitely won’t win him any favor with some of the die-hard regulars at PokerStars. But he and Stars both maintain that the changes are necessary to stay competitive with other poker sites and draw new players.

There’s probably definitely some truth to this, however, most of the players’ complaints about increased rake and currency fees also hold validity – especially when Stars is far and away the market leader.

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Joe Cada’s Split with PokerStars foreshadows Grim Future

Thursday, September 25th, 2014

The death of the sponsored poker pro is something that’s been discussed frequently over the past few years. But Joe Cada’s recent split with PokerStars has hammered the point home that sites are increasingly moving away from sponsored pros.

In Cada’s case, all he wanted was 100% rakeback from PokerStars to continue representing them. And this seems like a reasonable request from a former Main Event champion. Amazingly, Stars saw this as too high a price, as you can see from Cada’s tweets:

If everyone is wondering what happened with Poker Stars and myself it’s pretty simple. I asked for 100percent rake back, they said no.

I asked for zero money. I just wanted the rake back that I used to get.

Cada added that he’s never heard of a company asking somebody they sponsor to pay for their product. Seeing as how Stars wouldn’t keep the 2009 Main Event winner on their roster, it seems highly likely that they’ll continue dumping more pros over the coming years.

This trend already began weeks ago when Humberto Brenes, Jose “Nacho” Barbero and Angel Guillen didn’t get their contracts renewed. A PokerStars spokesman came out and said that these players were from countries where they don’t hold live tournaments. So Stars felt there was little reason to sponsor these players any longer.

But Cada is arguably more marketable than any of these guys because he has worldwide recognition as a Main Event champ. He is, however, from Michigan, yet another spot where PokerStars had no live presence.

The world’s largest poker site will always have some players representing their brand like Daniel Negreanu, Bertrand Grospellier and Liv Boeree. But it’s becoming obvious that they aren’t interested in having dozens of signed pros from every corner of the world.

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See Daniel Negreanu’s Lavish House

Wednesday, August 27th, 2014

Ever wondered what nearly $30 million in poker tournament winnings and a sweet long-term deal with PokerStars will get you? Daniel Negreanu recently gave us a glimpse by offering up a tour of his futuristic Las Vegas home.

As he says in the video below, Negreanu had a couple of friends renovate his place about a year ago to the theme of “Austin Powers meets Pee-Wee Herman.” I’m not sure if they teach this style in interior decorating school, but it looks like Kid Poker’s friends came reasonably close to the goal.

One of the more-interesting pieces in Negreanu’s not-so-humble abode is a tall green booth near his dinner table, which is definitely shagadelic. So is the blue lamp above his table, which is unlike anything I’ve ever seen in my life.

Of course, being one of the world’s best poker players, it’s little surprise that Negreanu also has a nice poker table in his home. He must be really into Game of Thrones too because he’s got a box on the table that plays music from the show when it’s opened.

Another thing that Negreanu shows off is his arcade, with one machine that features 8,000 games and a beer tap on the side. Next to the arcade is his trophy area, where he displays six WSOP gold bracelets and pictures of him with Barack Obama. I’ll spare you the rest of the details from the house and just let you watch the video yourself. At two and a half minutes, this clip won’t take up too much of your time.

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Daniel Negreanu reveals why he chose PokerStars over FTP, UB and Party

Sunday, August 10th, 2014

It seems like Daniel Negreanu has been the face of PokerStars forever. So it’s hard to remember him representing a different online poker site at any point in time. However, going back to 2004, Kid Poker was actually involved in his own poker room called FullContactPoker.

Some players today may recognize this site because it’s where Negreanu writes all of his blog posts from. But back then, it was a full-fledged internet poker room that mainly attracted Americans.

Negreanu helped FullContactPoker quickly experience success by undertaking a massive promotional effort. This included doing up to 50 radio interviews a day across the United States and Canada, plus getting the word out through other channels. His poker site showed such promise that one company even wanted to buy him out for $170 million.

However, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) came about at the end of 2006, thus throwing the US-friendly poker market into disarray. This forced Negreanu to quickly find something else to do with FullContactPoker. So he ended up signing a deal with PokerStars and moving his player base there.

While this and the $170 million deal are interesting enough, the selection process used by Negreanu to pick PokerStars is a story in itself. Here’s a look at what he told iGaming.org about why he ended up choosing Stars:

Signing with PokerStars was as simple as this, there were several sites interested in having my services including UltimateBet, Full Tilt Poker and PartyPoker. For me it came down to integrity and which site I trusted the most, had the best software and the best vision for the future. It wasn’t about the highest bidder for me; it was about who’s the biggest, who’s the best, and who’s going to be the biggest in the future.”

I believed in PokerStars from the start, as the company was built by a group of IBM professionals. They weren’t some random poker-playing dudes who wanted to be businessmen. Full Tilt was off the mark; I wasn’t going to sign with them, because I didn’t trust the infrastructure even back then. If I was going to attach my name to something, game security, integrity, and longevity were most important.

Given that Party Poker’s player base has dropped considerably, Full Tilt had to close before being bought by Stars, and UB Poker went completely under never to resurface again, PokerStars definitely proved to be the right choice. Furthermore, it appears as if Negreanu is about as good at reading business deals as he is with poker opponents.

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Big One Champ Dan Colman: Idealistic or Idiot?

Saturday, July 5th, 2014

If Joe Hachem thought that young poker pros weren’t doing enough to promote the game, then he must really be fuming at Dan Colman. The 24-year-old poker player recently won the 2014 WSOP Big One for One Drop along with $15,306,668.

After his victory, Colman refused to do the usual winner’s interviews and needed some convincing before he was willing to take some pictures. Even then, he wasn’t going to smile for the photos, almost like a 5-year-old kid whose mom insists that they take a family photo. Everything up to this point had the poker world asking, “What’s wrong with this guy?”

Well, according to a TwoPlusTwo post, Colman essentially believes that poker, and gambling in general, can lead to misery for recreational players. Furthermore, he doesn’t believe in expressing individual accomplishments such as winning the biggest poker prize of 2014.

There are some valid points mixed in this letter, but perhaps they’d be best expressed by an anti-gambling activist – not some fresh-faced poker pro who just collected $15.3 million from a tournament and has made a very good living from the game. The whole thing reeks of the ole’ I’m-in-college-attaining-higher-learning-so-I-know-everything attitude.

One of the opening statements of Colman’s post is “I have played it (poker) long enough to see the ugly side of this world.” Ignoring the fact that Colman is just 24, let’s switch to a much more-experienced player in Daniel Negreanu. The 39-year-old finished second to Colman in the Big One for One Drop and issued a response at his Full Contact Poker blog.

Negreanu doesn’t have a scathing opinion of Colman as I or some other writers do. In fact, he finds “nobility” in the young player’s ideals and agrees with the sentiment that most people will be losers in poker. However, Negreanu also explains that there are millions who strive to be a professional golfer, NBA basketball player, hockey professional or an NFL football player – only to fail in their pursuit. The entire post is really good, but I’ll leave you with one great excerpt:

Poker, and more specifically poker tournaments are a competition no different than any other competition. The cream rise to the top, make the most money, and the vast majority whether its pool, tennis, basketball, golf, the restaurant business, etc. fail. Capitalism as a system allows people to strive for big success in whatever career they choose.

Daniel opened his statement with “I don’t owe poker anything.” No, I guess not, but I would look at it differently Daniel: GRATITUDE! Being thankful that you found a game you both love to play and are also good enough so that you can make a life for yourself. You don’t owe poker anything, sure, but poker has given you a lot. The camera crew filming the event, the dealers, floor staff, Caesars, the WSOP, ESPN, PokerStars.com for giving you an opportunity to support yourself, the players that came before you and did spend time promoting a game you would have likely never heard about. You don’t owe poker, or me personally anything, much like when a waitress brings your order, you don’t owe her a tip or even a thank you. It’s just a gracious custom, much like doing a winners interview…

I applaud Daniel for wanting to live his life with a higher consciousness and looking more deeply at the bigger picture. I support that, and his right to decline interviews 100%. I also think people are being too harsh on him. He is young, and I’m not saying that in a condescending manner, just at the age of 24 life is just beginning, your views on the world, the questions you have, are just starting to form. I’m not the same person I was when I was 24, and I certainly don’t hold the same views I did when I was 24.

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Can Anybody catch George Danzer in 2014 WSOP POY Race?

Saturday, June 21st, 2014

George Danzer wasn’t exactly a nobody before the 2014 World Series of Poker began. In fact, the German had made six WSOP final tables entering the summer. But he also wasn’t on the same fame level as a Daniel Negreanu or even Jeff Lisandro. Perhaps all of that will change, though, since Danzer has picked up two gold bracelets at the 2014 WSOP.

His first came via the Event #18 $10k Razz Championship ($294,792), and his second, more-recent bracelet comes courtesy of the $10k Seven Card Stud Hi/Lo Championship ($353,696). Oh, and we might as well add that the German has also final tabled a $10k 2-7 Limit Triple Draw event ($70,308) and a $10k Six-Handed NLHE tournament ($49,061).

With five cashes overall – and four of them being very high quality – Danzer has jumped to the forefront of the 2014 WSOP Player of the Year race. Here’s a look at the top five point-earners with just over 20 events left:

1. George Danzer – 726.20 points
2. Brandon Shack-Harris – 474.00
3. Justin Bonomo – 413.63
4. Brock Parker – 406.25
5. Richard Ashby – 400.05

As you can see, there’s some clear separation between Danzer and those chasing him. So our question is, can anybody catch the German poker pro at this point? Looking back at the 2012 and ’13 POY races, the simple answer is yes.

Last year, Negreanu was the POY after earning 890.22 points, which is plenty more than Danzer has right now. In the 2012 POY race, Greg Merson racked up 981.13 points on the strength of his Main Event title and another bracelet win. So Danzer is probably going to have to rack up 2-3 more cashes or one more big finish if he wants to secure the POY.

But another thing to account for here is that only the WSOP APAC will run after the Las Vegas series – not the APAC and WSOP Europe. Furthermore, I wouldn’t count on another player like Merson winning the ME and another bracelet in the same year. It’s a pretty rare occurrence and we’re not dealing with 1992 field sizes any more.

In summary, you can expect Danzer to get a little more competition in his quest to win the POY if he goes on a cold streak.

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Debate over Mike Matusow’s Excessive Celebration intensifies

Tuesday, June 17th, 2014

A few days ago, Mike “The Mouth” Matusow was hit with an excessive celebration penalty in a 2014 WSOP $2.5k Omaha-8/Stud-8 event. Since then, many poker pros like Daniel Negreanu have jumped to his defense, saying that big personalities are good for the game and the penalty was uncalled for.

As for The Mouth himself, he innocently describes the situation as him winning a $200k pot, followed by him walking around the room and yelling “Yes!” Okay, so are we to believe this boy scout recollection from one of the brashest poker players in history?

Not according to WSOP bracelet winner Allyn Shulman, who wholeheartedly agreed with the penalty. Shulman was actually at Matusow’s table when the scene went down and wrote about his constant stream of profanities in her CardPlayer blog. The entire post is a good read, but here’s one especially telling excerpt:

After Mike won the pot, he started screaming he was the greatest F***ING player in the world, no one F***ING deserved this like he did, etc. He pounded on the table making the chips shake and then started running around the room whooping, hollering, yelling, jumping and swearing.

A number of players at the table who were obviously fed up with Mike’s shenanigans eventually called the floorman and asked about Mike’s excessive celebration.

IT WAS THE PLAYERS WHO COMPLAINED. Now why would the good folks at the table do that? Clearly Mike had been out of line since the redraw. So after he won the pot and continued his loud, foul-mouthed unruly behavior, some players finally had enough and complained.

When floor man Dave Lamb came over to assess the penalty, after already issuing a warning mind you, Matusow got up in his face and started cussing him out. The Mouth seemed to think that because rules changed to be more lenient about profanity at the table, he could say the F-word as much as he wanted, provided it wasn’t directed at anybody in particular.

However, Shulman points out that Rule 45 of the 2014 WSOP handbook states that the Rio prohibits players from using foul language in public areas of the casino. Moreover, players can be assessed penalties for violating this rule.

It’s highly, highly unlikely that Shulman is making all of this up and just taking a shot at Matusow. The more likely scenario is that a bunch of pros are jumping to Mike’s defense that really didn’t take in the whole scene, nor did they know that Lamb had already given Matusow a warning.

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Daniel Negreanu: “Even when I went broke, I woke up the next day ready to kick ass”

Thursday, May 29th, 2014

With a lucrative PokerStars sponsorship deal and over $21 million in poker tournament winnings, Daniel Negreanu is one of the richest players in the world. So it’s weird to think of him as once being broke. But like pretty much every poker pro, Negreanu did go through a period in Toronto where he struggled to make it. However, as he told iGaming, he never let his bankroll problems keep him from sticking with poker.

“Even when I went broke, I woke up the next day ready to kick ass,” Negreanu said. “There was no quit in me and I was determined to learn how to play better after getting beat. When I was getting beat I paid attention to why I was getting beat and I was trying to learn from every situation. Of course there was bad luck, but even at that age I didn’t believe that my losses were just due to being unlucky. It was more the sense of, ‘What am I doing wrong?'”

Obviously Negreanu worked through his early issues to become one of the game’s best. And this allowed him to realize his dream of playing against other top players in the WSOP. To hear Negreanu describe it, the WSOP, and Las Vegas poker in general, was much more exclusive:

Playing a WSOP event was big back in the day, it was for real men! It’s not like nowadays with all those pansy 1ks. The minimum buy in was $2,000 and most of them were $3,000 or $5,000. If you wanted to play small you’d play satellites, while nowadays there’s even $20 events going on everywhere, so I think it has lost a lot of its luster in terms of having that financial barrier. If you think to the nineties, the smallest buy in was bigger than it is now, which is kind of backwards if you ask me.

If someone sat down at your table and you didn’t know them there was no chance they were any good. It was just impossible, because if they were good, they would’ve been in Vegas playing before that. The biggest change with today is, if you sit down at a table there’s some 20-year old kid I don’t recognize and people tell me that he’s won $4,000,000 online that year. That’s the huge difference, now the unknowns are much stronger while back then those were probably just businessmen who came to enjoy themselves

If you’d like to see more on what Negreanu had to say about the old days of poker, we highly encourage you to check out Part I and the more-entertaing Part II of his iGaming interview.

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Jonathan Duhamel responds to Hachem’s Comments on WSOP Ambassadorship

Saturday, March 15th, 2014

One subject that’s frequently come up this year is the level of responsibility that WSOP Main Event champions bear in regard to making poker fun/inviting. Joe Hachem is the one who kicked this discussion off when he said that Main Event champs need to be ambassadors for the game. He specifically called out Jamie Gold and Jerry Yang for “destroying the legacy of the world champion.”

He didn’t elaborate, but we can only assume that Hachem thinks both players have done a poor job of promoting poker after winning the Main Event. The Aussie may also think that Gold’s ME bracelet being auctioned off and Yang’s tax troubles have further tarnished what it means to be a champ.

In any case, 2010 WSOP Main Event winner Jonathan Duhamel recently gave his take on ME champs and young players in general. Writing from his PokerStars blog, Duhamel doesn’t totally agree with Hachem, but he does point out that everybody bears some kind of responsibility in making poker fun and keeping recreational players around. He wrote the following two excerpts in his post:

Joe mentioned Jamie Gold and Jerry Yang in his comments (who won in 2006 and 2007) and how those two kind of disappeared from the poker scene after winning their titles, but to me that’s not necessarily good or bad. Sometimes a career in poker is not for everyone, especially for guys who have other jobs or families as can be the case for players who are a little older. Not everyone who wins the WSOP Main Event wants to tour all of the time or continue playing tournaments, and that is absolutely their choice.

(cont’d later) So Joe’s making a call to everyone — Main Event champions, young players, and those with more experience, too — to keep in mind when playing live to be friendly and do what we can to make sure everyone is having fun. Obviously the recreational players aren’t going to come back if they don’t have fun, and that hurts not just them but everyone.

Duhamel also cited posts that he liked from Daniel Negreanu and Phil Galfond, two more guys who present broader visions for what can keep poker entertaining.

The overall takeaway from Duhamel’s post is that all successful pros need to work at keeping both profits and fun in mind. After all, if the recreational players don’t keep coming back, the dead money drives up in poker and you’ll have less available profits, smaller game selection and a poker world that looks more like 2001.

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Should Poker really be covered like Winter Olympics?

Wednesday, February 12th, 2014

It’s been about a week since Joe Hachem gave his interview on how WSOP Main Event champions need to step up their ambassadorship efforts. And the discussion hasn’t stopped, with Daniel Negreanu recently bringing up an interesting perspective on poker television coverage.

Negreanu thinks that ESPN and 411 Productions could learn a thing or two from how NBC presents the Winter Olympics. As KidPoker pointed out through twitter, casual viewers aren’t exactly on a first-name basis with winter sports athletes. So NBC does a good job of focusing on athletes’ backstories. Here’s a sample of what Negreanu tweeted:

Winter Olympics provide a great example. Public doesn’t know the people or the sports but with great story telling fans & stars are created.

Much of the poker boom should be credited to ESPN and 411 Productions who spent time developing stars of poker. We have gotten away from it.

There is something interesting about EVERYONE! It’s up to the production team to find out what that is, then sell it to the public.

I have ALWAYS believed the focus should never be on the game, but on the characters who play it. We waste time appeasing the wrong demo.

Global poker numbers don’t seem to suggest that the game’s popularity is immediately dying off. However, Negreanu and other pros don’t feel like this popularity is sustainable if personality and interesting backstories aren’t brought back into the fray.

But it’s worth mentioning that, over the past five years or so, tournament TV coverage has been catering to more of a hardcore audience. So to revert back to how WSOP coverage was presented in the mid-2000’s and earlier would be a huge change. And not everybody is a fan of this either. Isaac Haxton is one of them, as you can see from the following tweets:

@RealKidPoker Comparing poker to the Olympics is perfect… if you want poker to be like snowshoeing, which people only watch every 4 years

@RealKidPoker But for something that is on tv consistently every week like other popular sports, in-depth analysis is completely appropriate

@RealKidPoker Poker lends itself to serious analysis on TV even more so because so many fans of the game play poker competitively themselves

@RealKidPoker Furthermore it’s insulting to the viewers to assume that they can’t or don’t want to understand the real mechanics of the game

@RealKidPoker More serious doesn’t have to mean less fun. TV commentary can be sophisticated while still being lighthearted and entertaining

Haxton brings up a good point too. However, the question here is what’s more important to a long-term sustainable poker population? Serious pros who understand check-raise analysis, or casual observers who keep filtering into the game and mostly serving as fish?

But as Haxton stated, maybe there’s a good way to blend sophisticated strategy talk along with jokes and lighthearted content. If so, ESPN really needs to add more of the latter if they want poker to continue growing.

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