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.