Daniel Negreanu – Poker Player Story
Daniel Negreanu AKA Kid Poker, is one of the most well known and liked poker players in the world.
He is famous for his incredible ability to read players and his may wins and major titles.
His place in the official Poker Hall of Fame is a true testament to his poker-skills and achievements.
But how did a colorful, loudmouthed Canadian become perhaps the greatest poker player of all time?
This is the story of Daniel Negreanu.
We’ve also made this blog post into a video, if you prefer watching instead of reading.
Who is Daniel Negreanu?
Daniel Negreanu is a talkative professional Canadian Texas Hold‘em poker player.
His aggressive style of playing, and flair for reading opponents, has earned him 2 World Poker Tour titles and 6 World Series of Poker bracelets (among numerous other wins). Negreanu has also been named The World Series of Poker – Player of the year, twice.
Daniel is currently placed third in all time poker earnings. His total live earnings are currently at a whopping $ 42.053,305.
Early life of Daniel Negreanu
Daniel Negreanu’s parents immigrated to Toronto, Canada from Romania, seven years prior to Daniels birth on july 26, 1974. They wished for a better future for their children.
By the age of four, Negreanu was hooked on The American Dream. He wanted to be rich. He is described as ‘bad-mannered’ in school and as the years went on and Daniel went to college, he was several credits short of graduating. He was failing.
But at the age of 15, he learned to play poker.
Daniel Negreanu is synonymous with ‘poker’. His funny wit, charismatic persona and unrivaled skill of reading players, has influenced the poker-scene like few other. Negreanu has appeared on numerous live transmitted poker-events and speaks freely about all things within the range of poker. He has even appeared in movies and made series and books about how to play and win poker.
By age 16, he was already ‘a regular’ at the local pool tables, and at one point he actually thought about becoming a professional snooker player. In the end though, his love of poker won, and Negreanu eventually dropped out of high school and began pursuing a career in poker.
He started off as a rounder – An expert player who travels to seek out high-stakes games – appearing at Casino Country and Fundtime. He’s even been rumored to sniff out illegal games.
Daniel began working on his reputation and his bankroll throughout his early twenties and headed to Las Vegas when he was 21. Things didn’t go as planned and he ended up losing more than he could afford.
He moved back to Toronto, and began rebuilding his bankroll.
In 1998, 24 year old Daniel won the $2,000 Pot Limit Hold’em at the World Series of Poker. The win added an astounding prize of $169,460 to his growing bankroll and his first bracelet – which is kind of a big deal within the poker community. He became the youngest to ever win a bracelet. Hence, Kid Poker.
From this point on, there was np turning back for young Negreanue.
Daniel Negreanu biggest win
Negreanu’s biggest win was in 2014, when he placed second in the Big One For One Drop $1 million buy-in event. Kid Poker battled 41 other poker players for the prize pool of $37,333,338.
Daniel Negreanu came in second only beated by Dan Colman. But Negreanu’s pity prize of $8,288,001 still remains his biggest earning. Negreanu later said that all he could think about after that was how much money he could have won, had he beat Colman.
Bracelets and titles
Daniel Negreanu began his impressive collection of bracelets in 1998, when he won the $2,000 Pot Limit Hold’em($169,460). In 2003 he went on to win the $2,000 S.H.O.E ($100,440) and followed that up in 2004 by winning the $2,000 Limit Hold’em ($169,100) again.
Four years later, in 2008, he took another bracelet from a $2,000 Limit Hold’em($204,874). In 2013 he won both a $10,000 No Limit Hold’em Main Event ($1,038,825) and a €25,600 High Roller No Limit Hold’em (€725,000).
Negreanu won both his World Poker Tour Titles in 2004. One for his win in the $10,000 Borgata Poker Open ($1,117,400) and the second in $15,000 Five Diamond World Poker Classic ($1,795,218).
He has several more merits to his name, amongst these, Foxwoods’ World Poker finals in 1997 and British Columbia Poker Championships’ main event, which made him $299,951 richer.
Private life
On the home front, Daniel Negreanu has been married two times. In 2005 he got married to Lori Lin Weber. Lori is a known and accomplished professional poker player. They later separated in 2007 and got divorced later on.
Daniel remarried in 2019 to long-time girlfriend Amanda Leatherman. He had acually bought the rings 10 years prior to that, when they decided to get engaged. But he thought she was not ready to settle down at that point of time. They separated, but eventually got together again, when she returned to Las Vegas.
Newer controversy
Kid Poker was banned from Twitch in July of this year, when he got caught in a bad mannered outburst at a viewer in the chat. The reason? The viewer had made rude remarks about Negreanu’s wife, Amanda Leatherman.
His wife defended the actions of her husband, stating that she was happy that her husband stood up for her. A month later Daniel / @realkidpoker was back on Twitch.
In 2019 Daniel Negreanu came into new controversy for writing a blog about the worst kind of poker players. He later had to apologize, as many thought he had lost touch with the poker-scene, as he does not grind as much anymore.
Daniel Negreanu vs. Doug Polk
For years, Daniel Negreanu has had an ongoing feud with Californian poker player Doug Polk.
Like Negreanu, Doug Polk is a colorful and loudmouthed character of the poker scene – and we’ve actually also written a complete post about his story which you can find here.
The relationship between the two poker legends have been bad blooded for years, and reached it’s unavoidable peak in 2020 when Negreau surprised everyone by actually accepting a challenge from Doug Polk.
Negreanu and Polk agreed to play a total of 25000 hands – with the option to stop after just 12500 hands.
The game is Texas Hold’em HUNL and stakes are $200 and $400. The first 200 hands were played live, face to face. Later hands are played online on two simultanious tables.
This poker feud is really something, with a ton of small jabs going back and forth between the two.
If you’d like to dig deeper we’ve gathered everything in this one post. Truely a clash of poker titants.
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Daniel Negreanu – Poker Player Story
What do you think – is Negreanu the best poker player of his era? Let us know in the comments below 👇
If you liked this post, maybe check out one of our other poker player stories – like the rise and fall of the ‘Great Dane’, Gus Hansen, who went from being one of the best poker players of all time to loosing more that $20,000,000, quitting poker and getting a job as an accoountant.
Or how about the story of Dan Bilzerian, the poker playboy who claims to have won more than $50M playing high stakes poker against international billionaires. But is he really a legit poker player?
