Inside the life of £40m poker legend from high stakes games to diet and family
Daniel Negreanu is one of the most recognisable names in the poker world, but the Canadian has needed to keep evolving to remain relevant after more than 25 years in the game.
"I would say around 2004 I was at the top of my game in terms of the edge I had against the field," the 49-year-old exclusively tells Mirror Sport. "Now, I'm better today than I was then, by a lot, but the difference is everybody else is also much better too so my edge is much smaller than it was way back then."
Anyone who watched poker in its 'boom' era at the start of the 21st century will recognise Negreanu for his table talk. The man known as 'Kid Poker' during his days as a young upstart is now one of the elder statesmen of the game, but these days he's far more deliberate in how often he plays and how much time he spends away from the tables, recognising the potential downside of fatigue as he gets older.
With more than US$51million (£40m) in live tournament earnings, Negreanu sits in the top 10 of poker's all-time money list. He has at least one live cash in every year from 1997 to 2024 (with the exception of the pandemic-interrupted 2020 schedule), but gone are the days of playing round the clock in the highest stakes tournaments.
"The truth is, in my 20s and 30s i travelled a lot," Negreanu explains. "But as I got older, married, happy here, I don't travel nearly as much.
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After 20 years living in Las Vegas, he and his wife have moved out to Lake Las Vegas to enjoy what he describes as more of a "homebody lifestyle" while still allowing him to return to the strip every year for the World Series of Poker. He still plans to spend most of the summer playing World Series events, but has the option of taking time out to rest and recharge if needed.
"That's one of the luxuries of being a professional poker player," he adds. "I don't have a boss who tells me when i need to be there and when i don't, so I can always choose my own schedule which means a lot of time at home, which is nice because then I get to spend a lot of time with my wife."
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Daniel Negreanu has been playing high-level poker for more than 25 years (GGProductions)Early in his poker career, Negreanu was a big proponent of veganism and was one of the first pros to be vocal about the importance of diet as a whole. Before poker became the lucrative game it is today, players' preparations didn't quite keep pace with the rise in prize money, and those who looked after themselves were able to see the benefits.
Now, the days of players smoking and drinking heavily are largely a thing of the past. Plenty will still have their fun away from the tables, but those at the top of the game are far less likely to show up in anything other than peak physical and mental shape.
"I would say what's been the biggest most drastic change in the professional poker player is when I started people were smoking, drinking, overweight, eating whatever," Negreanu says. "Today, especially at the highest levels, when you go to a poker tournament and go to the gym in the morning, it's full of them.
"They're in good shape, they're all streamlined in terms of what they're eating... They're trying to fuel their body in such a way to give them the biggest advantage at the table as well. It's obvious.
"We know there's something there so they're going to do everything they can to be at their best, and that's what we see today. To a small degree I probably played a role in [that] a little bit, in terms of discussing the importance of it, and it's great to see so many players today are taking it seriously."
Negreanu's latest TV poker venture is on GGPoker's Game of Gold (GGProductions)Negreanu was a regular in televised poker during the early stages of his career. He was a fixture on High Stakes Poker, one of the shows which fans of a certain vintage will credit with getting them excited about the game, and also featured on the NBC Heads-Up Championship - an invite-only tournament which saw top pros lock horns with poker-playing celebrities such as actors Don Cheadle and Shannon Elizabeth.
More recently, he has featured on GGPoker's 'Game of Gold', a poker show which has embraced reality TV elements and a team format. One aspect which has caught the eye is green room footage, where players' reactions are filmed as they watch their team-mates in action.
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"How many people that watch poker want to hear 'i want to know what's going on in the mids of those players, wouldn't you love to hear it?'. Well, you are now, because you're just getting these behind the scenes backroom views of exactly how poker players think about poker," Negreanu explains. "So I think that added an amazing angle and of course a little bit of the team aspect and reality show combo, it's like nothing that's ever been done before.
"In [the early 2000s], people were just trying to figure out what is the way to package it," he continues. "ESPN with their World Series of Poker coverage spent a bit of time on the backdrops of people, nbc went for a glitzy glamorous heads-up format. so we had a wide variety of new stuff with High Stakes Poker and Poker After Dark.
"But what I think ended up happening after time was it sort of became stagnant and we just saw cookie-cutter TV shows where you'd just get one table, play some poker for an hour, watch the live stream, done. It kind of became repetitive and Game of Gold just broke the mould by saying 'we're going to do this completely different' and the poker community by and large just fell in love with it right away."
Game of Gold's green room footage has been popular with viewers (GGProductions)Even casual poker fans might well be familiar with Negreanu - if not by name then simply as 'that guy who likes to talk'. He developed a reputation for being able to smooth-talk opponents into decisions, and the Game of Gold format allows for more of the same... though he has to be more selective.
He admits he would never try his speech play with friend and fellow poker legend Phil Ivey for fear of giving away too much information about himself. There are still times where it works, though.
"I do think about who my opponents will be in terms of those who are really uncomfortable or likely to be uncomfortable under all this pressure, and there were a few on the show where i was like 'alright, I'm going to target them by making them more uncomfortable by talking to them while they're thinking'," he admits. "If you're thinking about a really complex mathematical problem and I'm yapping in your ear, it makes it more difficult to do so. And we have shot clocks - we only have a specific amount of time, so that kind of burdens them even more.
"So I definitely think about that, and I also think about 'what have I done in the past on TV and who has watched it?'. Because I know that people have watched it then I can manipulate it, but if they don't know then I have to go a different route. So it's really my job to figure out who knows what about me."
Negreanu has already registered his first six-figure score of 2024 (GGProductions)After the success of Game of Gold, Negreanu is determined to be more selective when it comes to mapping out his 2024 schedule. He has already claimed his first big score, winning a tad over $200,000 at a tournament in Las Vegas, and he only expects to travel outside his hometown for special occasions.
He rounded off 2023 with a tournament series in the Bahamas, something which he plans to repeat this year, while a high-roller tournament in Jeju could be on the agenda in March. Negreanu admits to having "such FOMO" when watching the Triton Series of super high roller events, and the tournament in South Korea - with a main event which costs $100,000 to enter - could see him make his debut.
Away from that, though, he's keen to make the most of his life away from poker. Often that just means sitting on the couch at his Lake Las Vegas home, watching shows with his wife and keeping his distance from the glitz and glamour of the Vegas strip where he spent so much time playing poker in his 20s and 30s before taking a step back.
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