Daniel Negreanu Still the Top Canadian on the All-time Winners List - Can Anybody Unseat Him?

Even a couple of years after his demotion from the top spot, Daniel Negreanu is still the top Canadian live tournament player on the all-time list. The North American country is one of the strongest poker nations on the planet, so this goes to show just how well Negreanu still performs year after year.

Figure of Fun

It has become a traditional sport to lay hate at Daniel Negreanu’s door step for being a dinosaur and out-classed by the new generation, but how justified is this?

There are many reasons that show just how good the Canadian still is.

Firstly we should recognise that much of the hate comes from Negreanu’s long-time association with market leaders PokerStars. Pokerstars, to say the least, has destroyed their own image with a raft of unpopular changes that Negreanu got caught up in.

Doug Polk is a major presence on social media and used his name to cause a wave of hate to swamp Negreanu over the ridiculous “more rake is better” scandal.

So we can see that beyond all of this playground mudslinging Daniel Negreanu has been treated unfairly by the crowd.

Crossing Generations

High-stakes tournament reg and partypoker ambassador Patrick Leonard recently told how impressed he was with Negreanu’s ability to adapt during the ongoing grudge match against Doug Polk.

The format for the duel is heads-up cash and something that Negreanu was never known for in the past.

Polk, on the other hand, was once the self-proclaimed best in the world at the format. And even if this is not so, he was likely top five at least. So in other words Negeranu has no business taking on such a challenge but he is still making a game of it. 

To give more context here, while Negreanu is close to being $1 million down, he is clearly running horribly given the reviews that both he and Polk have released on video. Heads-up cash games might have extremely high variance but they favour the stronger player like no other format. Leonard’s opinion was that other players from Negreanu’s generation would simply not be able to make any kind of a fight with Polk, and what Negreanu has done with little preparation time is incredible.

Daniel Negreanu is showing that despite his age he really does belong in the new generation too. He is far from past it.

Who Will Pass Negreanu on the All-Time Winners List?

Daniel Negreanu currently sits in 3rd place on the all-time winners list with $42,053,307. The next Canadian is Timothy Adams in 20th with $ 24,330,803, closely followed by Sam Greenwood on $22,307,604. That’s a lot of catching up to do, even knowing that the younger men have time on their side.

Without a bumper win on a casino such as Online Casino Canada it is not beyond the realms of possibility that the player who becomes the most successful live tournament player from Canada is not even on the list yet. 

Daniel Negreanu is also far from finished with his own career. He is only 46-years-old and could easily be less than half way through his career. The younger generation has a lot of work still to do.

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