Daniel Negreanu WSOP Vlogs: The Story So Far

Thirty days into the series, and Daniel Negreanu has been putting out a video on each of them since he bought into the Tag Team event with Eric Wasserson, David Benyamine and Mark Gregorich. In that event, the second of the series, he took the team right up to antepenultimate hurdle before going out in third after playing the final table for his whole team.

Since then, the vlogs have been a fascinating look into the daily life of the high-stakes grinder, Negreanu’s approach to the mental game of poker, and his natural optimism which frequently borders on woo when we get into personal improvement. You can expect a lot of that in his vlogs.

His vlog has rather higher production values than most. He has a third party to shoot a lot of the material, and one imagines to do the editing and graphics as well.

The result is a pretty slick show. Like most poker vloggers at the moment, they run long. You best have fifteen minutes to half an hour spare to get on these. But prolixity notwithstanding no one else will give you this sort of insight into the biggest games in the series with this kind of regularity.

Private Life and Waffles

Following on from the Tag Team event, Negreanu moved on to the $10k Omaha eight or better event, starting that chapter of his series out with an afternoon breakfast of vegan waffles cooked up by his lady-friend Marissa.

A charming presence on her own terms, and who just about broke the internet when Negreanu finally put her in one of his videos.

From what he says, she sounds extraordinarily tolerant of the kind of lifestyle that leads to cooking up a breakfast in the afternoon heat of Nevada in June.

Heads Up For A Bracelet

As if poolside waffles served up by the woman he loves weren’t enough, he went on to run right down to the final two in the the Omaha eight or better tournament, playing for so long they had to schedule in an extra day just for the heads up phase of the event. 

Ultimately though, he took second for just shy of a quarter-million dollars. He even manages not to seem too upset about coming so close to bracelet and grabbing nothing but air and a paycheque.

Into the Hell Mouth

The great recurring character in the vlogs is, unsurprisingly, Negreanu’s long time friend and sparring partner Phil Hellmuth who seems to turn up largely to needle or be needled. In the razz tournament he comes bearing a copy of his new autobiography for which Daniel wrote the foreword.

On top of this, Hellmuth gets some screen time for setting light to a pair of shoes in the Rio parking lot, but the brat’s real star turn in in the limit hold’em event when Terrence Chan, MMA fighter and poker pro, got a little out of line with a draw and took a load of chips off Hellmuth in the process. The result was the now famous ‘motherfucker’ incident.

That was too good a rant for Daniel not to get into. And across from his table, he sets to vlogging the aftermath. He should be a war correspondent.

Daniel ultimately took 13th in that Limit Hold’em event bringing his cashes up to seven for the year. Another cash in the Hi/Lo Stud $10k brought that up to eight. Where he remains at the time of writing.

Stake Me, Stake You

Perhaps one of the biggest stories of the vlog so far has been the announcement that Daniel was to stake one player in the main event, splitting the winnings fifty-fifty and coaching the the lucky winner if needs be.

All you had to do to enter the competition was upload a thirty second video to Twitter with the right hashtag. That’s it: thirty seconds and a tweet to sell yourself as a worthy horse.

And The Winner Is...

Ultimately, with a shortlist of just three, DNeg’s couldn’t bear to chuck anyone out, so with a massive amount of ado, he announced it was going to go to all three finalists. Congrats to Tanya, Richard and KL.

Why VLOG?

Coupled with the tournament reports, and self-improvement spiels, the clips of driving, working out and playing soccer, there are some interesting moments of reflection: on gratitude and paying it forward, and even on why he vlogs and tweets.

For him, he says, it is about messages like the one in this video:

And on that inspiring note, you’re all caught up. 

DNeg’s tally stands at eight times in the money, three final tables, and a total of $375,958. And he is not done with the series, or these vlogs, anytime soon. So, now is as good a time as any to click that subscribe button.

Go, Team Negreanu.