The Rant Is Back

Daniel Negreanu’s YouTube channel, has been undergoing something of a renaissance of late, largely off the back of the sudden resurgence in poker vlogging as a thing, a phenomenon he has been quick to remind us he was doing way back when. He’s been putting out hand analyses and trip reports and a new run of the more typical walk and talk type vlogs for a while.

And as of the 14th March, he’s also brought back The Rant– a talking head series he used to do in which he covers the current events of the poker world, and lets us know whatever’s on his mind. The Rant always tended to cover a wide range of topics relating to poker for example one of the longest and most detailed entries in the old series of rants was the 25 minute assessment he made of the so called Lederer Files back in 2012.

Daniel is still not a massive fan of Lederer, but he’s mellowed since the scandal first broke. Back then, his go to quote was a Reddit AMA by an Full Tilt employee entitled - ‘30% Truth, 30% Plausible Deniability, 30% Lies and 10% Fucking Bullshit.’

In stark contrast to his history of controversially slamming this, that and another. He promises the new rant will be different. He says:

"One thing I can promise you is, positivity, we’re gonna go for positivity."

For a bit entitled ‘The Rant’ he is pretty down on negative headlines, citing Prince EA’s YouTube channel as a source of inspiration for the new ‘nicer’ Daniel.

Which isn’t to say he won’t be going after the haters. After a brief intro goes in immediately on the defensive, talking about the coverage of the ongoing Doug Polk versus GSN debate over Polk’s use of High Stakes Poker clips in his YouTube videos.

Daniel takes a fairly conciliatory tone, countering the generally combative approach of Polk, and repeating that his comments are purely about his approach to the question of copyright permission.

The new Daniel is older, wiser, and considerably more nuanced. See the newest Rant video here:

Mind you, the old Rant wasn’t all sound and fury, it was also full of the weird and occasionally whimsical moments like the time Negreanu interviewed himself dressed as Scotty Nguyen:

If that isn’t both a joy to watch and toe curlingly cringeworthy I don’t know what is. Here’s to whatever weirdness The Rant has coming.