Daniel Negreanu

The 26^th of July in 1974, Daniel Negreanu was born in Toronto, Canada. He is a professional poker player whose parents moved to Canada from Romania a few years before he was born.

He dropped out of high school to become a rounder and attended several illegal games in the town. At this time he dated Evelyn Ng, who is now a very good professional poker player as well, and they learned a lot from each other. Later on, when Negreanu was 21, he headed for Las Vegas in order to become a poker pro’. However, he didn’t succeed very well and had to return back to Toronto after losing all his money. In 1997 things started to look better again. He won two events at the World Poker Finals at Foxwoods, which named him the tournaments best all-around player. Not to mention that it gave him $133 600… He soon became the youngest WSOP bracelet winner, and he held that record until 2004. This made him acknowledged as one of the best poker players in the world and he was named the World Series of Poker Player of the year 2004 and World Poker Tour Player of the year 2005.

He also won two World Poker Tour events, two more WSOP bracelets and reached eleven final tables.

Since then he have been “Poker ambassador” at the Wynn Las Vegas resort where he played for any stake in their poker room. He also opened his own online poker cardroom, which he recently used to arrange a competition where the winner would become his protégé. The winner would not only get his golden advices but also get the entry fee of $10 000 paid for him in four buy-in events. The first winner was Brian Fidler and the second one was Anthony Mak. Since the middle of 2007 Negreanu is signed with PokerStars, together with big names such as Joe Hachem, Greg Raymer and Chris Moneymaker.

In addition to this, he has written more than a hundred articles for the CardPlayer Magazine.

More privately, he isn’t that private at all. He has a blog where he speaks openly about his poker playing, his private life and his thoughts in general. Until the end of 2007 he was married to Lori Lin Weber, who he wed in 2005. He now lives in Las Vegas, not too surprisingly, and he is giving poker lessons to celebrities such as Tobey Maguire. Negreanu is a big supporter of the Toronto Maple Leafs and also supports politicians such as Al Gore.

In February 2006 Daniel was named “Favorite Poker Player” at the Card Player Magazines Player of the Year Awards Gala – and he was well deserved of it.