Daniel Negreanu

Daniel Negreanu was born in Toronto in 1974; his parents had emigrated from Romania seven years before he was born.⁠[1]

He recalled that Toronto was a great city to grow up in, that he was raised in a European-style way by parents who taught him generosity and hard work, and that as a youth he spent time in Toronto’s snooker halls.⁠[2]

He began playing poker as a teenager in friends’ basements in Toronto and moved on to charity tournaments; he dropped out of high school and decided to try playing professionally at about 22, later moving to Las Vegas.⁠[3]

In 1998 he won the World Series of Poker $2,000 Pot Limit Hold’em event for $169,460; at 23 he became the youngest WSOP champion at the time, earning the nickname “Kid Poker.”⁠[1]

In 2004 he was first named WSOP Player of the Year, and he won two World Poker Tour championships.⁠[4]

As of July 2007 he was a three-time WSOP champion with a regular column in Card Player and a blog at fullcontactpoker.com; a reviewer described his style as “small-ball poker,” noted the triple-draw section he wrote for Super System II and that he had recently released Hold’em Wisdom for All Players.⁠[5]

In 2008 Power Hold’em StrategyStrategyStrategy (formerly MicroStrategy) is a Nasdaq-listed company (ticker MSTR) headquartered in Tysons Corner, Virginia, United States, founded in 1989 by Michael Saylor and originally built on enterprise analytics software. Since 2020, the company has used bitcoin as its primary treasury reserve asset and describes itself as the world’s first and largest Bitcoin Treasury Company; as of September 27, 2026, it held 847,666 bitcoins. Its current Chief Executive Officer is Phong Le.Open the full entry, headlined by him and collecting strategies from a group of young top players, was published.⁠[6]

In July 2014 he finished runner-up in the $1 million buy-in Big One for One Drop, won by Daniel Colman, with Christoph Vogelsang third.⁠[7]

The second-place finish earned him about $8.3 million.⁠[3]

On October 24, 2014, he and tournament director Jack McClelland were chosen from 10 nominees for the Poker Hall of Fame; it was his first nomination, having just turned 40.⁠[8]

He said being recognized at 40, the same age as the legend Chip Reese, was an even bigger honor; he had also been named the Global Poker Index Player of the Decade.⁠[9]

In June 2018 he announced a tournament poker course on the online education platform MasterClass; MasterClass co-founder David Rogier called him the most successful live tournament player of all time.⁠[10]

The course launched that September; he explained that poker has a game-theory-optimal (GTO) approach and an exploitative one, and that the course teaches a hybrid of the two.⁠[4]

In May 2019 he married Amanda Leatherman.⁠[1]

He had represented PokerStars since 2007 and announced the split before the 2019 WSOP; on November 20 that year he announced that he had signed with GGPoker.⁠[11]

From 2020 he played a $200/$400 heads-up match against his long-time rival Doug Polk; after three months, 36 sessions and 25,000 hands, Polk finished in February 2021 up $1,201,807, and the two said they had buried the hatchet.⁠[12]

Polk commented that Negreanu had improved markedly and cited this as one reason he would not want to face him again.⁠[13]

On September 27, 2022, he appeared on episode 324 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast; topics included poker hands and ranges, game theory optimal play, winning, losing and the mental game, poker history, solvers, online poker, the WSOP Main Event and cheating.⁠[14]

On August 24, 2023, he beat Doug Polk in Round 2 of High Stakes Duel 4 at the PokerGO Studio in Las Vegas.⁠[15]

In June 2024 he won the WSOP $50,000 Poker Players Championship, outlasting 89 players and beating Bryce Yockey heads-up for $1,178,703 and his seventh bracelet, ending a drought of more than a decade.⁠[16]

He said afterwards that having only six bracelets had been somewhat embarrassing for him because he had so many second-place finishes.⁠[17]

On September 16, 2025, the prediction-market platform Kalshi announced a partnership under which he would promote the platform, including on livestreams.⁠[18]

The partnership came as regulators in several US states were warning against and suing prediction-market platforms, while Kalshi and others filed counter-litigation; he did not mention the regulatory disputes in his promotion.⁠[19]

In July 2026 the 51-year-old won the WSOP $100,000 Pot-Limit Omaha High Roller, an 83-entry field, beating Artur Martirosian heads-up for $2,257,718 and his eighth bracelet, becoming the 11th player to win eight or more; he filmed his WSOP vlog during the event, and his YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry channel had nearly 940,000 subscribers.⁠[20]

X: Public account: https://x.com/RealKidPoker (opens in a new window)⁠[14]

YouTube: Public channel: https://www.youtube.com/dnegreanu (opens in a new window)⁠[14]