Canadian poker star Daniel Negreanu is just like you. Except for the 17 million reasons he isn’t.
You’ve been here. In this garage, next to the garden tools and cans of old paint, sitting at this folding table covered with greasy pizza and beer. You’ve held these cards in your hands, looked down at your stack of chips, at the flop, into the shifty eyes of your opponents. “They’re weak,” you’ve thought, calling their bluff. “All in.” And you’ve won—raked in your bounty, sat back and triumphantly swigged your tallboy. The beer tasted wonderful and free because you took a $30 pot. On the TV above the beer fridge, next to the urinal your friend installed in his garage for convenience, another game took place—on a fancy camera-rigged table, in front of a packed crowd. Professionals with their sunglasses and sponsored hats and all that swagger. “Yeah, I could do that,” you’ve thought, stuffing the crumpled $5 bills into your pocket. It’s just cards, after all. And that night, you were a master of Jedi mind tricks—willing the cards to fall your way.
With few variations, you’ve been there. (Perhaps sans garage urinal… though really, it’s quite convenient.) But certainly, you have never been here: the final table at the World Series of Poker Asia Pacific at the Crown Melbourne Casino in Australia. You’ve never sat in front of these cameras, under these lights, with $1,038,825 resting on every decision you make. You did not beat out 400 other players to get here. You are not Daniel Negreanu. On April 15, the Canadian poker legend picked up his fifth World Series of Poker bracelet, tacking another million-plus onto his more than $17 million in career tournament winnings. That’s before his deal with Poker Stars and other endorsements. Yeah, more than $17 million… playing cards.
You don’t win that kind of money by being lucky or playing poker with your buddies. And while almost everything about Negreanu makes it seem like he’s just another dude you work with—he looks like skinny Ed Norton from Rounders, sports a goatee and still plays in the same keeper-league hockey pool (complete with a junior draft) that he started with his high school friends—you must realize that Negreanu is much more like Michael Jordan than he is Sam from accounting.
Yes, yes, hold on—let’s not get carried away. No one is saying Daniel Negreanu from North York, Ont., is exactly like Mike. That’d be crazy. Though if Michael Jordan was really, really into playing cards… actually, we’ll just leave that one alone. Point is, you don’t have to be a superhuman physical specimen to sit in Negreanu’s chair. But you do have to possess the kind of focus and confidence it takes to sink a 20-foot putt or drop a game-winning jump shot with the championship on the line. The difference between laying down your pocket aces for a $30 pot and going all in with an ace-queen with a million bucks on the line (queen-jack-jack on the flop, no turn card yet…) is almost exactly the same as the difference between trying to outrun a looping toss from left field in the final inning of a Sunday beer-league slo-pitch game, and stealing home in the bottom of the ninth in the last game of the World Series (of baseball).
No, there is no physical accomplishment in poker. But the psychological game is more significant than you think. “There is a level of mental anguish that you go through,” Negreanu says from his home in Las Vegas. In a tournament like the recent Asia Pacific, it takes six to seven days in a row of playing poker for 12 to 14 hours straight to get to the final few. “Poker is similar to auto racing,” he adds. “Everything is cool, but then one little mistake and it’s all over—boom, you crash and burn.”
That was the tension Negreanu faced at the Asia Pacific when he was the chip leader with four players left, and that queen-jack-jack flopped down in front of him. He held an ace and a queen. Did the math in his head. Looked down at his stack and across the table at George Tsatsis—a local player he didn’t know, but who had played aggressively through the hours they’d been on the same table and was catching up to Negreanu. The turn was a four. Tsatsis was all in. If Negreanu’s pair of queens failed to win, his lead was shot. They turned their cards; Tsatsis had a jack-nine. Three jacks beats two queens. “I was screwed,” Negreanu says. “I only had about a five percent chance to win the hand.” And then the merciful third queen fell.
With 80 percent of the total chip stack left, Negreanu nickel-and-dimed his way through the final three players. A fifth World Series bracelet and $1 million were secured. “Sometimes luck comes your way,” he says. “I’ve had plenty of both good and bad luck in my career. That’s part of the deal.” Then, moments later, he clarifies. “It’s really foolish to go around thinking about how much good or bad luck you have, because it’s irrelevant.” The mercy of a queen doesn’t win you a World Series bracelet. That comes after days of reading opponents, watching their tendencies, finding their weakest points. It comes after pressure turns into a thrill—under the lights, in front of the cameras, when a single decision can seal your fate. “That’s when I thrive,” he says.
Since his first World Series bracelet win in 1998, at the age of 23, that is exactly where Negreanu has been—pouncing on others’ weaknesses, he says. Relentless, calm, clutch. Observant and cunning. The art of it, poker’s practised execution, is what got him here, at 38, only needing to play the game when he feels like it. “I worked hard when I was in my 20s, so I don’t have to now,” he says.
It’s true—these days Negreanu plays poker about as much as you do. But remember, you’re still here and he’s still there— there being Monaco in May, for the European Grand Final, and back to Vegas for the World Series of Poker in July. And in between? Well… “I just enjoy myself,” he says.
This story originally appeared in Sportsnet magazine. Subscribe here.