Daniel Negreanu is $2,228,174 in the hole playing tournament poker last year, he said on his annual state of his bankroll report that he’s been doing for several years through his YouTube channel and elsewhere.
It’s the worst year the Poker Hall of Famer had.
“I gotta say, I’ve been incredibly fortunate to only have one losing year where I lost about one million, another one where I broke even, and then winning years every other year,” Negreanu said in his Vlog titled ” HOW I LOST OVER 2 MILLION DOLLARS in a YEAR!”
That’s a great run, no mater how you slice it. Negreanu first started cashing tourneys around 1997. His first big score came in 1998 when he won $169,460 and his first World Series of Poker bracelet in a $2,000 pot limit hold’em event.
Too many tournaments and too cocky
Negreanu said after each year, he breaks down what he did right, and what he could do better to tighten-up his poker game. In 2023, he made several critical mistakes that compounded his results in a negative way, he said.
“You know, at the end of year like that, I start to break down, you know, what exactly happened and I know a lot of you armchair quarterbacks are going to tell me a whole bunch of reasons why and you’re wrong,” he said, while promising not read any of the comments.
Negreanu put a lot of the blame on the large volume of tournaments he played last year — 145 — especially during the World Series of Poker where he said he was chasing his third WSOP Player of the Year title. The volume of tournaments needed to cash in order to win the WSOP Player of the Year was too much for him.
He also said that the way the WSOP Player of the Year prize is earned is “broken” because of that.
“It’s too heavily related to volume, so it’s all about quantity over quality and that’s going to be a flip for me in 2024. We are going to focus on quality over quantity. The number of events I’m going to be playing is going to go down.,” he said.
He also said he “came into the year, what’s the word: High on my britches?” That’s Canadian for “too cocky.” He also suffered from something he called “winner’s tilt,” which led him down the path of gambling and splashing around pots more, putting a wobble in his game that helped send the whole year off the rails.
“So when I see this number, it just motivates me, it lights a fire under my butt and, like I said, 2024 – lookout – because ‘DNegs’ is coming for you.”
He plans to address his mistakes by only playing when he feels like it — which will mean less volume and poker show appearances — gambling less, staying humble, and studying more. He will also not focus on winning the WSOP Player of the Year.
Check out the whole clip:
