An Interview With Daniel Negreanu: Part I

by Justin West

Daniel Negreanu is without a doubt one of the most popular players the game of poker has ever seen, and for good reason. Daniel currently sits at third on the list of poker's all-time top 100 money earners, behind only Joe Hachem and Jamie Gold.

A native of Toronto, Daniel recognized early on in his life that he had a knack for gambling and, quite specifically, poker. So confident was he that at the age of twenty-one Daniel dropped out of college - just one credit shy of graduation - and moved to Las Vegas to pursue poker full-time.

With two first place finishes at the 1997 World Poker Finals at Foxwoods, Daniel took the world of tournament poker by storm and never looked back. He has since added three World Series of Poker bracelets, two World Poker Tour titles, and more than thirty victories in tournaments across the globe. To date, Daniel has earned almost $10,000,000 in tournaments alone.

Now, as recognizable for his kind demeanor and down to earth attitude as he is for his incredible abilities at the card table, Daniel Negreanu has to many become the very personification of a successful professional poker player.

What follows is part one of a two-part interview.

Justin: How have you been affected by going from just being a good card player, to gaining notoriety as one of the best poker players in the world?

Daniel: Well, I just don't think about it. If you get caught up in that stuff you'll go down the wrong road and stop focusing on what's important. For me, I just basically try to be who I am. I have a very good, grounded group of friends, and a social life that keeps me from buying into the whole celebrity BS thing.

It's not something I've ever been too involved with, anyway. I don't go "ooh" and "ahh" over meeting celebrities. I don't find that I'm any more special than anyone else. Maybe as a byproduct that's why a lot of people relate to me, because I don't act like a "celebrity."

Justin: Do you go out of your way to keep your personal and professional lives separate like a lot of players seem to do?

Daniel: Not really. I have a poker table here, but we don't really play a lot. We do play a lot of games, though the games we play are generally not poker. I play golf almost every day, we play pool, we do the Wii bowling. Of course, we gamble on everything, but we don't play cards much.

All my friends play poker, but they're not necessarily big named players you'd know, just guys I grew up playing with in Toronto. We spend a lot of time together just hanging out, being kids, playing games.

Justin: So tell me about your High Stakes Golf experience...

Daniel: It's going to air on ESPN. Basically it's a bunch of us poker players putting up a bunch of money and playing a golf tournament. But we put up our own money, so it's not like golf that you'd normally see on a network. It's got a really cool reality feel to it. We had a bunch of horrible golfers playing for tons of money.

Justin: Would you consider yourself a horrible golfer?

Daniel: Yeah, of course! I guess they say that only 5% of the people that play golf break 100, so I guess I'm in the top 5%. But comparatively, to real golfers, I'm terrible.

Justin: Does being a professional poker player help ease your nerves while you're out there on the course playing for cash?

Daniel: Oh yeah! Absolutely. You'll see it on the show, too. There's a lot of talk about that. When you golf and you have your normal swing, you're playing practice rounds, that's one thing, But when you actually have more pressure on all of a sudden stuff starts falling apart, you get more tense, four foot puts become impossible. Being a professional poker player helps a lot in that area, because like you said you're used to tense situations.

The big difference with golf is that it's totally up to you, not the turn of a card. You screw it up, it's all you. You just gotta have mind over matter, really just bear down. I think a lot of poker players are addicted to the adrenaline rush. After you play high stakes poker for so many years, you lose that a little bit. With golf, you get that adrenaline rush all over again.

Justin: That's interesting, actually, because I think most people would say that watching golf is far from "exciting."

Daniel: That's funny, because I'm watching a tournament right now.

Justin: I asked Kenna James last week if he'd ever shot an angle at the table, so I thought I might ask you the same question.

Daniel: No. I'm old school in that regard. If there are rules I can push the envelope with, by all means I'll do everything within the rules that I can that's not necessarily cheesy to extract extra information. For example, if I'm in a hand on the turn and I might be counting my chips out. I'm not betting yet, but I'm making it look like I might just to get a reaction from my opponent to see if he'll call or not. I've got no problem with stuff like that, but I'm good enough that I don't need to play the game with angles.

Justin: A few months ago one of the authors on Poker Pages wrote an article on the rule that states that any player at the table can ask to see either player's hand when there's a showdown in Texas Hold'em. It seems like the rule gets completely abused, used as a way for players to get more information.

Daniel: It does. A lot of people don't understand the meaning of the rule. I think a lot of internet players who are used to hand histories just want to see cards and may not realize it's disrespectful. But the rule was created to identify collusion or cheating. Basically, if you ask to see somebody's cards, if you're using the rule properly, you're accusing them or being suspicious of them cheating with the other player.

It's not a rule that you're supposed to use in order to gain information about your opponents, to answer the question of, "I wonder how he plays or what cards he had." That's not what the rule is intended for. If a player does that too often, he can lose his right to ask to see the hole cards, I think. For example, if [tournament director] Jack McClelland comes over and there's a player continually asking to see cards, Jack can disallow that person to ask that question anymore.

Justin: Have you ever encountered cheating at a table, yourself?

Daniel: Actually, it's funny. The only time I ever got cheated was when I was back in Toronto in a private hotel room with a guy named Blacky Blackburn, a guy named Tex, and some other apparently notorious cheats that set me up in a game back when I was about 18 or 19 years old. I think it was mostly marking cards, fixing the deck, stuff like that. I'm not really knowledgeable about cheating and cheating tactics, but I know I got cheated there, that's for sure.

part I | part II

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Justin West played poker since the age of 17, he spent more than a year earning a living on the green felt; a modest living, to be sure, but a living nonetheless. His aim was at one point to win the WSOP main event, thus causing Hell to freeze over. However, given his penchant for sin and his extreme dislike of cold weather, Justin has put that dream to rest.