After over 15 years of professional tournament poker, 2013 has already been one of the best years of his storied career, and considering we haven’t even hit the halfway point, and still have the World Series of Poker to play, Daniel Negreanu could conceivably put together a year unlike we have ever seen in tournament poker by him, or anyone else for that matter.

Unlike most of his big scores, Negreanu’s latest triumph came in the online poker arena, winning his first major online tournament with a victory in PokerStars SCOOP Event #39-H, a $5,200 buy-in PLO tournament. Event #39-H was one of the largest buy-ins of the entire 2013 SCOOP series and attracted a field of 180 of the top online players in the game. But in the end it was “KidPoker” who triumphed over the field, pocketing the $216,000 first-place prize-money.

The SCOOP victory will eventually be just another paragraph in Negreanu’s biography, but in real-time it shows precisely why Negreanu is THE face of the poker world, with his competitiveness and desire to remain relevant amongst the ever-stiffening competition in poker. While most people in Negreanu’s situation (multi-millionaire and one of poker’s most recognizable faces) would simply rest on their laurels and let the sponsorship dollars roll in, or perhaps focus on major tournaments only, Negreanu continues to work hard on his game, whether it’s cash-games, live tournaments, online play, or any other format, and the proof is in the putting…

Just after his WSOP APAC Main Event win I wrote an article where I essentially argued that Daniel Negreanu is not only one of the best tournament players in the game right now, but also among the best of all-time –I’m not going to rehash the article so you can read it here if you haven’t already: https://pokernewsboy.com/poker-player-news/daniel-negreanus-wsop-apac-win-cements-legacy/13854

Now, that was written after his WSOP APAC victory back in March, and since then Daniel has been making this argument easier and easier for me; final tabling the EPT Grand Final (4th place) and the WPT Championship (7th place) and now adding on a SCOOP victory for good measure. So far in 2013 he has won over $1.7 million in live tournaments; the seventh time in the past ten years he has topped the $1 million mark.

It’s hard to ever predict tournament results, especially for large-field events like WSOP tournaments, but considering the hot-streak he is on, imagine if Negreanu picks-up a couple WSOP bracelets over the next two months? Could we literally be witnessing the greatest year of any tournament player in the history of the game?

*Resources: www.pokerstars.com/scoop/results

This entry was posted on Monday, May 27th, 2013 at 8:29 am and is filed under Poker News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.