DANIEL NEGREANU

The big deal from Bayview on losing it all, winning it back and becoming the most feared name in poker along the way

EVERY GAMBLER HAS a hard-luck story, and Daniel Negreanu, the boy from Bayview who became the best poker player in the world, is no exception.

Reached at his home in Las Vegas, the 37-year-old king of cards tells us how he first learned he has what it takes to survive in the high-stakes world of professional poker.

“The first time I went to Vegas, I was playing in a game with seven regulars, and it’s five in the morning and I’ve just spent the entire night getting kicked in the head,” recounts Negreanu, star of Million Dollar Challenge, the most popular poker television game show of all time.

“So I lose my last bit of money and go into the bathroom and wash my face, and when I get out, all seven guys were gone.It was the first time in my life when I was the sucker.”

At the time, Negreanu was only 22, and all the experience he’d had was found in the pool halls of North York and Bayview where he used to ditch school to play snooker.

A hometown hero, Negreanu thought he could bully the Sin City regulars like he’d done to his opponents at Leslie and Finch.However, Negreanu quickly learned he was swimming with a new breed of shark.

“I still remember those guys,especially Hawaiian Bill. He was killing me,” he recalls. “My goal from that day onward was to bust them all out. Eventually, I learned how to become a card player and not just be a bull.Eventually,I took them all down.”

Few players have taken down Negreanu, a card player with more than $12 million US in winnings (he’s the second highest earner of all time) and the founder of the Full Contact Poker website,an early adapter of poker’s wildly popular evolution online. Born at Bloor and Spadina,Negreanu was raised by his Romanian parents who came to Toronto to escape communism.

They may not have wanted their youngest to become a gambler, but they had to listen when he proved to them how seriously he was taking his work.

“My dad never worried about me.He made ends meet on the black market,but my mom, she worries,” says Negreanu, who calls Toronto a “gambling city” and says that his gaming awakening occurred when the charity casinos opened in the early ’90s at the skating rinks, hotels and banquet halls around town.

Negreanu ultimately came clean to his parents: he was going to drop out of school, move to Las Vegas and become a card player fulltime.

“My parents were like, ‘Daniel, go to school, forget poker,’ but then I showed them my books,” says Negreanu, who’s always kept detailed logs of his winnings and losings and was able to show his parents documentation of his dedication to straights, full houses and poker’s best hand, the royal flush. “Basically, I was playing cards like a real job,from noon to 8 p.m., 40 hours a week. I didn’t think it was the way I’d spend the rest of my life, but maybe, secretly, I did.”

Early on, Negreanu made several losing trips to Las Vegas and would return home to Toronto determined to build his bank and reap his revenge.

He says card players from Bayview have advantages over players from anywhere else in the world. Thanks to the area’s multiculturalism, Negreanu learned how to take down every manner of opponent.

“Take an Indian guy, he has different mannerisms than an Israeli; an Indian guy talks with his hands; an Israeli guy gestures a lot with his shoulders,” says Negreanu. “Playing in Toronto, you see different people, different cultures; you learn. This translates well to beating someone at cards.”

Pat Pezzin is a Toronto native and a professional poker player who’s been friends with Negreanu since the two were teens. Negreanu’s always been a hawk, he says. “When one tries to bluff Daniel, it’s very important to keep in mind not to engage in conversation with him,” says Pezzin.

“His personality makes opponents feel comfortable, and they unwillingly drop their guard and give off too much information to Daniel, who has an uncanny ability to read his opponents and sniff out a bluff.”

Negreanu won his first bracelet (the equivalent of a World Series ring in baseball) in 1998, becoming the youngest ever World Series of Poker champion at 24 years old. This was at a time when poker was beginning to be broadcast on Fox and ESPN,and thanks to video games and the Internet, poker suddenly exploded into the mainstream.

The boy from Bayview was now competing in popularity with professional athletes around the world.

“I’ve learned from Daniel how to approach the public and the media. It’s guys like Daniel that made this game popular enough to the masses to provide us young guys with better and better opportunities,”says Joe Cada, 22, winner of last year’s World Series of Poker, a rising star who’s earned $8 million US.

“I respect how Daniel’s always trying to change the game for the better. He’s helping to create the best tournaments and poker coverage, and he’s always working to make things better on and off the felt.”

Between the end of the 1990s and the mid-2000s, Negreanu was not only the most recognizable poker player in the world, but he also won the most titles.

Racking up bracelets (and big purses), Negreanu won the World Poker Tour twice, was named Card Player of the Year in 2004 and won the World Series of Poker three times. He’d done everything he’d set out to do playing cards.

“I killed everyone. I won four major events, Player of the Year — I won everything you could win and thought I was unstoppable,” says Negreanu.

“Then all the other stuff I was involved in got to be too much. I was spreading myself to thin, and I needed to refocus on my game.”Sometime between becoming the world’s best poker player and its most recognizable ambassador, a strange thing happened to “Kid Poker”: he began to lose.

“I was playing a lot on TV, doing this and that. Eventually people are going to catch on to your tricks,” says Negreanu, who today compares himself to Rocky Balboa in Rocky III, a champion who got a little too high on himself.

Negreanu’s competing obligations — managing his poker company,signing with PokerStars, filming Million Dollar Challenge and keeping up the public appearances — were starting to eat into his practice time. But like Rocky Balboa, Negreanu says the true test of a champion is how he responds to defeat.

“I came out of nowhere once before and killed everyone, now I’ve got to do it again,” he says. “After years of working on the television show and these other things, I’ve rededicated myself to each hand. If you don’t work on your game constantly,there’s no way you can stay on top.”

The last time Negreanu got angry, he swore he would mop up Las Vegas with Hawaiian Bill. He did that and more so, becoming one of the best poker players of all time.Now, with Kid Poker back to focusing on his card game, a word of advice: if you see the kid from Bayview at the table, it’s best to just pick up your chips and walk away.

 

Article exclusive to STREETS OF TORONTO