On his blog, Daniel let the public in on how much he actually made playing poker in the last five years.
Daniel Negreanu is one of the biggest stars in poker. He currently sits on the top of the All-Time Money List – meaning he cashed for the most money in the world, playing live tournaments. Considering the fact, that he amassed more than $35,000,000 in live tournament earnings, one would think that Negreanu can’t post a losing year. However, as he disclosed in his blog posts (on fullcontactpoker) this couldn’t even be further from the truth, as he lost money playing the big buy-in tournaments around the world in the last 2 years.
Daniel thinks it’s really misleading for the public to see many players with millions in tournament earnings because of the huge buy-ins. If a player plays a lot of these events (as many of the high roller regulars do) they can spend between $3-5 million a year only in buy-ins. "… if a player plays the full high roller schedule and cashes for $2 million, they are all but certain to have had a losing year, and that’s before expenses.”
Their lives aren’t fairy-tale either
Negreanu even shared his results of the past five years. He had three winning and two losing years during this time period with the net profit of $8,733,074. His average buy-in is $35,496 and the hourly rate is $3,405. He also mentioned that unlike most of his peers, he doesn’t sell his action, he uses his own money to buy-in these events. The only exception next year will be the $1,000,000 Big One for One Drop event.
Daniel posted his goals for 2018 as well:
- Top $40 million in Live Earnings
- Win a WSOP bracelet
- Get 115 WSOP cashes and/or close a gap on Phil Hellmuth
- Profit $2 million
- Finish Year Top 30 in GPI
- Final Table SHRB or One Drop
- Win Poker Masters or US Poker Open
- Keep the #1 spot on the All-Time Money List
- Win a Super High Roller
- Study 120 hours of poker
These goals are pretty ambitious but as Daniel explained: "The goals I set are lofty, so I’m really not attached to the results in terms of seeing the year as a success or failure, but I’m a big believer in setting hard to reach goals. Not so hard to reach that you are living in fantasy land, but not so attainable that you rate to achieve the goal quite easily."
Daniel’s post was certainly eye-opening for many of the poker fans, so it’s really refreshing to see a high-profile player sharing his results and some insider information about the world of high rollers. If anyone, Daniel can achieve these goals, we wish him best of luck with that!
