World Poker Tour

Daniel Negreanu “Kid Poker“

Birthplace
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Hometown
Las Vegas, NV

Birthday
July 26

Total Winnings
$5,555,935

When Daniel Negreanu's parents immigrated to Canada from Romania, they hoped to provide a quiet and stable life for their sons, and they did. Daniel grew up in a happy home, but he was not one to follow the lead of other kids. Uniquely, by the age of sixteen, his hobbies included sports betting and pool hustling. In addition, he saw backroom poker games being played and took note of the amounts of money available to skilled players. He learned the game, played poker with the adults, then took his game to high school to beat his fellow students. By the time he turned 21-years old, his love of poker took him to Las Vegas to try his hand against the pros, though he soon returned to Canada broke and was forced to build a new bankroll in the smaller games, then head back to Sin City to try again.

By the age of 22, Daniel realized that he truly wanted to make a career of poker. At the same time, he dealt with the death of his father and decided that it was time to become serious about his life. With the cautious blessing of his mother, he moved to Vegas permanently and started to approach poker with a newfound dedication. And it worked. One year later, he captured his first World Series of Poker bracelet in the $2000 pot-limit hold'em event, and at the young age of 23, he was the youngest player to win a WSOP event. The poker world took notice, and no one has been able to take their eyes off him since.

Today, Daniel is one of the very best poker players in the game " and in the history of the game. With nearly $10 million in tournament winnings, he has a list of accomplishments that is no less than impressive. He has three WSOP bracelets and nearly two dozen cashes, along with two World Poker Tour titles and twelve other cashes. His two WPT wins came in 2004, which he admits was his best year ever in poker. He won the Borgata Poker Open, then the Five Diamond World Poker Classic that year, which propelled him to the top of the WPT leader board where he captured that year's title of WPT Player of the Year. In 2006 and 2007, he found himself at several more final tables and hopes to add more titles to his resume in the near future. In the meantime, he plays in the highest stakes cash games in Las Vegas " the Big Game in which the limits are $4000-$8000 and the games are mixed. He has also authored several books and become involved in numerous sponsorship deals for video games, instructional videos, and online gaming endeavors.