“I can increase my focus on what matters, and that’s going to be the bottom line in 2024.” – Daniel Negreanu
Just as he has for the past few years, Daniel Negreanu took to his YouTube channel and opened up his ledger to share with fans exactly how he fared on the poker circuit over the past year. The bottom line: results-wise, 2023 was a rough year for Kid Poker. He got right to it, Negreanu took a $2,228,174 loss in 2023, in what he called the “worst year” of his career since he’s been keeping track.
“I gotta say I’ve been incredibly fortunate to only have one losing year where I lost about one million, another one where I broke even and then winning years every other year,” Negreanu said.
Among the results, Negreanu also put in the most volume he’s had in years citing 145 tournaments, far and away the most events he’s played in a single year over the past decade and, according to him, perhaps in his career. He cashed in 39 events (~27%), although Negreanu doesn’t count how many entries he’s bought in for in a specific event, simply if he cashed or not.
Any player facing a $2.2 million downswing would want to take a look at what they’ve been doing and Negreanu is no different. Seemingly unstressed about it, Negreanu reflected on why he may have had a rough year including playing too many tournaments when he wasn’t in the mood, having smaller edges in the toughest high-stakes tournaments, and some good old-fashioned run bad in important spots keeping him from a big score.
Negreanu has never been one to let his losses keep him down so he also laid out his plan to attack 2024 including playing fewer tournaments and only when he feels like playing, working hard, and having respect for his opponents. Perhaps the most surprising future plan for Negreanu is his declaration that he doesn’t plan on focusing on the WSOP Player of the Year race next summer. As the only two-time winner of the award, Negreanu has stated, in each of the past few years, that he was gunning for a third and his breakneck WSOP schedule each of the past four years has reflected that.
“This year…I am not going to focus on WSOP Player of the Year,” he said. “Here’s the thing, the system is broken and it has been broken for a very long time.
“It’s too heavily related to volume…number of cashes…so it’s all about quantity over quality and that’s going to be a flip [for him] in 2024. We are going to focus on quality over quantity. The number of events I’m going to be playing is going to go down.”
Ultimately, win or lose, Negreanu is still going to be out there grinding, offering action to fans, and making content.
“This is what holding yourself accountable looks like,” he concluded. “I could lie, right…or B. I could just not share this with you but then that wouldn’t be authentic and real, right? I’m not just going to share my winning years, I’m going to share my losing years.
“So when I see this number, it just motivates me, it lights a fire under my butt and, like I said, 2024 – lookout – because ‘DNegs’ is comin’ for ya.”