Poker pro Daniel Negreanu has cashed for more money in poker tournaments than anyone else in history, but he has now posted two straight years of losses.
Negreanu, a Poker Hall of Famer, said in a blog post that he spent $2.87 million on buy-ins last year. He cashed for $2.79 million, which means he lost about $86,000 on 2017. He made nine final tables, but he failed to capture a win. He said that he played 71 events, with an average buy-in of roughly $40,000. He was down essentially two buy-ins on the year, which was virtually break-even, according to the 43-year-old.
Factoring in the time spent at the tables, Negreanu lost $144 per hour, he said.
The performance follows a 2016 in which he was in the red about $1.24 million after cashing for only $300,000 on total buy-ins of more than $1.5 million.
Negreanu said that poker fans shouldn’t be fooled by a figure such as $2.79 million in cashes because of the stakes that are commonplace in this day and age of tournament poker.
“My 2017 was a good illustration of the illusion that players cashing for $2 million in a single year is a great accomplishment,” he wrote in his Full Contact Poker blog. “In the old days, before super high rollers, you could all but guarantee that cashing for $2 million would mean the player had a winning year. Well, the truth is, 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.”
The six-time bracelet winner said that his tournament accounting doesn’t include money he made from his deal with PokerStars. He said he spends his own money on the buy-ins.
“I make the decision to play and risk money that I’ve earned,” he said.
Of course, Negreanu’s two-year downswing came after a massive winning streak. He said that over the past five years he is up $8.7 million, thanks to cashing for $19 million on $10.3 million in buy-ins. More than $8.2 million of those cashes came in the 2014 $1 million buy-in at the World Series of Poker, an event that is set to return in 2018.
Source : www.cardplayer.com