Poker icon Daniel Negreanu has pretty much made it to the top of almost all key poker ranking lists, the major ones being the all-time money list and the Hendon mob's popularity ranking. He has recently resumed paying live cash games in Las Vegas casinos after taking a break from the game and has started documenting his experiences on his poker blog.
Negreanu explained that he has once again started playing live cash games because he noticed at this year’s World Series of Poker that the younger crop of players were very good at mixed games.
He realized that constant practice is essential to remain good at such games, and that he needs to regularly play against top players to maintain his edge.
A member of Team PokerStars, Negreanu’s run at this year’s WSOP was not as great as he wanted it to be. Speaking on his wishlist, he said that more than winning money, winning WSOP bracelets mattered.
In a statement, Negreanu said
I play the $10,000 mixed games events with the smaller fields [in WSOP]because I'm looking to win 'Player of the Year,' bracelets and stuff like that. I don't care how I do at the World Series financially. It's how do I do results-wise. If I would win two bracelets and was still down money over the summer, I'd look at it as a win
He also said it was fun to be back playing games with fellow poker players such as Phil Ivey, Gus Hansen and Patrik Antonius. The players have also set a number of prop bets among themselves making the game all the more exciting. Negreanu said that prop bets make him play better since he has to focus more in order to not lose money.
Negreanu stated while he considered joining the WCOOP $102,000 Super High Roller event, he feels that the stakes are quite high for an online poker event. According to him, high stake online poker events are attracting technologically savvy people who are using things like tracking software and bots to win, resulting in loss of the fun element in poker.
Overall Negreanu is optimistic about poker’s growth as a game citing the new interest created by innovative platforms such as Twitch. He also credited PokerStars efforts of attracting new players into the poker community and said that unless new players joined the game by the thousands each year, the sustainability of the game of poker would get questioned.
