Daniel Negreanu Would Move Into First on All-Time Tournament Cash List With Victory

Published on October 23rd, 2008 1:24 am EST

Daniel Negreanu is playing some great poker right now.

Day 2 of the Festa al Lago (WPT) event at the Bellagio has just wrapped up, and Daniel Negreanu is currently well ahead of the rest of the field with a stack of 513k. Blake Cahail has the second biggest stack (467k), while Justin Bonomo is in third place with 383k.

There are currently 104 players left in the tournament, and the average chip count is approximately 160k. 368 players took part in the tournament, which created a total prize pool of $5.354 million dollars. The top 50 players will all receive at least $21,315 for cashing, while the first place finisher will receive $1.411 million dollars and the WPT title.

Negreanu certainly seems to be on his "A" game right now. He is coming off of a successful run at the 2008 WSOPE, where he notched a total of three cashes (including a fifth place finish in the main event, which was good for $395k). Negreanu also had five cashes at the 2008 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, which included a bracelet win in the $2k Limit Hold'em event. Daniel seems very confident in his game right now, and that is very bad news for his competition.

Daniel Negreanu has publicly stated that he is intent on passing Jamie Gold on the all-time money list. Gold is currently in first place with total lifetime cashes of $12.17 million dollars, while Negreanu is in second place with total cashes of $10.874 million dollars. A victory in this event would move Negreanu into first place on the all-time money list, so I am sure that this is in the back of his mind. A victory would also move Negreanu into a three-way tie with Tuan Le and Barry Greenstein for the second-most WPT titles (behind Gus Hansen), and move him even further ahead of Carlos Mortensen on the all-time WPT money list.

Negreanu surged to the chip lead late in Day 2 when he got involved in a very large three-way all-in confrontation with Tom "durrrr" Dwan and Steve Weinstein.

Negreanu raised to $5,000 pre-flop, Weinstein pushed all-in for $30k, Dwan called from the button, Negreanu moved all-in and Dwan called.

"Kid Poker" flipped up pocket Aces, while Dwan showed pocket 10s and Weinstein showed K-Q offsuit. The pocket Aces held up and Negreanu took down the massive pot.

Obviously there is still a ton of poker to be played in this event, but I certainly wouldn't bet against Negreanu taking the tournament down at this point.

There is a tremendous amount of talent still alive in this tournament, including:

-Justin Bonomo (can he finally bust through and take down his first major "live" tournament after so many close calls?)
-Isaac Haxton
-Dutch Boyd
-JC Tran
-Doyle Brunson
-Mike Matusow
-Adam Levy
-Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier
-Johnny Chan
-Isaac Baron
-JC Alvarado

The person who ends up taking down this tournament will have certainly earned their victory against some of the best poker talent in the world.

Day 3 will begin on Thursday afternoon, and the tournament will conclude on the 26th.


Photo: GreasieWheels.com

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Filed Under: Tournament Results