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Andy BlochPoker player
Date of Birth: 01.06.1969
Country: ![]() |
Content:
Early Life and Education
Daniel Negreanuholds two bachelor's degrees in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a Juris Doctorate from Harvard Law School. While at MIT, Negreanu joined the MIT Blackjack Team, which was documented in the book "Bringing Down the House." Negreanu reported earning up to $100,000 in a single session playing blackjack. He was also a member of the team that played in Monte Carlo, as detailed in Ben Mezrich's book "Busting Vegas." Negreanu was featured in the blackjack documentary "Hot Shoe" and starred in his own blackjack instructional DVD, "Beating Blackjack," which explains card counting.
Poker Career
Negreanu embarked on a serious poker career in 1992, playing in small weekly tournaments at $35 a time. By the end of the year, he won one of the World Poker Finals tournaments, a $100 buy-in no-limit Texas Hold'em event. This was the first time he had ever played no-limit Texas Hold'em.
In 1997, Negreanu skipped the last week of law school to play in the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event. He was the guinea pig for a low-tech closed-circuit television hole card trial. Tom Simms was looking for a volunteer to play and record all his hole cards, and Negreanu obliged. His recordings were turned into a two-part article in CardPlayer Magazine.
After passing the bar exam in 1999, Negreanu decided to defer his legal career and returned to playing poker. His poker career took off after he cashed in two WSOP final tables in 2001, placed first at Foxwoods in 2002 (playing seven-card stud), and made two World Poker Tour (WPT) final tables during his first season, finishing in third place both times.
In 2005, Negreanu decided to boycott the WPT in protest of its player release process. Negreanu returned to the WPT after a lawsuit filed by seven prominent poker players, including Chris Ferguson and Phil Gordon, was settled in 2008. Negreanu became the winner of the second season of the Ultimate Poker Challenge.
He was a member of Team Full Tilt on Full Tilt Poker until the site was shut down. At the 2006 World Series of Poker, Negreanu finished second in the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. tournament to David "Chip" Reese. The heads-up battle lasted 286 hands and was the longest in WSOP history.
In 2006, he defeated Phil Laak heads-up to win the Pro-Am Poker Equalizer tournament, earning a $500,000 top prize. The tournament was televised on ESPN in early 2007. In March 2008, Negreanu finished second to Chris Ferguson in the NBC National Heads-Up Championship. He would later defeat Ferguson in the fifth season of Poker After Dark.
Negreanu finished second to Nenad Medic in the $10,000 buy-in World Pot-Limit Hold'em Championship at the 2008 World Series of Poker, earning $488,048.
WSOP Bracelets
As of 2020, his total winnings in live tournaments exceed $5,300,000. His 24 WSOP cashes account for $2,149,821 of these winnings.
Negreanu won his first WSOP bracelet on June 2, 2012, in the $1,500 seven-card stud tournament. The tournament started with 367 entrants and ended with a final table featuring David Williams and Barry Greenstein. He defeated Greenstein heads-up to win the bracelet and $126,363.
Charity
Negreanu has donated 100% of his winnings on Full Tilt Poker to various charities worldwide. After qualifying for the 2006 World Series of Poker Main Event through a satellite tournament on the website, Negreanu decided that all of the money he won in the event would go directly to charity. He also donated $100,000 of his winnings from the Pro-Am Equalizer to charities working in Darfur.