Daniel Negreanu Ends 10 Year WSOP Drought by Winning $50,000 Players Championship

Daniel Negreanu broke his 10-year World Series of Poker bracelet drought by winning the 2024 Players Championship, the $50,000 10-game mix event that comes with a trophy named in honor of late poker legend Chip Reese. He joins a list of winners that includes Reese, three-time winners Michael Mizrachi and Brian Rast, two-time winner Daniel Cates, Scotty Nguyen, and John Hennigan.

It was a monkey off the 2014 Poker Hall of fame inductee’s back.

“A lot of relief really. I have a lot of anxiety about coming heads-up because I’ve had so many seconds. And it was just nice for things to feel like they went my way at this final table,” Negreanu told WSOP reporters after locking his seventh bracelet up.

Since winning bracelet number six in Europe in 2008, Negreanu has finished second and third six times, fourth three times, fifth four times, six five times, seventh once, eighth four times, and ninth another six times. And as arguably one of the most transparent players who constantly engages with poker fans through his vlogs and reports from the poker room, he has worn his frustrations of the last decade on his sleeve.

Everything worked out for Negreanu in the Players Championship, but he needed help from the poker Gods who gave him a one-outer on Day 4 that kept him alive. He also needed to hit a card on the river to survive heads-up. Both of those movements came in the Pot Limit Omaha round.

“There is one event in the world I want to play more than any and I wanted to win more than any, and it’s this one. This is the one,” Negreanu said. “Obviously, the Main Event is special in a different way. But this one is all the best players in the world, pro-heavy field, playing 100-minute levels, days and days of grind, 12 hours a day. So to come out on top, you can’t fluke that.”

The final table took about eight hours to finish, and included a murder’s row of professionals with dozens of bracelets, trophies and millions and millions of dollars in cashes between them. After Phil Ivey, Jeremy Ausmus, David Benyamine, Dylan Smith, and Chris Brewer bowed out, it came down to Negreanu and Bryce Yockey heads-up.

The title could very well have went to Yockey, who won his second WSOP bracelet in this year’s $5,000 Pot Limit Omaha event in May. As mentioned above, he had Negreanu all-in with a pair of aces during a round of PLO. Negreanu made a play on a flop of 762 with a pair of ducks and an opened-ended straight draw, and it was the two on the river that saved his tournament life and eventually led to the title.

This was Yockey’s tenth cash at this year’s WSOP and Negreanu’s ninth. He now has more than $23 million in WSOP cashes since he won his first bracelet in a $2,000 Pot Limit Hold’em event all the way back in 1998 at the age of 23, when “Kid Poker” was still a kid. Negreanu turns 50 July 26.

Negreanu was able to celebrate with his wife, Amanda, who never saw her husband win a WSOP bracelet. It was a nice moment for the couple who wed in 2019.

“It’s very cool. This is the first time she’s been down here since we moved here. Because she was going to come when I win, and I haven’t been winning. So it was nice to have her here for the moment, for sure,” he said.