Looking Back At The Boom: Daniel Negreanu Gives Thanks For A Front Row Seat

Canadian-born Daniel Negreanu is celebrating his first Thanksgiving as an American citizen this year. The 2016 Presidential Election results notwithstanding, as arguably the games most successful player, greatest ambassador and an outspoken liberal, it would seem there’s still a lot he can be thankful for.

Negreanu has made the most of the opportunities poker has provided him. He rode the wave of poker’s boom to fame and fortune the size of which not even the fortune teller who told him he’d one day find it could have predicted. But it didn’t always feel that way.

Negreanu had chosen poker as a profession long before Chris Moneymaker won the 2003 World Series of Poker Main Event and the popularity of the World Poker Tour exploded on TV screens across America. In fact, when the perfect storm came together and the poker boom was initially ignited, Negreanu thought he’d missed the moment.

“After the World Poker Tour’s first season I remember being so disappointed in myself because I didn’t cash and I didn’t make any final tables,” he told PokerNews. “That’s when poker started to boom and celebrities were being created. I always felt like I could be a good ambassador for this game, but obviously, if you’re not winning and you’re not getting on television, you don’t get that chance. I had won already, I had a couple of bracelets, but I felt like I was missing the mark, like I needed to be on that main stage and I wasn’t.”

That feeling started Negreanu on a path toward change, and ultimately, the success he desired.

“It was very disappointing, but it also helped me in another way, because I took the game more seriously after that,” he said. “The first year on the WPT I was doing what everybody else did. I’d be up until six in the morning drinking and go play at noon. Then I realized if I’m going to do this, I’m going to have to take this seriously.”

At the end of 2003, he started adjusting his pre-tournament strategies.

“I made a bunch of rules for myself, including that I was never going to drink the night before a tournament,” Negreanu said. “I was going to get the right amount of sleep, stop socializing so much and take it all very seriously. I went on to have an amazing 2004, which is still arguably the best year I’ve had in poker.”

If Negreanu caught a glimpse of the start of the poker boom in 2003, he had a front row seat to its continued and even bigger explosion a year later. Negreanu collected a massive $4,465,907 in tournament earnings in 2004. He won Card Player Player of the Yearand WSOP Player of the Year honors.

After finding the success on the WPT that had eluded him a year earlier, winning both the $10,000 Borgata Poker Open and$15,000 Five Diamond World Poker Classic, he was also named the WPT Player of the Year. Poker was taking off big time and Negreanu’s career went straight up with it.

“I remember seeing it grow so fast,” he said. “It all happened really quickly. I had always had some people who were like ‘Hey, can I get an autograph or picture?’ But then it became people when I was just walking down the street, not just in casinos or poker rooms, but everywhere. People were starting to pick it up and watch it on TV.”

In 2004, Negreanu became the industry poster child.

“At that time in 2004, nobody was winning more than I was, so I sort of became the face of it all,” Negreanu said. “I had a video game made …

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