Daniel Negreanu Hits $50M Poker Tournament Mark; How Much Has He REALLY Won?

Daniel Negreanu cashed in third place for $124,000 on Thursday in a $25,000 buy-in PokerGO Cup event, and in doing so he became the third player ever to reach the $50 million live tournament cashes milestone.

According to Hendon Mob, the GGPoker ambassador now has $50,116,496 in cashes on his resume. Only Bryn Kenney ($57,221,865) and Justin Bonomo ($58,954,124) have more. Stephen Chidwick is currently in fourth place at $44,665,132, followed by Erik Seidel who just hit $42,441,244 with a runner-up finish in the PokerGO Cup.

Negreanu took third place in Event #7, a no-limit hold'em tournament one day after busting in eighth place in Event #6, also an NLH tournament ($50,000). The PokerGO Cup series is wrapping up Friday with the $50,000 No-Limit Hold'em final table, which can be seen on PokerGO.

How Much is $50 Million Poker Cashes Really Worth?

Hendon Mob is the leading database for tournament results, but the data only includes cashes as it would be nearly impossible to compile profits. But Negreanu has always been open with his results. During his annual World Series of Poker vlogs, he keeps a running tab on his wins and losses throughout the summer.

Last year, he frustratingly lost $1.1 million and failed to win a bracelet for the ninth straight year. His sixth and most recent WSOP title came in 2013 at WSOP Europe and he hasn't won a bracelet in Las Vegas since 2008.

Last month, the Poker Hall of Famer shared the data on his overall profits since 2013. According to his calculations, he's up just over $13 million during that nine-year stretch (2020 excluded due to COVID).

So how much has he profited out of the $50.1 million in cashes he's collected? PokerNews estimated somewhere in the ballpark of $18-$22 million, which Negreanu agreed was a reasonable guess. His first of 436 Hendon Mob recorded cashes came in 1997, so there's no way to get an exact figure.

But if we take into consideration the $13 million in profits since 2013, add the $4 million he won in 2004, and then factor in an estimated average annual profit of $100,000-$200,000 from 1997-2012 (minus 2004), we get somewhere in the $18-$22 million range.

Times Have Changed

Although Negreanu's Hendon Mob results have spiked since 2013, it's likely his return on investment (ROI) has declined compared to his earlier years. That isn't to say he was a better poker player a decade ago — far from it — but there are bigger buy-in tournaments these days, and those events attract smaller fields.

In all likelihood, his best year in terms of ROI was 2004. He cashed for $4.4 million, which wouldn't be anything to go crazy over in the 2020s. Back then, however, there weren't many events priced higher than $10,000 to enter. As Negreanu explained, his buy-ins that year were likely around $250,000, meaning he profited upwards of $4 million or more.

Compare that to the past decade where his average annual profit has been under $1.5 million, skewed by a $7.1 million profit in 2014 thanks to a runner-up finish to Daniel Colman for $8.3 million in the $1 million buy-in WSOP Big One for One Drop event.

Those $1 million, or even $50,000, buy-in tournaments weren't even a thing back in the 2000s. Now the high roller events are a dime a dozen. Negreanu said his WSOP buy-ins from 2013-2022 were at $20.5 million total, or around a $2 million annual average. In recent years, he has limited his tournament exposure to the WSOP and World Poker Tour events in Las Vegas, and tournaments on the PokerGO Tour.

Current All-Time Live Poker Tournament Money Leaders

Negreanu's Career in a Nutshell

Outside of Erik Seidel and Phil Hellmuth, there isn't anyone who has performed so consistently over the past 20 years in live tournaments.

Months before he turned 24, he won his first WSOP bracelet in 1998, a $169,460 cash, his first ever six-figure score. One year later, he won the $7,600 buy-in televised US Poker Championship in Atlantic City for $210,000. By 2003, he'd already racked up five years of six-figure earnings in tournaments, which might not seem like a big deal in 2023, but the fields were much smaller, as were the buy-ins.

Cashing for $1 million in a year during the 1990s and early 2000s was a rare accomplishment, and usually only the WSOP Main Event winner could pull it off.

When the poker boom era hit in the mid-2000s, the earnings began to rise along with the field sizes. There were also more $10k's and juicier tournaments. He won bracelets in 2003, 2004, 2008, and two in 2013, along with capturing WSOP Player of the Year honors in 2004 and 2013, and briefly in 2019 before the results were recalculated.

As the tournament landscape changed for the highest stakes players, so did Negreanu's earnings. He began playing $25,000 buy-in and above tournaments regularly, mostly in small-field events but against some of the best players in the world. Outside of 2016 and the COVID year (2020), he's cashed for over $1 million every year since 2011, and 14 times in his life.

In October 2022, he picked up his second largest score ever — $3.3 million — for winning the $300,000 buy-in Super High Roller Bowl in Las Vegas, the only town he plays poker in these days.

One-third of Negreanu's overall cashes have come in just five tournaments (see below). But even without those, he's still racked up $33 million in cashes, which would be good enough alone for a top 15 all-time spot on the Hendon Mob charts. How much he profited from those 431 events, if you're wondering, more than enough to buy a mansion in Las Vegas, and we'll leave it at that.

Negreanu's Five Largest Cashes