Daniel Negreanu Banks His First Cash of the Year, Wins 2022 PokerGO Cup Event #6: $25,000 No-Limit Hold’em

It’s going to take some work to repeat as the PokerGO Cup champion, but Daniel Negreanu took the first step on Tuesday, winning the 2022 PokerGO Cup Event #6: $25,000 No-Limit Hold’em for $350,000. It was both his first cash of the series and his first live tournament cash of 2022.

“I’m not gonna lie, I actually genuinely have to thank Jeff Platt because after the tournament, Event #5, I was so frustrated that I was building chip stacks and dominating the early levels but didn’t have a single cash to show for it, so I was just done,” Negreanu told PokerGO afterward.

He went on to explain that Platt texted him to remind him that he still had a shot at being the back-to-back PokerGO Cup champ if he won either Event #6 or Event #7 and then Event #8. While Negreanu certainly understood that was a tall order, it was just enough incentive to get him back to the tables.

“I thought, ‘All right, let’s do this. Let’s give it one more shot,’ and I did,” Negreanu said. “It was a very different Event #6 than the first five. I had no chips and I had to rebuy, the whole deal. But who knows, the poker gods are weird.”

The poker gods certainly can be weird. You can do everything right and lose and you can get into tough spots and win. When the tournament was four-handed, Negreanu found himself all-in with A-8 against Sean Winter’s A-Q, but managed to located one of the three remaining 8’s to double-up and stay alive.

“You go through periods where you just feel like the poker gods are spitting on you, because they’ll beat you in hands in such ways, like on the river, where it’s the most emotional – and I’m an emotional guy, I don’t hide it very well,” Negreanu explained, thinking about that fortuitous hand. “So it’s been a rough couple of years in terms of all-ins. But in these all-ins? I did great. I won with ace-eight, which was key, and you gotta do that sometimes. You see all the great players and think they’re all fantastic, but they also occasionally have to hit a three-outer in order to win.”

Going into heads-up play against the same Sean Winter from that key hand, Negreanu had a massive chip lead, 4.54 million chips to 720,000. They eventually got it in with Negreanu holding A-J and Winter holding Q-T, all four cards of which were clubs, so Winter’s flush chances were out the window. Negreanu flopped an Ace, but still had to dodge Winter’s gutshot straight draw. Fortunately for Negreanu, he did, and he took down the tournament.

As mentioned, Negreanu has a chance to win the PokerGO Cup championship, but for now, he is in eighth place with 210 leaderboard points. Jeremy Ausmus remains in the top spot with 407 points.