Once embraced as one of the most likeable characters in the game, Daniel Negranu has drawn a sizable amount of heat over the past several months. From his criticism of Ultimate Bet to his well-publicized slur toward Annie Duke, Kid Poker has found himself in the limelight a bit more often than he and his employers would like, perhaps.
Now, it seems, he’s given detractors more fuel for their hate machine.
The events in question took place at the WCOOP Main Event final table. As the host of this lucrative event, Negreanu was responsible for overseeing the game. After the action got underway, Kid Poker began chatting it up with the railbirds. While this is not exactly unexpected, some viewers felt that his comments went a bit beyond the limits of etiquette.
Specifically troubling were comments about players’ bet sizes. Also drawing fire were his questions which seemed to come at inappropriate moments. Following his typically conversant stay, Negreanu abruptly left the table before its completion.
Never one to shy away from the public, the PokerStars pro posted the following response in a forum thread dedicated to the episode:
“I don’t want to get into a big argument about this, but I’ll explain my side and then get out of this silly thread:
“The bet size comment has NOTHING to do with strategy in the least, and was just a joke about how people often make weird bets like 5111199 or 1234567, and in this case, POTS was making it like 288,050, so I just posted a joke AFTER the hand asking about how he came up with that being the perfect number. It’s just a joke, and has nothing to do with poker strategy in the least. I did not make ONE single comment about poker strategy at any point during the FT. Not once, check the chat log.
“Asking the guy where is was from. I was typing out the question as I was laying down and it took longer than expected, and when I finally clicked send he’d just got raised pretty big and I didn’t notice. Agreed, bad timing, but I seriously didn’t mean to disturb him in the middle of a big decision.
“As for why I left, It was 9am I’d been up forever and I was dozing off and then literally fell asleep! I had a busy day and then another planned the next day, introducing Liv as the newest Stars pro.
“Other than that, I mentioned the EPT party on Oct 2nd which I thought would be relevant to the railbirds. I mentioned some of the other Team Pros in the chat and who they were, because I thought some people may not know who they were.
“Other than that, what the heck did I really do “wrong?” I didn’t talk about strategy EVER, I asked one question about a guys country and if it was Russian cause it ended in ov, but other than that, I wasn’t chatting with the players at all.”
So was this a breach of poker etiquette, or simply Daniel being Daniel?
In fact, why not tell him yourself? If you’re not already a member of the PokerStars community, grab the latest version of their software. Don’t forget to check out our exclusive bonus code, which will net new players an additional $1,000 in monthly tournaments.