The deep run is over for Daniel Negreanu in the WPT World Championship, thanks to a bad beat during Sunday’s Day 5 session.
Negreanu was eliminated in 17th place for $176,200, an impressive run considering there were 2,960 entries in the $10,400 buy in World Poker Tour season-ending tournament. But the manner in which he exited, and the achievements he missed out on because of the bad beat, were a killer.
Rough Way to Go Out
Entering the historic event, “DNegs” needed a top six finish to catch Carlos Mortensen as the all-time WPT money list leader and $301,000 (12th place or better) to pass Mortensen for first on the Main Tour leaderboard.
An opportunity to overtake the lead presented itself on Day 5 as the GGPoker ambassador was dialed in, focused, and playing sound poker. But then it all came crashing down at the hands of Lucas Foster at about 6:30 p.m. with the blinds at 200,000/400,000.
Negreanu had opened to 800,000 from the button with 
before Foster, in the big blind, three-bet to 2,300,000 with 
. With a small pocket pair, the original raiser wasn’t going anywhere in position, so he called and saw a flop of 
, a dream for “Kid Poker.”
Foster made a sizable continuation bet of 2,500,000 and received a call. Both players saw the 
on the turn, pairing the board. Once again, Foster came out aggressive and put his opponent all in for 5,000,000.
Negreanu snap-called and was way out in front with one card to come. Only four cards in the deck — two 10’s and two kings — could send him home. If anything else were to come, he’d be sitting on over 50 big blinds and back into contention for the $4.1 million first place prize.
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To make a long story short, the river was the 
, giving Foster a better full house and sending Negreanu to the rails in 17th place. Although he earned $176,200, he didn’t come to the Wynn Las Vegas because he needed money. He was there chasing a WPT title and to crack the $50 million lifetime mark in live tournaments. Instead, he left with another deep run, but not a tournament victory.
“I felt it again! I felt it in my bones!” Negreanu said as he exited stage left. “I always feel it. I wish I couldn’t,”
Although Negreanu had a rough 2022 World Series of Poker, losing $1.1 million for the summer and took a brutal bad beat on Sunday, he’s actually had quite an impressive year of poker. In October, he took down the $300,000 buy in Super High Roller Bowl for $3.3 million, and of course he ran deep this past week at Wynn in one of the largest tournaments in poker history.
At the time of publishing there were 13 players remaining in the WPT World Championship out of the original 2,960. The tournament will play down to the final table of six before the session concludes, and then everyone remaining will come back on Tuesday to determine a champion. We’ll have a full recap of the day when it wraps.
*Images courtesy of WPT.