Yep yep. It works too; it made for a good show. Similarly, they are loads of stories or people playing with the likes of P.Laak, & being amazed that he didn't say one word for hours of play. It doesnt particularly bother me if they are exaggerating, or even lying about it, but I do think they are doing so.

Don't get me wrong, I dare say some of these guys are ballers, but I doubt many are keeping that lifestyle up indefinitely.

You wouldn't have to be rolled for this if you are not doing it for profit. I will admit that he doesn't strike me as a guy who would be stupid enough to do a thing like that on a regular basis, but what do I know, So yeah, I agree with many of your assumptions.

As an aside, I somehow remember a very similar statement from Antonius, except he was actually referring to Poker. I may be mistaken, but didn't he once say something idiotic like $200/$400 felt "too low" to him? lol

Barry has great podcast with Joey. He talks about some investments that went bad and also a story about how he sold Amazon stock in early years (iirc). Didn't sound like he had a lavish lifestyle

Well, we've all been there. I remember to this day how I bought AMZN for my entire net worth at like $80 back in December 1999 and sold it on the very same day for $88, which netted me $2,000. I obviously dodged a 90% paper loss within two years after that, but ...

Yeah he mentioned selling it for about $1million (?) back when they only dealt in books because he had renovations on his house that needed doing or something. Would be worth exponentially more now. Mike Sexton did similar with his PartyPoker share if I remember correctly?

Sorry, this has been derailed from DNegs somewhat

On a side note, those 4 hour podcast are ridiculous. I mean, who is going listen to a guy go on about how he's the greatest (he has his own way of doing it, certainly not Phil Hellmuth style, but it feels like he's doing exactly that) with zero orientation as to which topics are discussed and when they will come up. I would love to listen to the AMZN story, but who in their right might would skim through two podacsts of about 4 hours each to do that?

Jaywhy can you explain to me how Negreanu is a rich amateur fish? (what you wrote in the high stakes poker thread). He's literally been a pro since the dawn of time.

LOL. Yeah I caught about 30minutes or so of the Greenstein one & it seemed interesting (including the Amazon anecdote I mentioned) but I was surprised how big his ego is. He was referencing situations of talking strategy with Ivey, & these debates apparently always seemed to result in Ivey going away, thinking about the conversation, & coming back to say Greenstein was right all along. And, almost in the same breath, he had the temerity to say Tom Dwan has such a big ego about poker!!

Barry has always loved to opine...and he's always talked way too much about his supposed mentorship of Ivey..

I just found the podcast where he tells the story (he actually did three of those with Joey) and I think it's safe to say that most of it or even the entire story was made up.

The story starts at 6:45:



The podcast was released on 25th of March 2018. AMZN's stock was at around $1,500 back then. The interview may have been recorded a week or two prior to that, so we cannot be sure, but it's helpful in getting an estimate.

BG claims the following:

If we go by the lower estimate, in order for his holdings to be worth $660 million @ $1,500, he would have had to buy that stock at $2,27. Historically speaking, the stock price was only ever at or below that from May to July 1997. So the guy who was playing $500 tournaments at this stage is telling us he had $1m in liquid cash to put into a single stock. So he's basically claiming he was in very early on. Note how he said he had to sell "some of it". So what he's saying is he actually bought right before or at the IPO?


When Joey asks a very obvious question ("So when did you have this stock of Amazon?"), BG only comes up with bullshit to makes himself look good:

I can't pin point it exactly, but I also have the impression that his body language makes it obvious he's lying.

Somehow Joey missed a second very obvious question, ie, did he sell at a profit, which would have been *literally* impossible if he bought at $2,27.
If the story was true and I really doubt it is, he would have made >100% until the end of 1997 and >2000% by the end of 1998 etc etc.

I guess the whole episode just serves to illustrate his notions that a) money is silly and b) he is the king (he buys and holds, isnt't a trader, would have held on to the stock if it wasn't for renovations on his house, reads a lot of books, figured out immediately that AMZN had to work, is strongly into business ethics yada yada yada).

Just for reference, I actually have a similar story (albeit for waaaaay less money) and it reads rather differently:

BG on the other hand, when asked, can't even make up a date as to when he supposedly held a stock that would be worth a cool $1bn by now lol.

Here, without any comment, are the last 5 WSOP knockout hands I could see on YouTube, played at the end of the series, by which time he had fully sharpened his play.

$10,000 SUPER MILLION$ First position with twice Negreanu's stack min raises, Negreanu calls with 9c 10C. The board comes 4s 10s Qs. Negreanu has Second pair with a poor kicker against a first position. Negreanu goes all in. And is called by the opponent's pocket KK.

$1,050 NL Bounty 6-Max Negreanu on the button with 88, does min raise to 2bb, reraised to 7.6 by SB, “this is 100% must jam” says Negreanu, runs into AQ, loses a flip to a full house when AAQ comes on the board.

Online $600 No Limit 6-Max 2nd under the gun 10c Js, all in, loses to pocket QQ after hitting a 10 and a flush draw on the board that fails to hit.

Online $1,500 Pot Limit Omaha 9s Jd Kc Ad raises, is re raised, “Alright, my hand is too good to fold” calls, pairs the K on the 3 5 K flop, "Fk me we’re in, can’t fold now even if he has aces we have a k J 9 to catch", so calls a pot sized bet. Opponent also has A suited spades, board comes runner runner spades, and Negreanu is out, moaning how he was ahead pre flop, though he had no flush draw on the flop, was behind if a 2 came, and just top pair top kicker on the flop, and could have hit a K, J or 9 and still been behind. (Ok, with one comment)

$1,000 No Limit Hold'em 6-Max Qd 9d all in shortstacked in cut off, called by SB with KJ os, board comes down with K and 9, loses to pair of Kings.

Jay, nobody cares. People realize he isn't great. This is now the Barry Greenstein makes bad financial decisions thread. Go away.

Jay, you've been a member here for over 8 1/2 years. Over 20% of your posts have been in this one thread.

Well to be fair Collin did troll him into writing that this time.

need number of effective for these HHs to be useful. please incl BBs jay why

Dnegs had 7.5xBB and called an UTG miniraise in the BB with T9s. Obviously, a donk play.

Yo OMC, stack sizes?

Wouldn't an all in have been better, as there may have been some fold equity? Or just not playing the hand at all, as it is not particularly ahead of the opponent's range. These were the sorts of marginal hands he kept overplaying. But its fine deuceblocker, by now I know you will defend his play, so if you think he played it well, fine, that is your opinion.

Jay, you are obviously terrible to post there hands like Dnegs doesn't know what he is doing. Do you play or just watch poker on TV and youtube?

He shoved JTo for 8xBB and Q9s for 10xBB, both from CO. Doing anything else would have been terrible. 4-bet shoving 88 from BTN vs. SB is also standard.

Defending the BB with T9s is obviously standard. He shoved the flop for a little more than pot with 2nd pair on a monochrome board. You can argue with the shove, but it can't be that terrible.

PLO hand, he raised with a rundown and suited ace on the button and called the 3! from the SB, which seems standard. There is 1.4 x pot left on the flop. It could be a fold, but I am not a PLO expert.

Shoving with T9s against an UTG minraise is obviously terrible. Very standard to defend in the BB against the minraise with this hand, getting about 4.5-1. Anything else would be terrible. You obviously don't know anything about today's online tournament game.

Deuce, as I mentioned several times, watching Negreanu play was pointless, as one wouldn't learn how to play better poker, and making fun of him was pointless as he is impervious to advice or criticism, so is stuck in 2005. But I thought it was silly of me to say he is bad without actually looking at his play, so I wasted my time by looking at his last five clear knockouts. Yes, a couple were bad luck, as losing to runner runner is a *****. But then other times he will have won by hitting runner runner, so it evens out. But the point is, he streams, so opponents get to know his ranges. And they will see when he is short stacked he tries to become Rocky, fighting with weak hands trying to overcome the odds against him. So in that mindset, 9 10s against an early position raise looks a good move "Fk him, I am not going to let him push me around", but what and you are forgetting is that others know he thinks like that, so they set traps for him to fall into, like min raising with KK , knowing he will make a stand.

If you can be bothered, just look at his knock out hands in the WSOP throughout the whole series, and you will see this same scenario over and over. God knows why he agreed to stream, he was giving so much free information away. Despite all the cheap shots about me hating him, I like the way he did lots of vids teaching people how to play variants of poker when a Pokerstars pro, as that will have brought people into those games. But it is a shame he lost credibility when defending his sponsors.

If you want to prove that point, you should post a couple of hands where that stuff happens.

The hands you posted so far are pretty worthless without stack sizes, but more likely than not they just show that Negreanu is able to memorize a push/fold chart. If we had stack sizes we could also check how ICM feels about those spots.

The fact that you post a bunch of short stacked hands that look pretty standard without knowing exact stack sizes and potentially pay out structure, doesn’t make it look like you know much about short staked tournament strategy and ICM.

Jaywhy, you don't know what you are talking about and don't understand online tournament play. His preflop play in all those hands was totally standard, and anything else would probably be bad. It is totally standard to flat call an UTG miniraise in the BB with T9s. Anything else would be terrible. He shoved for a little more than pot on a monochrome board with 2nd pair. There may be other plays, but that is a reasonable one. The UTG raiser often has high cards and missed the or has a lower pp than Dneg's pair. That UTG had KK does not mean he usually has TT+.

Dnegs may not be a top player any more, may never have been that good at cash, and may not have that much of an edge in online WSOP events. He may get the contract based on past performance, flamboyant personality, and willingness to toe the company line.

However, you are making a fool of yourself trying to show that he is a complete donk who misplays every hand preflop. All it shows is that you may be a complete donk.

I think the crux of Jay Why’s posting spree can be explained by interpreting his initial run-on, grammatically incorrect sentence of this post.

Jay wants Daniel to listen to his advice and criticisms to become a better person, player and role-model for the poker community. He thinks that if Daniel follows his counsel, Daniel will be a better spokesperson for GG. By commenting on his posts, we are diluting his ability to speak directly to Daniel through this thread. If he can reach Daniel and Daniel can process his advice, everything would be okay.

He doesn’t believe or care that Daniel, or anyone else, couldn’t give a rat’s ass about his opinion on everything.

Psych 101.

Thanks for this characteristically incredibly helpful instruction Deuce, next time I face an early position raise holding 10 high, and flop second pair with a weak kicker I will try so hard to remember to play it as you suggest.