Negreanu supposedly has done a tremendous amount of work with solvers and sims, at least based on the posts I see in this thread. But has he? Or is this a sense based on the work he specifically did in the various heads-up challenges a year ago, and we're just assuming he's similarly sharpened his game for the WSOP? The bootcamp he put himself through for Polk and Hellmuth, admirable as those efforts might be, will not directly prepare him for six-handed or full-ring tournaments.

When DNegs sits down to break down a hand, it seems like we should catch little glimpses of this, indicators of this preparation. Look at the strategy videos of people like Jonathan Little or Polk, who pull up their solvers and either commend or criticize a decision based on how it compares to the GTO solution.

Granted, that's a tall order for Negreanu, as this is a daily vlog. His hand breakdowns take place during a break shortly after he scribbled down some notes on his phone or crammed from some pocket of short-term memory. Contrast that to Little and Polk, who have the benefit of a recorded video stream from which they can truly analyze a hand through a solver, then edit and narrate accordingly. But still, it seems we should be seeing some hints of more advanced strategy in there, if in fact he has prepared the way so many people think he has.

As it is, the vlogs always show some bustout hand in which he moved in with a short stack, and either got coolered or he took a bad beat. (Isn't that how every short stack busts from a tourney?) The audience is then meant to think, "Oh, Daniel, tough one, you're running so bad!" But they're not seeing the reason he's constantly ending up with that short stack in the first place. Maybe they would see that it's just as much playbad as runbad.

Anyway, I don't know and neither does anyone else. It could truly be variance.

Still, every vlog has some version of "I'm feeling great, I got my coffee, I got a good night's sleep, I just fueled up with [insert vegan meal here]." While I certainly don't diminish the value of mental well-being, headspace, nutrition, etc., it seems like you still need to be ready from the poker standpoint. And I simply have zero idea of his actual readiness there.

It's plausible he hasn't done much full ring deep NLHE work since the HU - his range "radar" was off in the NLHE High Roller hands he posted - particularly being too loose in terms of relative hand strength (See K6o, TT hands)

Afaik he has never really worked with solvers running pio or GTO+ himself directly - there's some program and a team that simplifies solutions for him, distills concepts + main points + ranges. It wasn't Dnegs running aggregate reports for himself at nights like us peasants do.

I honestly think Negreanu is ass backwards lately with his decision making. He studied GTO right? But he isn't an expert. So when he plays the high roller type tournaments imo he gets exploited because there are a lot of players better than him and use GTO on him better than him using it on them. If that makes sense.

On the other hand, in smaller buyin bigger field events sure he might have an upper hand using GTO against most of the field. However lots of players in those tournaments do their own thing and play by feel, or just do things so anti GTO lol. So here's Danny trying to use GTO against players it's useless against. It's like he's zigging when he should be zagging and vice versa.

In my opinion Negreanu "studying" with solvers and GTO and all that did his game more harm then good. The feel he had for the game, making decisions using his gut instinct(which is important still) is long gone. I think his NL game has gotten worse. And honestly not surprised he's down over a million.

A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing if you are dealing with people that have more knowledge in that same area than you. As I mentioned the other day, I was watching one of his YouTube vids where he was explaining GTO over 5 vids made during a tournament, and he was explaining he would be calling more, and bluffing more, to try to be unexploitable, so opponents could never put him on a hand. So in effect, overall when playing GTO he is playing more worse hands than when not playing GTO as he is playing more bluffs which are great until they are called, and more passively, so not getting value from his winning hands, which is actually a leak I remember seeing a lot in his game last year, and why he often wins small pots and loses big ones. GTO applied by people who don't fully get it is a recipe for disaster, as it sucks them into playing bad hands without getting the right balance between those and strong hands. So going back to his feel style of play seems a wiser choice, rather than carry on being out GTO'd.

Just posting this here . . . gotta say, really suprised he hasnt won a bracelet in 9 years

WSOP 1998 – $2,000 Pot Limit Hold’em – $169,460
WSOP 2003 – $2,000 S.H.O.E. – $100,440
WSOP 2004 – $2,000 Limit Hold’em – $169,100
WSOP 2008 – $2,000 Limit Hold’em – $204,874
WSOP 2013 (Asia-Pacific) – A$10,000 WSOP Main Event – AUD 1,038,825
WSOP 2013 (Europe) – €25,600 High Roller NLHE – €725,000

and hasnt won one in Vegas in 14 years.

This has to be so hard on him since he cares so much and this is his life

He has to wonder "What happened? What am I doing wrong?"
The GTO vs Exploitive debate is all well and good, did shifting to GTO mess him up?

But it didnt mess up Phil. Because he never did shift.
He doesnt seem to ever talk about solvers and GTO.
Yet still is winning bracelets.

I feel for the guy. To give something your all and repeatedly come up short has to hurt.

-$1,055,073

Spot on. I think he wanted to show he belonged in the high rollers and tried to totally change his game and it really hasn't had the desired effect. All that has happened now is he is a dog in the high rollers and now a dog in the smaller buyin fields. He's trying to use GTO so much he forgot what made him great years ago. Again not surprised he's down a million.

I believe him when he says he's been unlucky. I watched the PLO final table last year and he probably "deserved" to win that one, for whatever it matters. Luck is a real factor in these tournaments and if you consistently run bad in the big spots, there's nothing you can do about it. If Hellmuth is unusually lucky in the big spots, it does seem like Negreanu is unusually unlucky.

On the other hand, the sample size is large enough that he probably should have some wins over that time frame if he's genuinely been making great decisions and outplaying his competition. So I think it's likely that his edge in a lot of these events may not be huge, or at least not as big as he thinks.

An interesting thought about self-reflection is that even if we have the sincere intent to critique ourselves, we're limited by our own knowledge. I know that I don't play NLHE perfectly, but I'm probably missing spots that I'm not even aware of because I don't even have the knowledge to recognize them. Stick a wizard like Michael Gathy or Stephen Song in my shoes and he'd probably be making plays that would have never even occurred to me. Even if Negreanu thinks he's playing well in everything, we don't know what we don't know. He may be missing value and making mistakes without being aware of it.

My last observation is that his "play everything" and "next one up" mentality at the WSOP may not be conducive to maximizing his potential. Bust one event. Jump into another late. Gamble it up. Bust. Jump into the next one. In this sense he may be a victim of his own success. The unlimited bankroll means he can treat most of these events like they don't matter. That should allow him to play with no fear, but sometimes a little bit of fear is healthy. I remember when he busted the ME last year his reaction was quite surprising to me. It was basically, 'I don't care. Now I can play X, Y, and Z instead and go for the PoY points.' Hard as it may be to focus on an unimportant $1.5k event when you are rich, he'd probably do better if he treated every little event like it's as important as the $250k or the $50k PPC. It doesn't seem like most of these tournaments are getting his full attention. In the back of his mind it's, 'Well, if I bust this, I can go play X instead and try to spin up a stack.'

I said this last year, but just one year I'd like to see him play the bottom half of the schedule instead of all the mixed games. I think it would be boring for him and I know he doesn't want to deal with huge fields/crowds, but I imagine if he fired all those little NLHE/PLO events he would have a big edge and make some deep runs. It would be an interesting experiment. The flipside of playing all the mixed stuff is that he is spread thin across a bunch of different games that he might not necessarily be that studied or practiced in.

I think this is a significant part of Hellmuth’s results. He seems to have maximum “care” every single time he plays.

He also only plays certain events if he’s “feeling good”. I know sometimes that’s a code word for getting action sold at markup, but I think he legitimately decides not to play certain events if he’s lacking confidence/emotional momentum

Don't forget that during the live 7-stud tourney he was also firing 4 bullets into an online PLO event.

In stud you NEED to be following and tracking the upcards that were folded, which is going to be hard to do if your attention is diverted playing another tournament online.

His lack of passion for the smaller buyin events and tendency to just jump in late and try to gamble it up is also not allowing him to utilize his reading/exploitative skills playing deeper-stacked earlier in the tourney against weaker opponents.

Instead he's forced into coin-flips or 60/40 spots where variance is going to be a bigger bitch and he doesn't have enough chips to push out the opponents that have already chipped up.

it was ****ing awful

gotta love the **** about 20k markers considering the people he considers friends

I personally think GTO is way overrated and can get you in major trouble more than it can help you when you are playing against no one playing GTO. They aren't playing GTO even in the high rollers. GTO is a mirage except maybe for online when you are against bots and GTO regs. Dnegs is having a bad WSOP. Pretty simple, really. The most overrated thing to come out of poker in past few years is GTO. For most people, it is a ticket to lose in live. Hellmuth made second last night. He gives zero turds about GTO.

You don't know what GTO is.

I agree it is overrated but for a different reason. GTO is great if you are actually playing GTO. Playing sort of GTO is bad as you wind up very exploitable and in a manner many now know how to deal with.

That was kind of what I was trying to say. ^^^^ You said it better.

Any reasonable player understood

Well, this is certainly a post.

Daniel didn't lose in today's vlog.

-$1,054,503

It’s like the sort of thing every other DN post laments about on his YouTube comment section

‘but why can’t he just go back to Reading People?!!!’

That said there is probably a lot to be said for the efficacy of tilting more towards exploitative play than GTO for a lot of these events, more so than people care to admit

World Chess Champion Magnes Carlsen is playing today in the Main Event. Maybe someone should tell Negreanu (whose a chess enthusiast) and he can interview him for his vlog.

Daniel can teach him what GTO is

My advice to Daniel. Take GTO and throw it out the f'n window for big field tournaments. High roller fields, use GTO but don't use it 100%. He's not even an expert in GTO to begin with and gets exploited by players who are much more knowledgeable about it.

Daniel needs to get back to how he used to play, small ball poker, use his feel, his instinct a lot of the time. He was a better player then. Now he doesn't seem to know how or when to use GTO and is all over the damn place. His instinct for the game is gone. He needs to get that back.

He watches Rocky movies before every wsop right? He needs that Eye of the Tiger!!