Is Negreanu a cheater?

It looks like Daniel is losing more and more. How is that possible?
He’s been playing poker for almost 30 years and now he’s losing big time.
He knows the math, he follows the percentages, he uses the charts and he was a winner.
Or was he?
Is he maybe losing now caus he doesn’t control the poker site?
He calls foul first. Why?
Does he know something we don’t know about his past games…

Maybe he was taking performance-enhancing drugs and can’t get away with that anymore?? lol

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Two people play a game, there’s one winner. Just because Dnegs loses the game doesn’t mean that he only won previously by cheating. That’s a ridiculous non-sequitor. If you want to level an accusation, bring some evidence.

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He’s now down 25 stacks over 17k hands, thats a lot but not “big time”. Polk was one of the best HU players in the world, Negreanu played almost no HU before. No wonder Polk has a (small) edge over Negreanu.

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I think it is bad taste to suggest someone is cheating without a shred of real evidence. I also think the result is in no way unexpected.

Daniel is one of the best tournament players of all time, where I think his style and his ability to read cards and tells really allowed him to exploit the errors of weak players. He is a very good cash game player also (though I think not nearly as elite in that arena, where he is facing other top pros, as he is in tournaments). Neither of those means he is one of the top 10 or even top 1,000 heads up players in the world. Polk is a top heads up player. They are also playing mostly on-line, rather than the live environment where Daniel has made his name. All the betting lines favored Polk heavily. How on earth does that lead to the conclusion that he’s been cheating?

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Puggy,does Daniel need some evidence?
https://www.highstakesdb.com/10748-daniel-negreanu-feels-like-it-is-rigged-after-another-74k-loss-to-doug-polk.aspx

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Why is it OK for Daniel to suggest it’s rigged?

Some people call that Hocus Pocus since poker is a game of math not feelings…

Negreanu is a large field tournament player of the old school. He reads people rather than trying to play GTO, and while he has adapted to the modern game, Doug Polk has grown into that game.

Just because somebody has played for a long time and won for a long time doesn’t mean they will definitely win against a given opponent. That doesn’t mean he was cheating earlier in his career or that he is being cheated now.

And I don’t think anyone on this thread said it was ok for him to say it was rigged without any evidence.

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It’s not, if that is what Daniel is suggesting. I didn’t hear him say that, and so I don’t have vocal tone to know if he is just being tongue and cheek about his losses, or if he is being a sore loser. That doesn’t make it ok for you to make libelous assertions either.

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I think the title of the thread, “Is Negreanu a cheater?” is basically libel. Asking the question as the very subject of the thread is inappropriate, and I think this entire thread should should either have the title modified, if that is not the intent, or the thread itself should be removed.

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Did anyone say that it was ok for Dnegs to say that it felt like he was playing a rigged game, or did you just try to make a bogus false equivalency claim in support of a baseless argument that Negreanu must have been cheating his whole career if he can’t beat the best heads-up player in the world at his own game?

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I completely agree with you, although as a public figure Negreanu has all kinds of terrible things said about him all the time. People were merciless about his cursing rant recently. He has done some bad/questionable things like saying more rake is better, but people online can be merciless.

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Spot on. The false equivalency and the assumption that goes along with it (that he somehow has been cheating for 25 years across hundreds or even thousands of different live and online venues) is hilarious.

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You see JoeDirk you are one of the people that proclaims poker is a game of mathematics, tables and percentages. But now you are saying “He reads people " before you called it " superstition not strategy.”
Negreanu is crying out loud that the game might be rigged.(when he’s losing of course)
That’s funny.
Or is it???

Not sure what you are getting at here.
Are you condoning the puerile proclamations by dannyboy?

Do you feel his foul-mouthed tirade was libel too?
What is it you are defending?

Puggy, people usually see in others what they are doing themselves (yes I know this leaves me open to all kind of accusations)
Good ol’ Dannyboy started this blame game after he continued to lose big hands.
It makes one wonder, why would a successful player accuse another player(or organization) of cheating?
Is that baseless?
maybe, maybe not.
Danny has won a lot of big hands over the years with good luck.
Or was it?
Polk said he could beat him, that he figured him out and it looks like he’s keeping his word!

The way poker is played has changed dramatically since the internet era began. Computers have given us the power to do the math game so much better than was possible 20-25 years ago, when Negreanu first came into the profession.

In live games, human soft skills like reading tells are still relevant, because human players are often bad enough at the math that exploitative strategies work well against them, and playing GTO isn’t necessary, or isn’t the most profitable.

These days, so many of the players playing live poker are seasoned by playing tons and tons of online poker, where you can’t do the human reading, and where they have hand analysis software, HUDs, and the capability to play massive volumes of hands relatively quickly, and hone their math-based strategies.

Moreover, those strategies have now been developed to a degree that they just weren’t in years past. 25 years ago, GTO wasn’t a thing.

This is speculative. Sure, Negreanu could be projecting. He could also be aware that cheating is a thing. I think Polk pegged him when he said that the way he’s behaving in the aftermath of these losses is like a 1-2 fish, complaining about luck, feeling like the game is rigged. That’s the kind of BS I do.

There’s still no evidence that you’ve brought forth here to suggest that he’s been a cheater in the past. So… go look for some, and let us know if you find it. But spare me the speculation.

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Of course it’s speculation, or is it?
I think DN has been ‘cheating’ by trying to psyche out people and playing headgames.
He knows that that is how he’s got away with big pots by playing the man not the cards.
Polk took that element away by playing on the computer.
DN has access to computers and all the other “good” stuff so there’s no advantage for either one.
Only playing cards.
Turns out Polk is better at that…

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