The Railbird Report: Negreanu Faces Phil Ivey and Gus Hansen in $2,000/$4,000 Game

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Aug 04, 2016 8 min read Last updated Sep 01, 2016

Who's leading the All Time Money List with $32,618,268 in cashes according to TheHendonMob? Daniel Negreanu! Who's on top of the popularity ranking of the same live tournament poker database with 508,131 unique hits since the 1st of January, 2008? Daniel Negreanu! Negreanu is on top of the poker world right now, so at least that much is clear.

Those half a million unique hits haven't looked up Negreanu's palmarès solely because they came across his name in poker reports. The Canadian, turned United States citizen, has kept himself busy with a whole host of other things as well. Besides the just released documentary on his life (KidPoker, check it out on Netflix), he's involved with the hockey team coming to Vegas, asks a plethora of questions on different subjects via his twitter, and acts like a crusader against "The Donald".

Though he's widened his scope a bit, Negreanu is still first and foremost a poker player. And while his track record boasting $32 million in live tournament cashes might suggest he's mostly a tournament player, he's originally a cash game player. And while you won't regularly see him playing the ring games at European Poker Tour stops, back home in Vegas he still strolls into the Bellagio poker room every so often.

Yesterday, Negreanu published a blog where he wrote about a $1,500-$3,000 mixed game — stakes were later bumped to $2,000/$4,000 — where they played 8 hands of each game in an 11-game mix. Negreanu revealed many details of the game, and described a hand where none other than Phil Ivey made him lay down two pair in a stud hand:

To see what Negreanu did facing this bet, you have to check out his blog post. But what would you do?

Negreanu's blog is great for poker fans as it gives a unique look into the world of high stakes poker. While shows like Poker After Dark and High Stakes Poker have ceased to exist, high stakes games still happen on a regular basis in Vegas and other places in the world, with the usual suspects.

On top of writing about the recent hand against Gus Hansen and Phil Ivey, Negreanu reminisced about a game he played back in the day with the same line up. The stakes were high, but the chips were low;

After the tournament, a $4000-$8000 cash game broke out. The problem was, nobody brought enough money to buy chips to play a game that size, so we all agreed to play with $1 chips and settle up back in Las Vegas.

It's this game where Negreanu lost a million dollar for the first time in his life, and again he wasn't afraid to give a nice little anecdote;

He then says, "You hit beantown. First time you ever been stuck a big bean?" I still wasn't quite sure what the hell he was talking about, then it dawned on me that I was stuck $1.3 million in the game while Ivey was all smiles. I guess a "big bean" is a million. Good to know.

Negreanu won a little bit in the game this week, but is still down $276,200 for the year. He set a goal of playing 200 hours of live cash games total for the year, profiting at least $250,000. He played 89 hours so far, so he has some catching up to do. First up though, is EPT Barcelona where the most prolific PokerStars Team Pro will show his face once again.

Last Week's Biggest Pots Online

While Negreanu is open about his profits and losses in the game, and shares anecdotal hand histories with his fans, live cash games are away from the general public. Joe Schmo can't just walk up to Bobby's Room and rail the entire game to see who's doing well and what the biggest pots are.

Fortunately, online is a different story. Just fire up PokerStars and you can rail all the games you want. And in case you were busy last week, we recapped the biggest hands and put all the stats in tables. Thanks to tracking site HighStakesDB for the stats.

After a quiet summer, action was back on at the high stakes tables. Interestingly enough, the weeks biggest pot came from a $50/$100 no limit hold'em table, where "bajskorven87" and "OtB_RedBaron" both got 332 big blinds to the middle in a big pot. Another cooler made for the second biggest hand as Jens "Fresh_oO_D" Lakemeier caught a lucky river against Alexander "joiso" Kostritsyn in a $55,800 pot. A pot between Timofey "Trueteller" Kuznetsov and "RaúlGonzalez" round up this weeks top three.

1) "bajskorven87" Wins a $66,338 Pot (663 big blinds) versus "OtB_RedBaron"
^{($50/$100 NLH Heads Up)}

"bajskorven87" opened his button for $220 and "OtB_RedBaron" made the call to create a $440 pot.

With $440 in the middle, the flop of A♣10♦9♠ appeared and "OtB_RedBaron" checked to his opponent.

"bajskorven87" made a continuation bet of $437.50 and was soon facing a check raise to $1,185.62. "bajskorven87" made the call.

The 6♥ hit the turn and "OtB_RedBaron" bet $2,275.07 into the $2,811.24 pot. "bajskorven87" raised to $7,050 straight and "OtB_RedBaron" called to create a $16,811.24 pot.

The 2♠ on the river was a blank and "OtB_RedBaron" checked. "bajskorven87" made an over bet shove for $24,713.64 and "OtB_RedBaron" made the call. "bajskorven87" showed 7♦8♦ for the nuts and "OtB_RedBaron" could do nothing more than mucking his A♥10♠ for top two.

2) Jens "Fresh_oO_D" Lakemeier Wins a $55,831 Pot (558 blinds) versus Alexander "joiso" Kostritsyn
^{($50/$100 PLO part of mix 6-handed)}

Action folded to Alexander "joiso" Kostritsyn and he made it $350 on the button. Big blind Jens "Fresh_oO_D" Lakemeier made the call to create a $750 pot.

The flop came 2♠10♣3♦ and Lakemeier check raised Kostritsyn's $447 bet to $1,600. The call followed, growing the pot to $3,950.

With the K♥ hitting the turn Lakemeier didn't hold back and fired another $3,400 into the pot. This time Kostritsyn was the one putting his foot on the pedal, raising to $14,145. Lakemeier made the call to grow a pot of $32,240.

Lakemeier checked once the 3♣ completed the river. Kostritsyn, having $11,795 back at this point, didn't shove but bet $8,058.75. Lakemeier shoved all in and Kostritsyn committed his remaining $3,700 as well, but would soon receive the bad news.

Lakemeier showed 9♥Q♣3♠3♥ for rivered quads. Kostritsyn had no other option than to muck his 2♣K♠10♠K♦ for the second nuts.

3) Timofey "Trueteller" Kuznetsov Wins a $43,309 Pot (216 blinds) versus "RaúlGonzalez"
^{($100/$200 PLO part of mix Heads Up)}

Timofey "Trueteller" Kuznetsov opened his button for $600 and "RaúlGonzalez" three bet to $1,800. Kuznetsov made the call to create a $3,600 pot going into the flop.

"RaúlGonzalez" bet $1,800 on 6♥2♦Q♦ and Kuznetsov made the call in position.

With the A♥ on the turn, "RaúlGonzalez" bet $4,797,99 into $7,200. Kuznetsov shoved all in for $18,054.62 and "RaúlGonzalez" made the call.

The two high stakes regulars had the option to run the river twice on, but both times "RaúlGonzalez" ended up missing his outs. Both the 6♠ river and 9♦ on the river were blanks and Kuznetsov was slid the entire pot of $43,309.

Online High Stakes Action Last Week

The 2016 Leaderboard

This years biggest winner, Ben "Sauce123" Sulsky, didn't play a single hand of poker according to tracking site HighStakesDB, and both other 2016 big winners didn't make for a lot of action either. Andres "Educa-p0ker" Artinano lost a whopping $292 in 35 hands, Dani "supernova9" Stern is down $5,431 over 75 tracked hands.

Both Alex "Kanu7" Millar (36 tracked hands, down $2,102) and "candela2005" (down $19,561 over 83 hands) took it easy, but fan favorite Viktor "Isildur1" Blom did make for a big show. He played 10,211 tracked hands, winning $57,000 in the process. He's still the years biggest losing player, but overall still up over $1.3 million on PokerStars.

_{The above top three of biggest winners and losers in online poker for 2016 and the top 10 biggest winners and losers online for the last two weeks only consist of PokerStars accounts that haven't opted out with HighStakesDB.com.}

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