People News: Daniel Negreanu defeated; Andrew Neeme married and more…

In this column we deliver you the latest and most interesting news and gossip from our favourite poker people.

Daniel Negreanu defeated by Hellmuth (Again)

The poker news have been filled with updates of the latest High Stakes Duel between Daniel Negreanu and Phil Hellmuth. The pair played for $100,000 each in a heads-up game for about five hours and the winner in this second round was once again Phil Hellmuth.

This time Negreanu was not able to amass a 19-1 chip lead. It was only a 3-1 lead at the peak. Hellmuth played a lot more aggressively during this game, but Negreanu was still outshining in skill. Be it as it may, Hellmuth managed to pull it off again and claim victory. This is the fifth straight heads-up match he has won in this format after having beat Antonio Esfandiari before.

A third one of these matches is going to happen soon and Daniel Negreanu is hoping to get back even – in more than one sense of the word. Players will put down $200k each, so if Daniel wins, he will have won his money back, plus a little extra. But the money really isn’t what this match is about. Daniel wanted to prove to the world that Phil Hellmuth is not as good as he keeps claiming.

A sample size of two heads-up Sit & Gos is basically not a proof, but this is something the average poker player will not see. All they see is a very vocal Daniel Negreanu, claiming to be a better poker player than Hellmuth. So, the responses on Twitter were nasty. Daniel created a 11-part tweet thread to explain his thoughts on the “mean” reactions of the poker community.

1/11 thread

Bizarre part of my career with lots of heads up losses

Early in my career I won my first 8 final tables with no 2nd-5th place finishes

I guess it evens out in the long run, and I have cashed well over $20 million during this span, but when you are competitive by

— Daniel Negreanu (@RealKidPoker) May 6, 2021

And sure enough, soon after Daniel tweeted from the Aria poker room, playing in a high stakes tournament. Let’s just hope he won’t get battered too much in those. He says he can take all the criticism, but it surely can’t be fun.

It’s gonna take me a while to get used to this plexiglass deal!

First live tournament or poker session since the pandemic.

Definitely weird. pic.twitter.com/qiFNZ4JhB7

— Daniel Negreanu (@RealKidPoker) May 7, 2021

Shaun Deeb vs. Dan Smith

No, this is (probably) not going to be another heads-up match. In this feud, Shaun Deeb once again trolled a member of the poker community, namely Dan Smith, for this photo:

2p2 thread inspired me to pay homage to @AWice today pic.twitter.com/cBBnqvP8yg

— Dan Smith (@DanSmithHolla) April 24, 2021

Smith, who isn’t a very tall man, posed with three women by the pool, all of which are shorter than him. Reason enough for Deeb to bash on Smiths’ height saying “Must have been tough to find 3 girls shorter than you that are legal”.

Deeb himself is heavily overweight and many made snarky comments back at him on Twitter. The more surprising was Smith’s return, challenging Deeb to a $1 million cage fight.

Let’s have a cage fight for a million https://t.co/dO2PqcmZCR

— Dan Smith (@DanSmithHolla) April 24, 2021

It’s not the first time that we had fights in a ring between poker players – think back at Lex Veldhuis vs. ElkY or Olivier Busquet vs. JC Alvarado – but a Smith vs. Deeb fight is very unlikely to be happening.

Global Poker Awards will return in 2022

Hosting a Global Poker Awards ceremony in 2021 did not make sense as not much poker happened in the previous year. Now, the Global Poker Index is very proud to announce that they will host the awards again in 2022.

The awards are planned for March 2022 at the Aria Resort & Casino and will of course be streamed on PokerGO. This collaboration has been cemented also for 2023 and 2024.

So, anyone who wants to make it into the poker history books can start grinding again this year. More than 20 awards will be given out and these are not just for poker players, also industry people are usually recognised during this event.

If would like to see the official announcement, you can find it on YouTube:

Andrew Neeme married

Everyone’s favourite poker vlogger Andrew Neeme (sorry, Brad Owen) has finally tied the knot with his long time partner Busi. The two of them were engaged for a while and had planned a big wedding for 2020, which got cancelled due to known circumstances. Busi said on their very own podcast “Tells” that once the deposit was returned from that event she knew they were not going to go through the planning process again.

And so they decided on a quiet wedding in their home town of Las Vegas with a beautiful photo shoot all across town and at their home. The thought was to picture them as a married couple living the same life they had already lived together for so long. The gallery of photos is still available on a dedicated website.