Daniel Negreanu wins the WSOP Player of the Year race!

Team PokerStars Pro Daniel Negreanu today won the sector Series of Poker Player of the Year title becoming the primary person to win the accolade twice. Negreanu started the day behind Matt Ashton at the POY leader board but had calculated that a top eight finish would see him clear the British mixed game specialist.

Negreanu's had an improbable year: EPT9 Grand Final

There was the risk that November Niner Marc-Etienne McLaughlin was still within the a few of the final 13 and may he have gone deep and won the primary Event then he will have pipped Negreanu to the title. You assert that's improbable but something similar happened last year when Phil Hellmuth cashed in four WSOPE events, including a win within the WSOPE Main Event, to make a late dash for it leaving Greg Merson needing to win the WSOP Main Event in Las Vegas, which he did. This year's added drama was nixed when McLaughlin bust before the money leaving the honor run in Negreanu's hands. It didn't take much longer.

Joni Jouhkimainen's bust out in 9th (€50,400) sealed the deal topping off an out of this world year for Negreanu, which nearly saw him complete his Triple Crown.

WSOP Player of the Year
(Bracelets, final tables)
2004: Daniel Negreanu (1, 5) $346,280
2005: Allen Cunningham (1, 4) $1,007,115
2006: Jeff Madsen (2, 4) $1,467,852
2007: Tom Schneider (2, 3) $416,829
2008: Erick Lindgren (1, 3) $1,348,528
2009: Jeff Lisandro (3, 4) $807,521
2010: Frank Kassela (2, 3) $1,255,314
2011: Ben Lamb (1, 4) $5,352,970
2012: Greg Merson (2, 2) $9,785,354
2013: Daniel Negreanu (1, 3) $1,256,399*

*Stats don't include the last event (WSOPE €25k High Roller)

Negreanu has cashed in nine events WSOP events this year for $1,256,399 already (that comes with his WSOP APAC win and the WSOPE)

The congratulations came rolling in, and here is a couple of them:

And there has been a pleasant show of sophistication from Ashton:

At the time of writing Negreanu was fourth of 7 remaining players with €63,500 locked up and still in with a shot at €725,000 and his sixth bracelet. Will keep you updated.

DNegs on his solution to the EPT Vienna final table in 2010

Rick Dacey is a staff writer for the PokerStars Blog.

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