Continuing the close battle for the rights to claim the title of “All Time Tournament Money Leader”, Canadian bred player Daniel Negreanu was once again in position to take back the top spot when he went deep in this weeks World Poker Tour $100,000 “Super-HighRoller Event”. The seemingly unstoppable Erik Seidel had other plans of course…
Seidel has been having one of the most amazing runs the poker world has seen in terms of amount of money won by the playing force on a month to month basis since the beginning of 2011. Averaging around a million or more for every page on the calendar so far this year, Erik has been crushing $25,000 dollar or higher buy-in events in particular. All of Erik’s major tournament cashes totaling over $5,500,000 since January have been fifth place or better and include four recent outright wins; first it was Aussie Millions $250,000 Super High Roller title worth $2,472,555, then in February he shipped again at the Las Angeles Poker Classic, taking down the $25,000 High Roller Event for a healthy $144,570. Next, it was on to the NBC National Heads Up Championship, where Seidel turned his 25k entry into another $750,000 as the last man standing in a field of the worlds top players and champions invited to the event. After this week, the poker machine tacks another $1,092,780 to his astronomical lifetime total of $15,945,180. The owner of 8 World Series of Poker bracelets, 1 World Poker Tour Title and 97 fifth place or better total finishes in events of over a $1000 buy-in certainly has earned the top spot.
Negreanu is no slouch either however, his third place finish in the same WPT 100K event yesterday for over $448,000 has kept the gap widening between him and Phil Ivey how now sits third place on the list. Ivey wasn’t present at the Bellagio World Poker events this week and has been reported by many sources not to have been seen in any major tournaments since “Black Friday”. Aria is having a promotional celebration event soon that is supposed to see Ivey play an events winner Heads Up; whether or not he continues to avoid public attention or attends this will pretty much indicate whether or not it will be Erik and Daniel continuing to jockey back and forth for the top spot over this years WSOP.
Negreanu had the lead earlier this year after a million dollar 2nd place finish in the $100,000 “Super High Roller” event at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure held in January. Daniel had passed Ivey for the top spot back in late 2009, a fourth place finish at EPT Vienna for $244,144 seen him finally overtake the $12,000,000 WSOP Main Event landmark win that had Jamie Gold superficially owning first place. After Phil answered back with his own second place finish in the $100,000 Challenge at the Aussie Millions of early 2010, Negreanu had his work cut out for him before squeaking past Ivey again this year. Daniel now sits with a live tournament earnings total of $14,573,511 putting him roughly three quarter of a million dollars ahead of Ivey, but around one and half million behind Seidel. Regardless, different “formulas” and “adjustments” made for inflation or invitational events can leave the live tournament money list flawed or subject to opinion. Hands down, Daniel owns the “Canadian Players Only” list with around a $5,000,000 lead on Jonathan Duhamel who is to the closest, and huge $9,000,000 difference between him and Gavin Smith‘s third.
Seidel over took Ivey for his first time in March of 2011 after the LAPC win,then Daniel with the NBC Heads Up Title, but it is important to note that his career records go back nine years before the Toronto player’s 1997 “break-out” and around twelve years prior to Ivey storming on the scene in 2000. Where the top three spots would shift on differences of a few hundred thousand before, movement looks only to come with a heater, an extremely high buy-in cash or another bracelet in the near future.
