Daniel Negreanu wins 7th WSOP bracelet in $50K Players Championship | Poker

Daniel Negreanu’s slump at the World Series of Poker is over.

The Las Vegas resident won the prestigious $50,000 buy-in Poker Players Championship on Thursday at the Horseshoe Events Center. Negreanu defeated Bryce Yockey heads-up to earn the $1.17 million first prize and the Chip Reese Memorial Trophy.

It is Negreanu’s seventh career WSOP bracelet, which are awarded for tournament victories, and first since 2013.

Negreanu, 49, one of the most popular players in the world, is the 10th player in history with seven or more bracelets.

“Emotion, relief, tears, all of it, because it’s really been a long time,” Negreanu said on the PokerGO broadcast.

Yockey, a poker pro residing in Marina del Rey, California, was seeking his second bracelet this summer and third of his career. He earned $768,467 for second.

High-stakes pro Chris Brewer finished third for $519,158 in the tournament, which features nine variants of poker and annually draws the world’s top mixed-game players.

“There is one event in the world I want to play more than any and I wanted to win more than any, and it’s this one. This is the one,” Negreanu told WSOP.com. “Obviously, the Main Event is special in a different way. But this one is all the best players in the world, pro-heavy field, playing 100-minute levels, days and days of grind, 12 hours a day. So to come out on top, you can’t fluke that.”

Negreanu’s last WSOP victory was in Europe, and he hadn’t won in Las Vegas since 2008. He finished runner-up five times in the past 10 years, including the $1 million buy-in Big One For One Drop event in 2014.

The win made Negreanu the leader in lifetime WSOP earnings with over $22.4 million, passing Antonio Esfandiari ($21.9 million).

“A lot of relief really. I have a lot of anxiety about coming heads-up because I’ve had so many seconds,” Negreanu told WSOP.com. “And it was just nice for things to feel like they went my way at this final table.”

Negreanu and Yockey traded the chip lead for nearly three hours before the tide turned on a hand of Pot-limit Omaha. With Negreanu all-in for his tournament life and down to his final card, he hit one of his 19 outs to score a key double-up and take over the chip lead.

A few hands later, Negreanu owned a 3-to-1 advantage over Yockey, and the match ended less than an hour after that.

In the final hand, playing Pot-limit Omaha, Yockey check-raised with flush and straight draws, then called when Negreanu, holding trip sevens, forced him all-in. Negreanu then made a full house on the turn to render Yockey’s draws irrelevant and seal the victory.

Negreanu’s wife, Amanda, was in attendance at the Horseshoe, adding another layer to the win.

“It’s very cool. This is the first time she’s been down here since we moved here because she was going to come when I win, and I haven’t been winning,” Negreanu told WSOP.com. “So it was nice to have her here for the moment, for sure.”

Contact David Schoen at dschoen@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5203. Follow @DavidSchoenLVRJ on X.