Daniel Negreanu Bags Top 10 in WSOP $25,000 PLO High Roller, Targets First Omaha Bracelet

By Alex Drummond, Editor-in-Chief · June 17, 2026 · Fact-checked by Maya Chen

Daniel Negreanu finished Tuesday night with 789,000 chips and a top-10 stack in the World Series of Poker's $25,000 Pot-Limit Omaha High Roller, putting the Toronto-born ambassador for GGPoker in position to chase the one variant of bracelet that has eluded him in a 28-year tournament career.

Event #47, scheduled across three calendar days at the Horseshoe and Paris ballrooms, drew 329 entries across two starting flights, including 47 re-entries, and generated a prize pool of US$7,731,000. Forty-nine players are guaranteed to cash, with the eventual champion earning a first-place prize that will exceed US$1.8 million if the structure follows the 2025 edition. Day 2 began at noon Las Vegas time on Wednesday and will run for ten one-hour levels, with late registration closing at the end of Level 12 and the money bubble expected to burst during the second or third level of the day.

Negreanu bagged in seventh place overall, sitting on 197 big blinds at the Day 2 starting structure of 3,000/6,000 with a 6,000 big blind ante. The leader, Italy's Youness Barakat, bagged 1,675,000. United States PLO specialist Philip Marsico was second with 1,570,000, and French veteran David Benyamine, a regular in the World Poker Tour circuit since the early 2000s and one of the deepest live PLO portfolios in the game, was third with 1,209,000.

The chip counts entering Day 2

The format mismatch

Negreanu, 51, has spent most of his bracelet-winning life playing No-Limit Hold'em and the larger mixed-game championships. His seven WSOP titles, won across 1998, 2003, 2004, 2008, twice in 2013 and most recently the $50,000 Poker Players Championship in 2024, include zero in a single-variant Pot-Limit Omaha event. The first of those bracelets came in a $2,000 Pot-Limit Hold'em, a format the WSOP has since retired. The rest are scattered across Limit Hold'em, Seven-Card Stud, Hold'em-Omaha-Eight-Stud-Eight (S.H.O.E.) and the mixed-game flagship.

That gap is not for lack of trying. Negreanu's PLO record on the secondary high-stakes circuit has been strong in recent years. In 2024 he won the PokerGO Tour PLO Series $5,100 Pot-Limit Omaha event for US$197,475 and then took down a $10,100 PGT PLO Series event later that year for US$265,200. In June 2025 he finished third in PGT PLO #8 for US$101,400. He has played in essentially every televised PLO cash game on the Las Vegas circuit over the last three years and remains a frequent guest on the Hustler Live PLO streams.

WSOP bracelets in pure PLO formats, however, have eluded him. Live $25,000 Pot-Limit Omaha High Rollers since the structure was added to the WSOP schedule in the late 2010s have produced bracelets for Brandon Adams, Michael Watson, Dennis Weiss (twice, including in 2025 for US$2,292,155), and a handful of others. Negreanu has cashed in the variant a handful of times but never made a Day 3.

What 789,000 means at this structure

Day 2 of Event #47 began at noon local time at blinds of 3,000/6,000 with a 6,000 big blind ante, putting Negreanu's stack at 197 big blinds. That is comfortable, but not commanding. The structure for PLO high roller events, in which a single hand can swing 80 or 100 big blinds on a flopped wrap and a wet board, means leader Barakat's 419-big-blind tower can be transferred to a 60-big-blind opponent in two hands.

The bubble is the immediate target. Forty-nine spots pay out of the 329-entry pool; sixty-six remained at end of Day 1b. The first money jump under last year's identical structure paid US$50,490 for the min-cash, with payouts rising sharply once the field is inside the top thirty. By the end of Wednesday play, the field is expected to be down to fewer than twenty players, with a Thursday final-day to play down to a winner.

Negreanu has been candid in recent interviews about treating high-roller events as bankroll-management exercises rather than pursuits of any single trophy. He has invested heavily across the 2026 WSOP schedule, including a fourth-place Day 1 chip count in the $250,000 Super High Roller earlier in the month before busting in 35th on Day 2, and he was in the field for Event #41's record-breaking $4.3 million top prize that went to Adrian Mateos two days ago.

The Canadian field, mid-series

The 2026 World Series has produced three Canadian bracelet winners through Event #47, with combined gold of US$2,395,570. Frederic Normand took down Event #21 Pot-Limit Omaha Hi-Lo on June 6 for US$235,377. Kristen Foxen, born in St. Catharines, Ontario, won the $25,000 High Roller No-Limit Hold'em (Event #19) on June 7 for US$1,773,083. Christopher Alcindor completed the eight-day hat-trick the following day in the $1,500 Big O for US$387,110. Adding non-bracelet results, Clayton Mozdzen's runner-up finish in the $1,500 H.O.R.S.E. (US$122,206), Orlando Moretti's sixth-place finish in the $800 Deepstack on Tuesday (US$64,992), and assorted cashes for Mike Leah, Tara Dunn and Paul Richardson have pushed Canadian notable cash for the series above US$2.58 million.

Negreanu has not yet posted a cash at this WSOP. He has registered for at least nine bracelet events, busted close to the bubble in the $250,000 Super High Roller, made three Day 2s, and has gone deep without a final table in any. A Day 3 in Event #47 would be his first deep run of the series. A bracelet would be his eighth, drawing him level with Phil Ivey, Erik Seidel and Men Nguyen on the WSOP all-time list, and the first PLO bracelet of his career in a format that has both rewarded and frustrated him at the secondary circuit.

The Ontario angle, beyond the seat

Negreanu was born in Toronto and started his career in the underground cash games above various Avenue Road clubs in the late 1990s. He moved to Las Vegas full-time in 1998 to pursue tournaments, has never relocated back, but plays under the Canadian flag on all WSOP reporting and on PokerNews. He remains the most-cashed Canadian in WSOP history, with 266 lifetime cashes and approximately US$23 million in WSOP earnings, and his commentary work for GGPoker streams over the last four years has made him the most visible voice on Ontario's regulated GGPoker product. The same operator runs daily satellites for the WSOP and for the upcoming WSOP Super Circuit Canada at Playground in August through a separate, regulated Ontario gaming licence.

For Ontario players watching the Wednesday updates from the Horseshoe, the practical takeaway is that Negreanu remains, at 51, a viable competitor in fields that include essentially every player whose name appears on the all-time money list. Players looking to follow the Day 2 action can monitor the live updates on PokerNews and the live blog on WSOP.com. Players interested in qualifying for WSOP Super Circuit Canada satellites from a regulated Ontario operator can review the GGPoker Ontario page; the broader regulated market is covered on the best poker sites in Ontario overview, and the tournament schedule covers the next four weeks of regulated guarantees across all six rooms.

What to watch on Day 2

Three storylines are worth tracking through Wednesday. First, Negreanu's seat assignment: PokerNews has reported he draws next to David Benyamine, the third-largest stack, which creates an immediate left-of-position challenge. Second, the bubble: with 49 cashers and 66 remaining, the bubble will burst either during late registration or in the first hour after, with the field likely to play hand-for-hand at around 50 to 51 players. Third, the structure: ten 60-minute levels at $25,000 buy-in is short by high-roller standards, and the field will likely play down to twelve or thirteen players by night's end, with a Thursday final-day playing down to a winner.

If Negreanu carries his stack into the final twelve, he will be in position to chase what would be his eighth WSOP bracelet, ending another drought of his own. Two years ago at the 2024 series, he ended an 11-year wait by winning the $50,000 Poker Players Championship. His seventh bracelet came at age 49, four years after committing to a self-imposed three-year tournament reset focused on game-tree refinement and high-roller volume. The eighth, if it comes in Event #47, would arrive at age 51 and in a discipline he has spent the last three years studying rather than winning.

The Day 2 cards were dealt at 12:00 p.m. Pacific. Live updates and the full chip leaderboard run on PokerNews live reporting throughout Wednesday afternoon and into the night.

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