Get to know Daniel Negreanu,best poker player of the past decade

Today's culture seems to be celebrity-obsessed. There is now such a high premium placed on being recognized as a celebrity. This may have a lot to do with the fact that celebrities are feted everywhere and tend to earn big bucks from endorsements, personal appearances and their own product lines Unfortunately, not all celebrities became such by virtue of their hard work, special talent, skill or intelligence, or any worthy achievement. It would be so easy to cite examples of those who achieved their status through such notoriety as sex tapes and other scandals. It is always thus uplifting to read of people who have real talent or ability to offer the world.

In this context, the mention of Daniel Negreanu, poker player par excellence, may cause debate and discussion. However, whether you play the game or not, or whether you consider poker a serious topic or not, you will have to admit that his achievements have been commendable, especially now that poker is being recognized as a game of skill rather than chance.

For starters, at the ripe old age of 40 (turning 41 this 2015), he has already amassed a whopping close to $30 million from his live tournament prize money alone. This, from a career of professional poker playing which he started at 22 (though he initially failed at it). The year after, at 23, he started making a name for himself at the World Poker Finals, winning two events, earning thousands of dollars, and bagging the best all-around player award. The rest is history, and it is still being written to this day.

Some of his most notable achievements include having two WPT (World Poker Tour) titles and six WSOP (World Series of Poker) bracelets. He has also been recognized as Player of the Year by both WPT (in 2004 - 2005) and WSOP (in 2004 and 2013, the first player to win the award twice). He has won so many other tournaments that he was inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame in 2014, and has been named as the past decade's best poker player by the independent Global Poker Index.

On his personal life, Daniel Negreanu is of Romanian descent, though he was born in Toronto, Canada last July 26, 1974. He learned to play poker at 15 and dropped out of high school in senior year to make the rounds of games and casinos.

Aside from being a professional poker player, Daniel Negreanu is also a hockey fan, blogger, philanthropist who founded the golf event "Big Swing" for charity, mentor and teacher, writer and author, actor, and vegan. Truly, what an exciting life.