Daniel Negreanu obviously doesn't like a quiet life. If anyone had thought that when the Canadian poker legend left PokerStars they were headed for marriage and retirement, they couldn't have been more wrong. In fact, since he got caught, "DNegs" switched to GGPoker, engaged in a fierce heads-up feud with Doug Polek (losing $ 1.2 million), and then took on Phil Hellmuth in not one but two heads-up matches. up for high stakes.
The last thing Kid Poker was probably expecting was Brandon Cantu calling out to him for his net worth, but this is where we are, poker fans.
Who is Brandon Cantu?
A double WSOP bracelet winner, it's no secret that Brandon Cantu is also a polarizing figure in poker. Cantu had his previous brushes with controversy during the 2012 World Series where he complained in 2012 that he had been "robbed" of his third WSOP bracelet.
Back then, his complaint was that Rio had to close by 51m and he couldn't play a one-on-one match against Jon Aguiar, who lost after each had a rest day so that both players could play WSOP Main Event Day 1b. Cantu called his performance one of the best "in the history of the World Series".
Cantu has never won a bracelet in nine years and has been accused of cheating people in the poker world in the past, but who has also faced paralyzes as seen here:
How the beef was made
The Cantu of Negreanu story was something that really lingered in the background for many years until this week. Cantu is a close friend of Phil Hellmuth, so considering the fact that Hellmuth defeated Negreanu not only on his debut High Stakes Duel they competed, but also in the second game, you can safely make Cantu the natural enemy of Kid Poker.
The truth is, however, that Negreanu and Hellmuth are too good not to show each other much professional respect. To this end, Hellmuth has demonstrated it more than anyone else by assigning a skill level to Negreanu in two exclusive interviews with us in the past weeks as well as before, after and during each High-stakes duel match. Does Cantu respect Negreanu just as much?
We'd have to be wrong or not on the side, no, he didn't.
A professional like me, what format do you and Phil have? My God, if I think @phil_hellmuth the greatest player of my generation is +150 I have to say I'm in the neighborhood of +230? My God, all the hype and experience you have. Let's ask the freaks… @MikeMcDonald 89
- Brandon Cantu (@ brandoncantu) May 7, 2021
Cantu's attack on Negreanu might look blue, but we'd be very surprised if some money loans fell early in this relationship, after all, Negreanu is well known in the industry for having been a benefactor to many emerging and upcoming talents, and had his fingers burned before .
It's fair to assume that he could back up the following answer with more details than he would like to share on Twitter: “I would have played you too, but I feel it's just true to pay back all the money you extorted and robbed. The dead beat thief is who you are. "
Putting aside the poetic twist Kid Poker achieves with the slur 'Dead beat thief', [Ed - note to self, pen award-winning movie entitled Dead Beat Thief], is Negreanu right or is Cantu rightly calling out Negreanu?
Could they go to war?
Negreanu states both privately and publicly that Cantu should either "get up or shut down," but what if Cantu did exactly that? What could he bear and would it be worth watching? While PokerGO subscribers and Sour Patch Candy fans had eaten every second of the action in Hellmuth vs. Negreanu, surely the same audience wouldn't tune in to Cantu vs. Negreanu, if they hadn't seen Cantu first. In recent years, Cantu has been paying off some players he also owed money.
Negreanu views this as thieving and Cantu as overkill, stating that he "borrowed beyond my abilities as a high stakes poker player eight years ago." Guilty as the accused. "
In poker, the lines are blurry, too many and too many people to ever be anything other than gray, but Cantu promises to take every dug-in - trying to rob Negreanu of his "net worth" is at least utterly amusing. First, no player worthy of their brains would ever have wagered 25 years of hard-earned poker profit per line in a suggested format from Cantu, a win-win-all-game series where variance can determine any player a winner with a favorable run cards when the piles become shallow.
Where do Apex Predators come from?
While a heads-up match seems unlikely, there is a chance that the action will be interrupted privately when the World Series enters town, albeit not quite “to the rolls” as Cantu suggests. In the midst of all the posturing, Cantu's suggestion that if Hellmuth were +150 (as was the case with some online bookmakers) then Cantu should be +230 - which is why the American believes his $ 12m sham funds should be matched with Negreanu's net worth.
First, we highly doubt that the net value of Negrean is as low as say $ 25m - $ 30m. PokerStars Profits in their most profitable period in history would likely mean that Negreanu would invest a lot of his money early and safely, meaning he is unlikely to be doing anything other than playing with compound interest and profit from now on.
Add to that the $ 1.2 million loss of Doug Polk on their heads-up and that Negreanu could both a) afford to lose with ease and b) could have been prepared to lose more if it had gone worse with a much more experienced online player and his value will likely be much higher than Cantu could ever put in his wallet.
Cantu's final argument about his greatness seems to be that he met Elon Musk and we love the madness, to be fair.
Will Negreanu face Cantu? We'd be fooling around on the precautionary side if you were thinking of buying bulk popcorn just to recreate Michael Jackson's meme.