Negreanu Leaves Back-Bacon Bank at Home, Begs 'n' Borrows at Aussie Millions

Poker forums are abuzz in the last day or two with the story of Daniel Negreanu at the Aussie Millions. This year's Aussie extravaganza included a unique, ultra high-roller event that concluded yesterday, an event with $100,000 for a buy-in. 18 players, at least 15 of which should be familiar to most fans of the game, ponied up for a seat, and Erick Lindgren took down the first prize, a cool $1,000,000 for what amounted to a two-table SNG.

Funny, though, that Negreanu's little oops drew more wordage. Seems he thought that the "$100,000" listed on the Aussie Millions schedule of events was a typo, and as a result he didn't originally have enough cash on hand to play the event. Funnier still, it seems he had neglected to pre-arrange a line of credit with the Crown Vic, the hosting casino, so onlookers saw Negreanu chumming up the other deep-pocket players to come up with the $100K scratch.

Rumors are that one of the people he approached, Phil Ivey, turned him down, with Ivey reportedly saying that his money was already planned for baccarat. (Whether or not Ivey has developed an addiction to lower- or minus-EV games, including craps, might be a subject for a later post. Noting that it is his money, and he has -lots- of it, it'd still be nice to see Ivey not go the T.J. Cloutier or Stuey Ungar route.)

But back to Negreanu. He did indeed scrape the funds together for the event... seems like he just might be good for it, y'know. Negreanu's good for the game in oh-so-many ways... bright, personable, intelligent, opinionated, extremely talented... and still capable of the occasional "Doh!" moment.

And the real reason for the planned shaving-the-head thing, is that he doesn't want to look like "Fry Guy" any longer.