Annie Duke and Daniel Negreanu, in happier times.

As you may have heard by now, poker pro Daniel Negreanu teed off on fellow player Annie Duke in an interview the other day, referring to her as a "F***ing c***." Now Duke has responded in an open letter to one of his biggest sponsors, Poker Stars, that takes exception with Daniel's choice of words.

After Negreanu called her that less than charitable name, a female poker player, who goes by the alias PokerLawyer, wrote her own open letter to Poker Stars. In it, she said she hoped they would chastise Daniel in some way, for his use of the 'C' word. They didn't make any mention of the offensive word in their response to her, and basically just said that Daniel was entitled to his opinion, and they support his right to say what he wants, as an individual. And that's what made Duke mad.

In Duke's letter, she says, in part: "I am not offended by Daniel's opinion. He has a right to disagree with me and dislike me...This is not about his views. This is about a particular word he chose to express those views. The word "c***" is not an opinion, it is an abusive epithet, and PokerStars is completely ignoring the use of that term..." She goes on to say how disappointed she is that they support Negreanu and his role in the controversy.

To complicate matters further, the two have a bit of a history. A few years back, Negreanu posted a laundry list of reasons he didn't like Duke. He's since gone on the record to say he was out of line with some of those comments, but clearly the animosity remains.

Which means this all probably isn't over. Will Daniel Negreanu take it back? Will there be another flurry of angry open letters? Only time will tell...

On the Annie Duke fan leaderboard, Daniel Negreanu ranks dead last.

Daniel Negreanu, the world's second-winningest tournament poker player of all time and a beloved figure to many poker fans, is known for running his mouth over just about any topic you can think of. Usually he stops short of saying anything too offensive, but in a new interview he goes off on Annie Duke and unleashes some pretty harsh language on her.

In what almost looks to be a throwaway part of the interview, Negreanu is asked about the men who played in this year’s Ladies Event at the WSOP. After three sentences about the event in general, Negreanu turns the conversation to Annie Duke and doesn't hold back:

What irked me is that this woman has the audacity on her website to call herself ‘the best female poker player in the world’. So on one side of the coin she’s fighting for, ‘Oh, we’re all equal, there shouldn’t be any gender thing,’ but when appropriate she decides to call herself the best female poker player in the world. 

So I’m like ‘how offensive are you, you f***ing c***? You want to say you’re speaking for women, yet you claim superiority over all of them.

This isn't the first time that Kid Poker has gone off on the reigning NBC National Heads-Up Poker champion. In the past, though, he wasn't so terse about it. Check out this old post for a laundry list of reasons that Daniel Negreanu hates Annie Duke, including her behavior the first time they met, at a tournament at the Four Queens in downtown Las Vegas back when he was 22 years old. Neither of them yet had their faces plastered all over television and magazines, so the account is an interesting window into a different time in poker even though it's clearly biased.

Daniel Negreanu dresses like this even when he plays online.

There are many who say Daniel Negreanu is a dinosaur, one of the old generation of pros who've been eclipsed by the new online poker wunderkinds. They say that the old guard is doomed to slowly slip into obscurity, surpassed by a new generation of Tom Dwans.

But then the old relic goes and has a week like this. In the last five days, Negreanu is up $332,770, playing $100/$200 No Limit Hold'Em. And he's doing it online, where some of those aging dinosaurs fear to tread. In fact, Daniel has recently made a concerted effort to improve his online game, with the hopes that it will prevent him from actually becoming that obsolete old-timer that some say he already is. And not only might it make his game better, he also doesn't have to worry about anyone wearing sunglasses when he plays on the net.

Up until this week, he'd been trending down for the last year, at least in online action. But his 1/3rd of a million dollar win puts him back into profits for 2010. And combine that with his second-place finish at last year's WSOP-Europe Main Event, and a few decent results at the recently-ended 2010 WSOP, and Negreanu's game isn't looking too shabby.

Frank Kassela claimed the Player of the Year lead when John Juanda bubbled the $25,000 Six-Handed No-Limit Hold'em event last night. (Photo: PokerWire)

Day 2 of the $25,000 Six-Handed No-Limit Hold’em is officially in the books, and the wait was well worth it. There was more than enough action to go around as the field was narrowed from 69 at the start of the day to just 18 as the night finished up.

Ending the day in the top spot was Bryn Kenney. He benefited relatively early in the day from a perfect river card that allowed him to crack Phil Ivey’s pocket kings with A-K, and from there he rarely had to look over his shoulder, finishing with a stack worth 2,425,000, nearly one million chips more than his nearest competitor, Brian Hodhod (1,484,000). 

Fan favorite Daniel Negreanu jumped up over the one-million-chip mark early in the day but eventually hit a spot where he just hovered around the same stack size. He ended the day in sixth place with 860,000, still plenty of room to work with blinds at 10,000/20,000 and a 3,000 ante. Regardless of where he finishes, Negreanu is guaranteed his best finish of the 2010 WSOP so far.

Just ahead of Negreanu at the end of the night was double-bracelet winner Frank Kassela (978,000), who entered the day dueling with John Juanda to take the lead in the WSOP Player of the Year race. Both men roller-coastered across the chip counts all day, but when crunch time came around Juanda actually became the tournament’s bubble boy, running 2-2 into Mikael Thuritz’s Q-Q and then busting one hand later. That finish in 19th place for Juanda gave Kassela a guaranteed five-point lead, one which he can expand significantly by making a big run today.

Also still alive and guaranteed a payday when Day 3 of the $25,000 Six-Handed No-Limit Hold'em begins are Sam Trickett (1,123,000), Abe Mosseri (1,035,000), Jason Somerville (859,000), Isaac Haxton (835,000), Shawn Buchanan (772,000), Eugene Katchalov (600,000), Justin Bonomo (576,000), Carlos Mortensen (484,000), Vadim Trincher (425,000), Mikael Thuritz (388,000), Heather Sue Mercer (349,000) and Dan Kelly (260,000). All of them will be chasing the top prize of $1,315,518.

The day should be a relatively short one, as only 12 players need to be eliminated to reach the final table and take one final break until Saturday afternoon. Action in this last big WSOP hold'em event prior to the Main Event gets back underway at 3:00 p.m. PT this afternoon.

Daniel Negreanu had one of the best Day 1 performances of his 2010 WSOP today.

Day 1 of the World Series of Poker’s first-ever $25,000 Six-Handed No-Limit Hold’em tournament is in the books, and action poker was the theme of the day. The field dropped 113 of its 191 starters, leaving just 60 more players to be eliminated before the money bubble pops and guaranteed $58,699. Philipp Gruissem, an online poker player from Germany, ended the day as the chip leader with 548,100. He has just two previous live tournament cashes on his resume, but he’s not a total unknown on the internet. He has performed well in a number of Sunday tournaments and special events online over the last two years en route to career winnings of $950,016.

Several bigger storylines of this WSOP played out on a smaller scale in the first day of this new high-dollar event. Like the British invasion angle? Try former professional soccer player Sam Trickett, who already has a second-place finish in the $5,000 No-Limit Hold’em event to his credit this summer. He finished third in chips to end the day as this tournament’s top representative from the United Kingdom.

Been following the WSOP Player of the Year race closely? John Juanda and Frank Kassela, who were tied at the top of the leaderboard going into this event, finished 7-8 at the end of Day 1. Juanda held just four and a half big blinds more than Kassela, and both return with very deep stacks tomorrow, with whoever finishes better in this tournament most likely gaining important ground on the other for Player of the Year.

And if you’re a fan of Daniel Negreanu you already know that he’s had something of an off-year at the WSOP, at least by his standards: he has only cashed three times. One of those was a final table appearance in the $10,000 Deuce-to-Seven Draw Lowball World Championship, but eighth place paid just $26,004. In all his earnings this summer amount to $54,96. But if Negreanu stays on the course he set for himself on Day 1 of this tournament, where he finished sixth in chips, then he’ll be in fine shape to make his second final table of the Series for significantly more money than the last one.

All those storylines will continue to play out later today. And if past experience is any guide, the presence of other top poker pros like Phil Ivey, Erik Seidel, Phil Galfond and Erick Lindgren further back in the field means that new WSOP storylines could emerge faster than you can flip a coin. The second of four days of play begins this afternoon at 2:30 p.m., and you can watch streaming action directly from the Rio starting at 5:30 p.m. on ESPN3.com.

Daniel Negreanu almost kissed $10,000 goodbye on an ill-advised prop bet.

When you're a huge name in the poker world, with all the winnings and sponsorship dollars that entails, sometimes you get bored risking only your buy-in. And that's when you make insane 100 to 1 prop bets on yourself to keep things interesting.

Daniel Negreanu has seen it all at the World Series of Poker. So maybe it's only natural that his interest starting waning while playing in the $10,000 Pot Limit Hold'Em Championship last night. He sent out a tweet saying: "Got 75,700 on dinner break. Got no mental strength to play high end poker today..." An hour later, though, he'd come up with a plan to get his head back in the game - an insane prop bet with a fellow pro. Again, accoring to his Twitter update: "I just laid 100-1 with Kathy Liebert that I will make day 2 of this event. She bet 100 bucks. I'd lose 10K. I know it's a bad bet I don't care!"

You have to admire his confidence, if not his math skills. And yes, at the time he made the bet, he had a pretty good chip stack and there were only a couple hours more to play. But risking five figures to make $100 is not the way to please the Poker Gods. And, sure enough, a couple hours later he'd managed to lose half his chip stack and was one bad hand away from getting knocked out of the tournament. In the end, though, he managed to hang on and make it through to Day 2. No word yet on what he's going to do with his winnings, or if he already blew them by paying for a taxi back to the Strip.

The rail of the 2-7 Draw World Championship is packed with poker fans.

Event #22 of the 2010 World Series of Poker, the $10,000 Deuce-to-Seven Draw Lowball Championship, may have drawn one of the smaller fields of any event held so far with just 101 entries, but there’s some serious railbird action going on thanks to the quality of the participants at the two tables that remain as Day 3 begins here at the Rio.

Some big-name poker pros remain in contention, though most of them are at the bottom of the chip counts. Andy Bloch (146,000), Daniel Negreanu (223,000) and John Juanda (225,000) are bringing up the rear of the 10-man pack. Bloch is seeking his first career bracelet after several second-place finishes, most notably to Chip Reese in the 2006 $50,000 HORSE, while Negreanu and Juanda are both seeking their fifth career WSOP wins. If Juanda can advance to the last seven, he will be making his third final table appearance this year already.

Meanwhile Erik Seidel (280,000) sits squarely in the middle of the pack as he chases his ninth career World Series of Poker bracelet, which would tie him with poker legend Johnny Moss for fourth place all-time. Seidel’s fourth career bracelet came in deuce-to-seven way back in 1998, when he defeated a field of just 26 players to claim the $132,750 top prize. He also won his eighth bracelet and $538,835 in the Deuce-to-Seven World Championship back in the 2007 WSOP, and cashed in this year’s Event #14, $1,500 Deuce-to Seven Draw Lowball.

All of these top pros will have a tough road ahead of them as the players occupying the top spots aren’t exactly slouches. Chip leader David Baker is appearing at his second final table of this WSOP, seeking to improve on his 6th-place finish in the $50,000 Poker Players Championship. Online pro and EPT regular George Danzer, who has scored big cashes in the last year playing shorthanded Pot-Limit Omaha and Badugi, will be looking to win Germany’s first bracelet of 2010. And former pro hockey player Eric Cloutier is guaranteed his highest-ever finish in a WSOP event, and if he can finish in 6th place or higher his cash will be the single largest of his five-year poker career.

With blinds starting at 4,000/8,000 and antes of 2,000 there is a fair bit of play for the shortest stacks, so this event could go for a while. But with a no-limit betting structure, it could also end on hte early side. One thing is for sure - there are no soft spots in the lineup, so whoever claims the bracelet at the end of the night will be a deserving winner.

Jamie Gold may have won the biggest prize, but he isn't the best. (photo courtesy of WSOP)

The 2010 World Series of Poker is finally here, and with it, the chance for some as yet unknown poker player to win the main event and become a legend. Since Chris Moneymaker came out of nowhere to pocket the bracelet and $2.5 million in 2003, the winners of the main event have won the biggest prizes and made the most headlines. But since the poker boom really started in earnest, back in 2003 or so, what players have actually performed the best at the WSOP?

Those answers can be found in a new article on CardPlayer.com that lists the top WSOP money earners since 2003. And to make things a little more complicated, but also a little more interesting, they scrapped any prizes won at the final table of the main event. Their reasoning being that those prizes dwarf everything else, and the tournament itself has no many entrants that making the final table is a bit of a crap-shoot. So, by their reasoning, the best way to find out who the top WSOP players really are, is to look at their total winnings excluding those results.

Holding down the #1 position on their list is a name that might be a little surprising. The rest of the top 5 is filled with pros that have been big names for years. But what they all have in common is the ability to excel at all kinds of poker variants, and not just No Limit Hold'Em. And what they also have in common is that none of them are Jamie Gold. He may be the biggest cash winner in poker history, but the vast majority of it came with that one, big $12 million cash for the 2006 main event, and so, according to Card Player's rules, that doesn't count.

Here's the top 5, including total cash earned at the WSOP, since 2003:

Vitaly Lunkin       $3,374,896

Scotty Nguyen     $2,954,925

John Juanda       $2,772,089

Freddy Deeb       $2,703,404

Daniel Negreanu  $2,660,182

An opponent uses a Vulcan mind meld to try to read Ivey.

Sportsbooks have just released their initial odds for the upcoming 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event, and you'll never guess who's right at the top. Phil Ivey is the favorite to win the big one at this year's WSOP.

If you're a betting man or woman, you can pick the top all-time earner in tournament poker to win the main event at 80 to 1 odds. The second best odds are for Allen Cunningham and Gus Hansen, who both come in at 100 to 1. If Phil Hellmuth happens to win, those brave enough to have bet on him will get a 125x return on their money.

Ivey has, of course, never won the main event. But he's widely considered to be the top player in the game right now, and he's coming off a final table appearance at last year's WSOP finale. He does own seven bracelets already, two of which are from 2009, and he'll definitely be gunning to add to his hardware collection this year.

You can also bet on your favorite poker pro just reaching the final table. Again, Phil Ivey is the favorite, at 33 to 1. Daniel Negreanu makes an appearance in the list of top favorites, with 40 to 1 odds, while Gus Hansen comes in at 50 to 1.

The 2010 WSOP main event begins July 5th, 2010, in Las Vegas.

Roy Winston: Sunglasses do not equal cheating

Last week we told you about Daniel Negreanu’s blog in which he goes off on sunglasses, saying they’re bad for the televised game and that cheaters like Russ Hamilton would be opposed to banning sunglasses from the game completely. The odds say that there were probably plenty of people in poker who disagreed with the blog but weren’t willing to come forward and challenge such a looming public figure as Negreanu. But now at least one of his fellow poker pros has stepped up to challenge his stance.

Yesterday at CardPlayer, poker pro Roy Winston posted a blog entry titled “Sunglasses and Poker----Really?” that questioned the assertion that sunglasses are tantamount to cheating. He never actually calls Negreanu out by name, referring to him instead as “a certain well-known player/blogger (who) compared wearing sunglasses to cheating.” But even without naming names, Winston makes his opposition to Negreanu’s line of reasoning very clear.

“What about players like Phil Hellmuth, Greg Raymer, or John Phan, all of who wear sunglasses and all of who have honor beyond reproach?” asks Winston. "Where do you draw the line if you do ban sunglasses? What about those of us wearing prescription glasses, some of which are tinted. Tinting runs the range from light to heavy and might be hard to police. So before you open a can of worms you really need to think about the ramifications. Comparing sunglasses to performance enhancing drugs or outright cheating is nothing short of ridiculous."

Beyond that, he also calls Negreanu out, once again anonymously, over an incident at this year’s PCA that some in poker called an angle-shoot. “He didn’t event seem to know the rules at a major live event when it came to a partially exposed hand on the river," writes Winston. "It might seem that for some, what you call cheating depends on which side of the line you are standing on.” With punches like that being thrown, something tells us this subject hasn't been put to rest just yet.