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Dan Smith Defeats Daniel Negreanu for $100k High Roller Title at Bellagio

Dan Smith just earned the third-largest score of his live tournament career after defeating Daniel Negreanu heads-up in the WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic $100,000 Super High Roller at Bellagio in Las Vegas.

Negreanu was on a mission to redeem himself after a relatively poor performance in the Poker Masters earlier this year. However, he fell just short of the title, but still took home a very respectable payday.

Field Was Typical Who’s Who of High Stakes Poker in Las Vegas

The $100,000 Super High Roller at the WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic kicked off on Wednesday at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. The event drew a solid field of 39 entries, creating a prize pool of $3.9 million.

By the time the final table was reached on Friday, an expected Who’s Who of the high stake poker world made the final table. Bryn Kenney continued his impressive run in 2017, making the final table and ultimately finishing in 6th place for $234,000.

Sergio Aido capped off what’s been a career year with a final table in this event, eventually finishing in 5th for $312,000. Isaac Haxton is a regular at High Roller final tables in Vegas and finished 4th in this one for $390,000.

Stefan Schillhabel exploded in 2017, with over $4.4 million in earnings prior to this event. He was chip leader with three players left but ran into a pair of coolers to bust in third place. He still earned $624,000 for yet another strong finish.

Dan Smith Earns Third Largest Career Score

Heads-up play was between Daniel Negreanu and Dan Smith in this event. Negreanu was slightly behind at the start of play and looked to be in good shape to double-up. On a flop of J-10-4, he was all-in with Q-10 against A-K for Smith. However, Smith binked a queen on the river to make a straight and take the title.

Negreanu earned $936,000 for his runner-up finish, his largest since 2015. Negreanu has $2.6 million in earnings for 2017 and $35.26 million for his career.

Dan Smith earned $1.4 million for his win, the third largest of his live poker career. The win has him at $3.95 million on the year, making 2017 his second best year of his tournament career. He made $5.2 million in 2016.

With the win, Smith now has $19.08 million in live tournament earnings, good for 17th on Poker’s All-Time Money List. Negreanu’s runner-up finish allowed him to put some distance between himself and Erik Seidel for the #1 spot. Seidel has $33.19 million, a little more than $2 million behind Negreanu.

Negreanu was able to keep pace this year because Seidel had a less productive year than expected. After two straight years of earnings over $5 million, he only managed to bring in $2.18 million this year. However, if history continues as it has in the past, odds are that Seidel will catch and maybe even surpass Negreanu for the top spot sometime in 2018.

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