After Daniel Negreanu tweeted both his World Series of Poker (WSOP) and year to date financial results, Lee Davy poses the question as to whether or not it’s a good or bad thing for poker?
Daniel Negreanu recently went to Twitter to tell the world that he had earned $7,055,001 in profit from the WSOP.
Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
For as long as I can remember discussing salary has always been taboo. It’s just something that isn’t cool. From a business perspective, I can understand it. To have employees earning different levels of pay for doing the same work does breed a little annoyance to say the least but what if you are self employed?
I openly tell anyone what I earn and from time to time; I will write a blog post about it at the Needy Helper, where I work as a coach trying to help people quit drinking alcohol.
I tell people what I earn because I am trying to build up a level of trust with my readers and I believe being transparent is one way in which this trust can grow. It also helps me to educate people on financial down or upswings that can lead to stress and ultimately booze.
What Daniel Negreanu does, or how he acts, is very important in our industry. He is an industry leader and a lot of people see him as a role model. Not only for his displays on the felt but also because of his recent work at the Choice Center in Las Vegas.
So when he decides to tell the world what his poker profit is, people are going to take note.
But is it a good thing?
I used to think it was but now I seem to be wavering.
What I love about Daniel Negreanu is his forthrightness. Ask the man a question and he will give you a straight answer. It’s this transparency that makes me want to trust him, endears me to him, and makes me want to follow him.
So telling people what he earns is just his MO. This is who he is.
On July 8th Negreanu sent this tweet out to the universe.
“Declare your intentions and speak it out, shout it out, even yell it out till you believe it! Convince yourself you can do great things!”
So there is also a touch of the Law of Attraction about the Canadian, something he no doubt learned more about during his work at the Choice Centre. When you are in this frame of mind, then positivity breed’s positivity. So, perhaps this is another reason these next two tweets were sent out.
WSOP Final Total: Events 32 Cashes 9 Hours 292 Buyins $1,233,000 Payouts 8,545,408 Profit $7,055,001 Time for golf this week
— Daniel Negreanu (@RealKidPoker) July 10, 2014
Been number crunching. My 2014 so far: Events 44 Cashes 12 Hours 416 Buyins $2,931,661 Payouts $10,247,143 Profit $7,315,482 Barca next
— Daniel Negreanu (@RealKidPoker) July 11, 2014
I guess it’s his way of asking the universe for more of the same please.
So why am I wavering?
There are two reasons why my skinny butt is currently on the fence on this one.
The first concerns the recent rise in attacks on poker players. Think Theo Jorgensen and Jonathan Duhamel and Google the rest from there. It’s something that I have written about extensively and the recent security concerns at the WSOP did nothing to calm my nerves over this issue.
So from this standpoint, I don’t think it’s a good idea to broadcast to the world how much money you have because there is always some idiot who wants to come and take it.
Everyone assumes that Negreanu is stinking rich, so the tweet doesn’t really change that much from a personal point of view but I am talking about the practice in general.
It bothered me that someone could look at the Hendon Mob, see that Dan Colman won $15 million and then assume he actually has that amount of money. My initial thought process was to write about the need for change. The need to make the Hendon Mob more realistic by including the costs to get a clearer idea of return of investment (ROI).
Then I spoke to Alex Dreyfus and my head was sent spinning a little faster.
Dreyfus is of the opinion that the big numbers are good for poker. He is on a mission to turn poker from the ugly duckling of the gaming world into the majestic swan of the sporting world.
When you consider how many people play poker and then compare it to how many actually make a real solid living out of the game, then the numbers are probably sparse.
Now that’s not a great marketing angle.
So with this in mind, pushing actual ROI onto the Hendon Mob could be catastrophic for the future popularity of our game, which in turn affects all of our jobs.
Back to the world of ambivalence I go.
So Dreyfus’s thought process leads to Daniel Negreanu’s tweets being a great idea. He is telling the world what possibilities poker holds. Big money and big names attract big non-gambling sponsors but it also attracts big time scumbags.
So, 1,000 words later and I am still undecided. Do things change even further should Negreanu have a bummer of a 2015 and tweet out his losses? Do we really want that transparency? I think the curiosity inside of us yearns for it and the fact that it may harm poker’s future doesn’t even creep into our tiny minds?
What do you think?
