Daniel Negreanu came within one hand of a piece of World Series of Poker history on Friday, September 25, when he reached the unofficial final table of the $5,000 High Roller Bounty Pot-Limit Omaha event during the 2026 WSOP Online series on GGPoker. The Hall of Famer finished sixth for $43,641 plus roughly $15,000 in bounty collections, falling just short of a shot at his ninth career bracelet.
It capped a brutal stretch for one of the game’s most recognizable players. This was Negreanu’s third final table in a single week of the 2026 WSOP Online series, a run that also included a painful exit from the $25,000 High Roller Championship days earlier, where he was eliminated after what commentators described as a brutal bad beat.
A Final Table Built on Patience
Negreanu arrived at the unofficial final table in reasonable shape, sitting fourth in chips among the eight players left with roughly 35 big blinds. That stack put him well behind Israeli high-stakes regular Yigal Papi, who had ballooned to a commanding 134 big blinds and looked like the player to beat once the bubble of the final table burst. Finland’s Markus Ristola went out in seventh place shortly before Negreanu’s own exit, tightening the field around the money jumps that bounty formats create at every elimination.
Bounty Pot-Limit Omaha events like this one reward more than just outlasting the field. Every knockout carries its own cash prize on top of the escalating tournament payouts, which keeps stacks moving fast and forces even patient, experienced players like Negreanu into difficult spots earlier than a standard freezeout would.
The Hand That Ended the Run
Negreanu’s tournament came to an end when he committed his stack with two pair, only to run into Blaz Zerjav, who had flopped a set. In Pot-Limit Omaha, where every player holds four hole cards and needs exactly two of them to make a hand, two pair is a dangerous holding to get fully invested with, since sets and straight draws are live behind it far more often than in Hold’em. That dynamic played out in full against Negreanu, ending his bid in sixth place and handing the chip lead in the hand to Zerjav.
Chasing a Piece of WSOP History
Negreanu now holds eight WSOP bracelets. A win in this event would have made him just the tenth player in tournament poker history to reach nine, a group that includes names like Phil Hellmuth, the all-time leader with 17, alongside legends such as Doyle Brunson, Johnny Chan and Phil Ivey. Negreanu’s own resume already ranks among the most decorated in the sport: two WSOP Player of the Year titles, induction into the Poker Hall of Fame in 2014, and one of the largest all-time live tournament cash totals in poker history. Notably, all eight of Negreanu’s existing bracelets came at live tables, so a win here would have doubled as his first-ever online bracelet, adding a distinctly modern chapter to a legacy built largely on live felt through the 1990s and 2000s. Readers new to the format can find a rundown of how the bracelet chase actually works in Poker Pro Academy’s WSOP guide.
The WSOP Online series itself has grown into one of the calendar’s most important stretches since GGPoker began hosting bracelet events during the pandemic years, giving players who cannot travel to Las Vegas a legitimate path to the same hardware handed out on the live circuit. For a player of Negreanu’s stature, adding meaningful volume to the online side of that ledger would help silence any lingering suggestion that his best tournament days belong strictly to an earlier era of the game.
A Grueling Week at the Virtual Tables
Three deep runs in seven days is a workload most players never experience even once in a career, let alone repeatedly in a single series. Negreanu’s week also touched on names familiar to WSOP Online regulars, including Russian high-stakes veteran Anatoly Zlotnikov, who has been a fixture of this year’s bracelet events. The volume of high-buy-in fields Negreanu chose to play, several at $5,000 or more, reflects a deliberate strategy of prioritizing quality over quantity as he continues to chase milestones deep into his fourth decade in the game.
What Comes Next
The 2026 WSOP Online series still has bracelet events remaining on its schedule, meaning Negreanu will get further chances to complete the climb to nine before the series wraps. Whether or not the milestone falls this year, Friday’s result is another reminder that one of poker’s most familiar faces remains a live threat in fields stacked with the game’s best online specialists, not merely a legacy name cashing in on reputation. For a player who has spent much of the last two years focused on building his profile in live-streamed cash games, a deep tournament run against a bounty-hunting online field showed a side of his game that longtime fans have not seen highlighted as often in recent seasons.
