Daniel Negreanu’s dream of winning his seventh bracelet — his first since 2013 — came to a sudden and dramatic end with 16 players left in Event #3: $500 WSOP Kickoff No-Limit Hold'em Freezeout.
Negreanu was sitting down with over 11 million in chips with the blinds at 125,000/250,000 and was one of the top three stacks in the field. Two hands after moving to the other table, however, he would run into the guillotine of Oregon’s Shawn Smith.
'This is gonna be a huge one!'
Smith opened to 500,000 from the button and Negreanu jammed his entire stack, good for well over 40 big blinds. Smith only needed a few seconds before sigh-calling, noticeably uncomfortable as he lazily dropped in a single chip. DNegs then whipped out his famous gimbal, exclaiming: “This is gonna be a huge one!” before calling and turning over 
.
Smith turned over 
and the two were both flipping for their tournament lives. The board ran out 
with no help for Negreanu and Smith dragged the huge pot, sending his stack to over 23,000,000. Check out the raw video:
Negreanu and his rather large rail were left in stunned silence after his tower of chips was reduced to just three green T-25,000 discs. He was forced all in in the small blind on the next hand and was rather upbeat despite being eliminated — even calling for his own payout.
Following his 16th-place finish for $8,451, Negreanu ($22,137,711) moved ever so slightly closer to taking over Antonio Esfandiari ($22,365,690) at #1 all-time WSOP money list.
