I had always wondered if Negreanu had to deal with freaks behind the scenes who would harass him or become obsessed with him.
This year, we got our answer.
First off, this year is different for him partially because the WSOP is no longer at the Rio. The Rio had these back hallways which experienced/in-the-know players could use to easily navigate the property and basically sneak around without having to congregate with the masses. Since I only run an 8th tier poker forum, I had no need for these back hallways, but I used them occasionally when it was more convenient for where I needed to go.
Negreanu, however, loved these back hallways, and would use them to quickly pop out of the tournament rooms, and get to his rented trailer in the back employee lot, without any of the unwashed masses being able to bother him. For 17 years at the Rio, this worked beautifully for him.
However, no such thing exists at Paris/Bally's, and he also isn't allowed to bring that trailer on property. Instead, he rented a small meeting room near the WSOP, and uses that during breaks. Unfortunately, he can't lock the door, and he has had issues with weirdos walking in and bothering him during a lot of the breaks. Apparently none of these people were dangerous/threatening, but he was already on edge because of this.
Next, he has been dealing with a crazy conspiracy theorist chick named Sara Palmer. I actually met Sara a year ago, when she was brought as someone's date to a group dinner at Resorts World. She showed up about 45 minutes after everyone else. When she first showed up, she was kind of quiet, and then her date brought up poker in order to break the ice. She then brought up some recent poker scandal, and told us that there was a "very good breakdown of it on a podcast called Poker Fraud Alert". She claimed to have just found it, and asked if I had listened to it before, describing the host as "really smart" and "very good at explaining things".
At first I thought she was fucking with me, but no... she was serious. She was legit talking about me... to me, believing I wasn't associated with the show. I told her who I was, and she was shocked. Anyway, we had a nice conversation at dinner, and she seemed mostly normal. That was the only time I met her.
Somehow over the past year, she transformed into a total conspiracy nut, and became a completely different person. She became very fixated upon Negreanu, believing him to be part of some crazy global conspiracy of massive poker cheating. Apparently she has had an on-and-off fixation with him going back over a decade, going back and forth between having a crush on him and hating him. Currently she's in the mode of hating him.
Anyway, she showed up at the WSOP and tried to bug him in the hallway, and then told an inaccurate version of the exchange on Twitter. However, Daniel had it all recorded, so he easily proved that his version of events was correct.
You can read more about the Sara Palmer situation here: https://pokerfraudalert.com/forum/sh...nspiracy-Chick
But wait.. there's more!
Apparently Daniel is now also being blackmailed by some weird dude from Arizona, who claims that Negreanu has a secret family there which he abandoned. At the 3:58 mark in the below video, Daniel reads a text he received from the guy, followed by prior voicemails from the same person, which demanded money at the end to "keep quiet":
It is unclear at this time if Daniel is going bring this to law enforcement. He probably should. He has the guy right there attempting to blackmail him. Daniel swears he's never been to Arizona, and I believe him. The guy's story makes very little sense, implying that Daniel was living with his secret family full time, before abruptly leaving and going to Vegas. I think the guy blackmailing him probably knew someone who looked like Negreanu over there, and is convinced that Daniel is hiding his secret past family, and that perhaps this could lead to hush money.
Weird shit. While Daniel's outspokenness sometimes brings on some of his own problems, none of these issues are at all his fault. He's just being targeted by nutcases.
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Originally Posted by Dan Druff
