Daniel Negreanu has played for millions plenty of times. But never for billions. Until last weekend!

Before we get too carried away let's be clear that this was for play money. But, as many players have discovered in the past, the play money arena, rather than being a walk in the park, can be a humiliating leap into a bear pit for the uninitiated. 

But before we get carried away even more let's be reasonable. #KidPoker thrived. 

The tournament was a special one hosted to celebrate the release of Daniel Negreanu's documentary KidPoker. 

The Kid Poker documentary is now available on Netflix

And while you might think a play money tournament would leave entry open to anyone, you'd be wrong. With a buy-in of 500,000 this was an exclusive contest with 1,000,000,000 (that's a billion - numbers so ridiculous in length are fun to type) chips guaranteed and a 10,000,000 bounty on Negreanu's head. 

With a field of 306 entries (with 64 re-entries) that meant a big overlay and a reason to follow the action on Twitch, which is exactly what Randy "Nanonoko" Lew found himself doing, playing along until he was eliminated by the eventual winner. 

Nanonoko was on hand with the celebrations

Was that winner Negreanu? Not quite. Bowie825 took honours, while Negreanu finished third, despite taking the chip lead into the final table and at one point beating quads with a straight flush when all in on the flop:

For the record a straight flush beats quads in play money, as well as in real money games

Not a bad way to celebrate the release of KidPoker, details of which you can find here. A great film about arguably poker's greatest player, now available on Netflix.

Not a bad play money player either.