The only problem for Negreanu is although he halted Polk’s momentum a bit, he only chipped off a small portion of the deficit. At the very least, he desperately needed to book a small profit to stop the bleeding, which he did ($17,780), and would then follow that up with two more consecutive small wins of $13,000 and $46,581. Time to stop the bleedingĭay 13 was an important session for Negreanu. But Negreanu was already down nearly $600,000 after Day 12, and 12,500 hands was a long ways away. The poker pros agreed to permit the losing player to call it quits at the midway point without penalty. At this point, many wondered if Negreanu would just give up and quit at the halfway mark (12,500 hands). And then on Day 12, he really put the hammer down and ran hot for a $332,178 profit. He’d go on to book wins of over $100,000 the next two sessions. From that point on, outside of a few hiccups along the way, as you’ll notice from the above graph, Polk’s upward trajectory began on that day. Polk won $205,521 on the day 377 hands, which ended Negreanu’s momentum. He understands variance and doesn’t tilt easily.ĭay 9 was the biggest turning point in the High Stakes Duel. Polk’s played high stakes heads-up poker for years. If you thought a $180,000 deficit early in a long match was going to tilt the heads-up G.O.A.T., you’d be sadly mistaken. Could Daniel Negreanu really defeat Doug Polk at heads-up no-limit hold’em? Heavy favorite answers back Through eight sessions, many felt a potential upset was brewing. He won the next two matches by over $340,000 combined.īut then Negreanu got back to crushing as he won four of the next five matches, including a $222,832 score on Day 7. Polk, however, bounced back from the rough opening session as the challenge moved to the internet. Many poker fans were surprised by what they saw, and Negreanu would continue to have some success over the next couple of weeks. The GGPoker ambassador booked a $116,000 profit live from the PokerGO Studio in Las Vegas. Negreanu starts off challenge with a bangĭaniel Negreanu kicked off the match in surprising fashion, by dominating Doug Polk on PokerGO in what turned out to be the only live poker session of the challenge.

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