Daniel Negreanu had yet another impressive session in his grudge match against Doug Polk, extending his lead even further.
Thursday’s session was quite competitive and there weren’t many massive pots. Early in the match, the poker pros traded jabs, with one player winning a sizable pot and then shortly after, the other returning the favor.
Polk didn’t turn a profit, though he found some more success with his over-sized river bets than he did on Monday. During that Monday session in which Negreanu booked a $222,000 win, Polk lost most of his money due to some ill-timed big bluffs. That wasn’t the case on Day 8, and it led to a much smaller defeat.
Negreanu Continues to Outperform Expectations
If you thought Polk was going to run roughshod over Negreanu — and many of you did — you were dead wrong. The GGPoker ambassador has now won four of the past five sessions. He’s also in the lead by a relatively large amount, although Polk’s deficit is far from insurmountable.
On Thursday, Negreanu again busted out to an early lead, but he wasn’t able to sustain that advantage for the entirety of the day (about two-and-a-half hours). In the end, he booked a small-ish win of $24,146, bringing his overall lead to $179,363.
The poker masters played 457 hands of $100/$200 cash game on the WSOP.com poker site and have now completed 3,422 hands. Polk and Negreanu will play at least 12,500 hands, meaning they’ve completed 27.4% of the challenge, although this match is likely to go the full 25,000 hands. That decision will be made by the player who is behind at 12,500 hands.
Despite having lost four of the past five sessions, Polk’s confidence hasn’t diminished. The heads-up No-Limit Hold’em legend even criticized Negreanu’s pre-flop strategy.
Dnegs is playing a preflop strategy so insane that it has to be one of two things
1) He has found the holy grail of preflop solutions unknown to any top hunl players on the planet
2) He's playing bad
I'd say time will tell but maybe it already is
— Doug Polk (@DougPolkVids) November 20, 2020
Poker pro Faraz Jaka questioned why Polk made the above comment. He wrote: “Why expose opponents leaks or communicate what you think are leaks to him. Isn’t that only going to hurt your edge? Genuine question on why you think it wouldn’t matter.”
The feuding poker pros have remained cordial, for the most part, since the match began two weeks ago. They’ll be back at it again Friday at 2:30 pm PT for Day 9.
