Doug Polk is absolutely destroying Daniel Negreanu through more than 9,000 hands played in their heads-up match. Polk is now flirting with a $1 million profit after again booking a six-figure profit against his long-time rival.
If you’ve paid attention to the live-stream chats on YouTube during the matches, you’ll notice the poker community is mixed on its assessment of the play. Some argue the difference in the match is pure luck, while others believe Negreanu is simply getting out-played.
Regardless of your thoughts on skill, there’s no doubt the luck has been on Polk’s side throughout most of this challenge. He’s yet to lose a single all-in pot with cards to still to come while ahead. Conversely, Negreanu has lost a handful of those pots. And the overall number of coolers appear to be heavily in Polk’s favor.
Heading into Thursday’s session, Polk held a $784,560 lead through 8,970 hands at $200/$400 stakes on WSOP.com. Things got even worse for Negreanu on Day 18.
Polk Can’t Miss
Negreanu committed to playing a longer-than-normal session on Thursday. The match ended up lasting about five hours before the players called it quits. When all was said and done, Polk booked a win of approximately $172,000, his seventh six-figure win in the past 10 sessions (he lost the other three sessions by small amounts).
Polk is now so far ahead that it would be virtually impossible for Negreanu to catch up at the 12,500-hand mark. At that point, he’ll have an opportunity to call it quits without penalty, or to play another 12,500 hands. Despite getting pummeled, based on his comments during his post-game interviews on the GGPoker YouTube channel, it appears he’s committed to continue playing.
Thursday’s session was brutal for the GGPoker ambassador; It would be difficult for Negreanu to run much worse. Within minutes, he lost $80,000+ pots with pocket aces against pocket kings (Polk flopped a king), and his A-Q on a Q-6-Q flop went down in flames when Polk hit a flush on the turn with K-10.
There was also a stretch during the session in which Polk flopped or rivered trips more than five times. And those are just the hands we saw (only hands that make it to showdown are visible).
Plain and simple, the WSOP.com poker site hasn’t been kind to Negreanu. But he isn’t ready to spew any “rigged” conspiracy theories just yet. He is, however, still confident in his game, despite the brutal beats.
“The only reason he’s up so much is because of pure luck,” he told Jonathan Little and Jeff Platt during his post-game interview. “I’m just sticking to what I know, and I feel good about my play.”
Negreanu admitted that the bad run has been a real gut-check. The poker pros will get back to it at 2:30 pm PT Friday and then will take next week off to compete in the WSOP Main Event.
