Daniel Negreanu is still down a sizable amount to Doug Polk in the high stakes duel. But he's bounced back a bit with now two straight session wins, and the deficit is beginning to head in the right direction for the GGPoker ambassador.
The poker legends have now completed 20 sessions — 19 on WSOP.com and one at the PokerGO Studio. In total, they've played 11,318 hands for an average of 566 hands per session.
Negreanu won the only live session — the first 200 hands — by $116,787. Since then, Polk has turned a $813,114 profit in 11,118 hands. That equates to an average of $73.13 per hand, or 18% of one big blind ($400). So, that means every hand they're being dealt, Negreanu is dumping about $73 to his rival, on average.
If the trend continues, by the time this match hits 25,000 hands, the scheduled length of the match, Daniel Negreanu will be down another $1,015,190 for a total of $1,711,517.
Daniel Negreanu wins big
But here's the good news for Negreanu — he's already beginning to reverse that trend. As bad as those overall figures look for the Poker Hall of Famer, they were much worse two sessions ago.
Negreanu won $143,642 on December 11 in 834 hands. That ended a string of three consecutive six-figure victories for Doug Polk. The poker pros then took a 10-day break, and Negreanu booked another impressive win.
On Monday afternoon, Negreanu grabbed an early lead and never squandered it. The session was a stark contrast from recent weeks in which Polk has jumped out to big early leads. In many days, Polk won an early cooler or bad beat to put Negreanu in a deep hole having to play from behind.
But things were different on Day 20. Negreanu seized early control and was able to dominate most of the session. He did lose one massive pot with a straight against a flush. That was the only horrible hand for Negreanu, who seemed to win over 50% of the pots.
In total, the no longer feuding poker stars played 534 hands, with Negreanu raking in a $117,962 profit. That profit would have been larger if not for a failed bluff on the final hand that cost Negreanu $25,000. But it was still a second straight successful session for the GGPoker ambassador.
Polk remains the heavy favorite and will almost certainly hold the lead at the midway point. If Negreanu wants to quit at 12,500 hands, he can do so without penalty. But he's made it clear that he intends to see this thing through to 25,000 hands.
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