Phillip Nagy, CEO of the WPN network, joined the lineup of players looking to take a chunk out of Doug Polk as he trains for his grudge match with Daniel Negreanu.
Now that the WSOP is out of our systems and Negreanu is on his way back to the U.S. of A. — we can all start looking forward to that grudge match with Doug Polk getting underway.
One person who can't wait for the action is Nagy. Hot off the back of his Twitter fracas with Jonathan Little, Nagy has thrown his hat into the ring as a sparring partner for Polk.
Nagy Tweeted at Polk “If you want to play an older. I would enjoy a HU Match up to you.” He self-deprecatingly added in a further Tweet: “It might even be closer to what your real match is gonna be LOL LOL (old guy HU poker).”
To get in a bit of practice ahead of his game, Polk has been issuing a series of low stakes challenges. Initially, he was playing $1/$2 matches against fans and colleagues. But after that went poorly he moved up stakes to facilitate dumping cash faster.
He’s currently looking for opponents at $5/$10 and $10/$20.
Smart money
WPN’s management has been pretty savvy in dealing with the Polk/Negreanu match. For example, ACR, one of WPN’s skins, has been giving Polk his training ground rake free.
As well as getting themselves some publicity from Polk as he trains, they've also positioned themselves as the most likely place for the big game to play out when it comes. After all, Daniel Negreanu’s sponsors GGPoker don’t offer tables to U.S. players.
Nagy’s personal involvement seems likely to be part of this push for publicity. Not to mention the obvious fun of getting to play one of the big names in poker heads-up. And at far more reasonable stakes than those Polk would normally play at.
The third option might just be that all the smart money is currently buying short options on Polk’s luck.
Raised stakes
Polk has only just managed to break even on his training regime. As he put it in a Tweet: “I have played 110 hours of poker in the last month and have made $16.”
Polk’s current stakes of $5/$10 and $10/$20 are forty to eighty times lower than the match with Negreanu will be.
The terms — as set out in one of Negreanu’s Tweets — are provisionally: “$200-$400 online, 2 tables, Hold’em, Table Stakes.”
Waiting game
Polk hasn’t yet responded to the challenge from Nagy.
Though, with Twitter being what it is, it wasn’t long before someone put forward an alternative match-up for Nagy. They Tweeted at Nagy, “itd be cool if you had your own grudge match against @JonathanLittle.”
We have no update on that idea either as yet. Though we'll be watching both challenges closely from the sidelines with some popcorn.
Featured image source: Twitter
