Doug Polk has his match with Daniel Negreanu wrapped up, especially after winning more than $200,000 on Monday evening. But you shouldn't stop watching its conclusion.
Viewers on Monday were taken on a wild ride, with both players winning a plethora of gigantic pots. Fans of Negreanu, however, certainly didn't enjoy the outcome of what turned out to be a seven hour session, the lengthiest of this heads-up no-limit hold'em poker competition.
Polk and Negreanu have now completed 35 days of play on the WSOP.com poker site at $200/$400 stakes. For the most part, Polk has controlled the match, although it's been competitive at times.
Recently, however, the game has gotten out of control and is no longer competitive. On Days 33 and 34, Polk won each session for a combined $170,000. In doing so, he effectively put the challenge out of reach — his lead had surpassed $730,000 with under 4,000 hands remaining.
So, he no longer was in jeopardy of losing as the poker pros entered Day 35 on Monday. But Negreanu's been his long-time rival, so he isn't looking to just win, he also wants to win big. It appears that is going to be the case now that he officially put the challenge out of reach last night.
Negreanu shoots and misses
Doug Polk burst out to a $250,000 lead after a few hours on Monday and Negreanu couldn't just throw in the towel. He had to continue playing because there was too much money on the table.
Negreanu knew his only chance at pulling off a wild comeback would be to win a bunch of six-figure pots. He did win some big ones on Monday, but not enough, especially considering he also lost several of them.
The match lasted seven hours because more than $700,000 was on the table due to each player getting stacked multiple times. That left Negreanu in a pickle. If he quit after 3-4 hours like normal, he'd lose out on a shot to win back a significant amount.
But if he continued playing, he was also risking adding to his deficit and losing more money to Doug Polk. He chose to continue, and played it overly-aggressive during the session. At times, it paid off, but he also bluffed off two pots of over $90,000. In one of those missed bluff attempts, Polk had kings full, which of course he'd never lay down.
After just over five hours of play and a challenge record of 1,976 hands, Negreanu flopped top pair and Polk rivered a straight to win a $110,000 pot. That was enough for Negreanu to decide it was time to quit.
Negreanu had rallied from six-figure deficits twice already during the session. This time, however, he'd seen enough and wasn't going to try and fight his way back into the game a third time. Instead, he called it quits and left with a $209,281 deficit and is now down by $946,085.
The poker superstars have 1,718 hands of a 25,000-hand challenge remaining. They'll likely finish it up either Wednesday or Friday.
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