It finally happened. We have a date. On the 1st of November, Polk v. Negreanu is on like Donkey Kong. The two got to the brass-tack of it all over the weekend after Polk Tweeted at Negreanu.
“Alright im sick of the run around," he wrote. "Does anyone know how to get in touch with @RealKidPoker so we can actually schedule this match [...] im ready to fucking battle. Lets work out some details.”
To which Negreanu clapped back, “Well this tweet is awkward. You all riled up eh! [...] Nov 1st could work. Feel better?”
From there it only got friendlier, with accusations that Negreany was putting the “Kid” into “Kid Poker” with his childish antics.
Negreanu’s response to that was, “To be fair, our starting point was a Heads Up for Rolls challenge, so we kind of started off childish no?”
This exchange transitioned into a more productive discussion in which they gave the public some solid details for what the match would look like.
Rules and regulations
This all comes after several months of cat-herding. During this time, the busy WSOP schedule and the vicissitudes of Twitter’s DM system have led to delay after postponement after near cancellation.
It all worked out in the end though. Because they finally settled on that 1st of November date. Doug v Daniel will stream live on All Hallow’s Eve 2020.
The set up will be no-limit hold’em with $200/$400 blinds. This will be played at 2 tables on WSOP.com, with a 100 big blind minimum stack. When a player falls below 100 big blinds they must automatically top-up. The challenge will continue until they've duked it out for 25,000 hands.
At the half-way mark, the losing player can quit or stakes can be raised by mutual agreement.
They will play in sessions of a minimum of two hours, with a recurring option to extend by an hour when the clock runs down. The sessions will be live-streamed, with webcams on both players. Negreanu will not be showing his cards on the stream. It seems likely that Polk will follow suit with his cards, rather than run the risk of asymmetrically donating so much information.
Polk has also demanded a “site check” to ensure neither player is making use of real-time assistants or similar. The details of these checks will be forthcoming later.
Both players have also tentatively agreed to running commentary from Kane Kalas. However, one imagines that for a game likely to take anywhere from 50 to 250 hours to play out, they might want more than one analyst on hand.
So there it is. Unless Negreanu goes AWOL again, we’ll be back to update you with more on this in a couple of weeks.
Featured image source: Twitter
