Doug Polk beats Daniel Negreanu for $1.2M in poker match
Polk is a three-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner; Negreanu is a six-time WSOP bracelet winner.
After 91 days and 25,000 hands of high stakes heads-up No Limit Hold’em, the match between Daniel Negreanu and Doug Polk finished with Polk adding $255,722 to his total earnings to end up a $1.2 million winner.
It began as a showdown between two players who seemed to hate each other with every fibre of their being, but it ended with mutual respect despite Doug Polk taking $1.2 million from Daniel Negreanu when their incredible match came to an end.
Polk and Negreanu started playing Nov. 4 with 200 hands live at the PokerGO studio by the Aria. The match then shifted online at WSOP.com, where they played two tables at a time at stakes of $200-$400 (a $40,000 initial buy-in for each table).
Negreanu won $116,500 in the initial live session, but Polk quickly regained the lead and never relinquished it. Polk was up $770,254.08 at the midpoint of the challenge. Negreanu had the option to quit but chose to keep going.
Twice Negreanu got the deficit down to about $500,000, but Polk built the lead back up. At the the end of the last session, having hit the 25,000-hand mark, Polk emerged with a $255k win for the day.
Polk made his name in poker by beating the best players in the world in heads-up No-limit Hold’em online, and Negreanu, though a member of the Poker Hall of Fame, is known primarily as a live multitable tournament player.
Polk, a 31-year-old Henderson resident, is a three-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner with more than $9 million in tournament earnings, according to the Hendon Mob Poker Database. Last year, he led the failed effort to recall Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman.
As soon as the challenge ended, Polk spoke on his YouTube channel with Jamie Kerstetter and Nick Schulman about the work he put into to get ready to play after having walked away from the game a year ago.
“I’m very happy that I spent so much time preparing and I felt it really ended up helping me tremendously and that I got to execute at such a high level over such a long period of time,” Polk said after his win.
Negreanu, a 46-year-old Las Vegas resident, is a six-time WSOP bracelet winner with $42 million in live tournament earnings.
In his own post-game interview on GGPoker.tv, Negreanu gave Polk full credit for the win while still lamenting being on the wrong side of luck in some spots.
“He deserved it. He played well. I thought he made really good adjustments. I thought he improved as the match went on as well. Thought he got better and better and sharper, in a lot of different lines,” Negreanu said. “I was definitely unfortunate in the match. Here’s the thing, I needed to actually run above expectation to win the match. That’s what needed to happen and I don’t think that happened, obviously.
