Doug Polk beats Daniel Negreanu for $1.2M in poker match
Doug Polk is walking away with $1.2 million from his poker challenge match with Daniel Negreanu.
Polk won $255,722 on Wednesday as they reached the agreed-upon total of 25,000 hands of heads-up No-limit Hold’em.
“We won guys. We did it,” Polk posted on Twitter.
Session: +$255,722 over 1718 hands
Total: +$1,200,000 over 25000 hands
We won guys. We did it.
— Doug Polk (@DougPolkVids) February 4, 2021
The match was the culmination of a long-standing feud between the two poker stars. 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. He won $636,098 over the final four sessions to finish with $1.2 million.
The feud stemmed from Polk’s frequent attacks on Negreanu for his actions while an ambassador for the online poker site PokerStars as well as some of his personal behavior. They stayed mostly cordial throughout the challenge.
Before the match, Polk was a -556 favorite to win on pokershares.com (Negreanu +410). 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.
Negreanu, a 46-year-old Las Vegas resident, is a six-time WSOP bracelet winner with $42 million in live tournament earnings.
Contact Jim Barnes at jbarnes@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0277. Follow @JimBarnesLV on Twitter.