Doug Polk surges to another huge lead on Daniel Negreanu

Doug Polk has all but clinched victory in his poker challenge match against Daniel Negreanu.

Polk won $380,376.36 over the past three sessions to push his lead to $946,085.32. They have played 23,282 of the scheduled 25,000 hands in their heads-up No-limit Hold’em showdown.

Negreanu had been down more than $1 million at one point, but he rallied to cut the deficit nearly in half at $565,708.96 before Polk’s recent surge.

The challenge will likely end this week. Negreanu and Polk plan to play sessions Wednesday and Friday.

Negreanu and Polk are playing at stakes of $200-$400 (a $40,000 initial buy-in for each session). The match is being played two tables at a time online on WSOP.com after the first 200 hands were played live at the PokerGO studio by the Aria.

Negreanu and Polk have a long-standing feud, with Polk attacking Negreanu for his actions while an ambassador for the online poker site PokerStars as well as some of his personal behavior.

Negreanu, a 46-year-old Las Vegas resident, is a six-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner with $42 million in live tournament earnings, according to the Hendon Mob Poker Database.

Polk, a 31-year-old Henderson resident, is a three-time WSOP bracelet winner with more than $9 million in tournament earnings. But he made his name in poker by beating the best players in the world in heads-up No-limit Hold’em online, while Negreanu is known primarily as a live multitable tournament player.

Before the match, Polk was a -556 favorite to win on pokershares.com (Negreanu +410).

Contact Jim Barnes at jbarnes@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0277. Follow @JimBarnesLV on Twitter.