Doug Polk up $1M on Daniel Negreanu in poker match

Doug Polk has taken more than $1 million off Daniel Negreanu in their poker challenge match.

Polk won $298,984.93 on Wednesday to push his lead to $1,002,595.59 in their heads-up No-limit Hold’em showdown. The poker stars have played 17,878 of a scheduled 25,000 hands.

Negreanu trimmed Polk’s lead to $484,073.93 last week, but Polk has won four straight sessions since to more than double the deficit.

“Finally broke a million,” Polk said on Twitter. “Had so many big hands today … nice to get a big win after so many difficult sessions. Went on a 500k downer but recovered and am ready to finish this thing out.”

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.