Daniel's strategy IP to play passively and check back a lot of turns looks like an intentional deviation. It's the type of defensive strategy that's designed to lose the minimum against a stronger player.

Daniel's checking back a lot of strong hands, effectively keeping his checking range uncapped (or at least stronger than a checking range ought to be in equilibrium), which forces Doug to play more passively in response. The result is that both players end up checking down/calling a lot of strong hands. The downside of this strategy is that it allows Doug to over-realize his equity out of position. The other downside is that it's boring af to watch.

Luckily, Dnegs ramped up the aggression near the end, so I still think he's capable of shifting to more aggro strategies later on.

They didn't try faux trash talking like Hellmuth and Esfandiari and their more natural table talk was engaging.

Also, the cash game format is more interesting than the tourney format that was used it the Hellmuth/Esfandiari match.

Daniel is very proud of himself.

well it's election night in America and it's going to be free on youtube for replay. a lot of people will watch polk and dnegs play some of the first live televised poker of 2020 for sure.

for him to go into this bet willing to reduce his ev in the name of reducing variance is like the ultimate wtf. are we to believe he signed up for this challenge both thinking he's a big dog AND that this is potentially too much money for him to lose?


even if we somehow believed that to be true, i doubt that the amount he'd be losing by playing slightly bigger pots in position is ever going to be as much as what he's losing by playing as passive as he was in the earlier hands.

Next match Friday!

True. Action def. picked up later on though.

It's not necessarily about reducing variance. Daniels's style is intentionally defensive. It forces Doug to play a lot more passively OOP in response as Dneg's checking ranges are artificially stronger. This strategy has the effect of diminishing the stronger player's edge, at the expense of letting them over-realize equity.

Now obviously this is not an "optimal strategy", but it's not as bad as people think. This is an intentional deviation. I have no doubt that daniel and his team spent time developing strategies designed to minimize loss against stronger players. If nothing else, it's a fall-back strategy.

The sad part is that no matter how hard Polk beats Negreanu online, casual(recreational players) will only remember these 200 hundred hands and will just accused Polk of using RTA or some other computer cheating.

It was a great PR move for Daniel

anyone knows when is online game starting?

If anyone watched some of DNegs stream over the summer from the WSOP, he played basically the same then as he did today. Very passive. Didn't raise much. Basically a calling station and then he would go all in on next to nothing when he seemed to get bored.

Tonight I saw a lot of that for the first 175 hands or so, and then he switched it up which is why he started to win. Plus Polk seemed to get flustered and tried to win some big pots when he shouldn't have.

But if they have 1000s of more hands to play, and DNegs plays his very passive style like he did over the summer? He will eventually lose his patience, lose a big hand, and tip over and get killed. Plus imo he is much better at live poker when he can actually see his opponents face and body movements. Online he is not very good, at least he wasn't this summer.

After all the build up and uncertainty, it is a relief it is actually happening. Search on YouTube for "High Stakes Feud | Daniel Negreanu vs Doug Polk" on the PokerGO channel, and you can see 200 hands in 3 hours 43 minutes of the play. Negreanu won't be disappointed by the outcome of that session!

Negreanu was saying that he would only be playing from his home so I am pleased they are playing face to face, as that is much more interesting than online poker. It will be interesting to see if Negreanu's results against Polk differ much between face to face and online.

Looking forward to hearing what people think about the play of both players.

folding 100% pre would limit the number of mistakes he can make too.

Lol strat in nvg but this is wrong. In hu you win in the sb and lose in the bb. Daniel is basically limiting his chance to win in the position where he should (in theory) make his chips by playing this way.

You can't edgepass in the sb and think you can play a crushing strat from the bb and somehow win - it just doesn't work like that.

The K9 hand was good by dnegs, but if he plays the rest of the challenge like he played today oveall he's going to get crushed well before they play 25k hands especially playing online in Doug's wheelhouse. Doug should be down 200k+ given the card distribution in the session today.

most limiting was not asking for more live (or bigger stakes) or a mixed game added. pure ego and the 120k start might have led to an easier win.

Both played fine as far as it goes..daniel, as I knew would be the case, is not intimidated and is not playing on scared money..he is not an easy guy to bluff..that k2 hand toward the end was illustrative of this..I didn't find that polk was particularly playing randomized or "gto"..??

I thought this was a high stakes grudge match, not a new soap opera

Also, is this Kane Kalas ******ed or somehow mentally handicapped?
Every single thing he said was just completely off/total BS

Sad indeed.

DNegs seemed to run above EV in terms of hitting strong hands to bluffcatch with, but his playstyle seems like a losing one vs. Polk. Can't just play extremely passive from the SB and give infinite free equity.

where to bet on this since pokershares doesn't have the line anymore ?

I was glad to see this be civil and not-awkward, I think that both players handled the interactions well

as for actual gameplay, Dnegs played worse than I thought he would, if he plays like that online he will get crushed. Doug went with typical online-player-playing-live strat of making low frequency plays 100% of the time, which also cost him some money, but was good for the viewers, wonder if this was intentional (sacrificing some EV to make the match more interesting/build aggro dynamics)

I believe tomorrow.

imagine fanboying poker players in 2020 , maybe thats ok but the cringiest is when u hear people ask whos the best poker player in a game with so much variance, variables, shot taking luck etc etc and everyone throws random high stakes players names.

like in the good old days 2008-2011

Is there anywhere an American can bet on this match?