Doug Polk and Daniel Negreanu played their second consecutive High Stakes Feud match on Thursday, marking the first time that the pair had played two days in a row since the challenge began on November 4th.
Negreanu once again was in the driver’s seat on Thursday, winning his second session in a row and the fourth out of the last five sessions. He finished the day up $24,156.82 and now finds himself leading Negreanu by $179,363.71, the biggest lead that Negreanu has held through the first 8 sessions. At 457 hands and two and a half hours, they played their third-long session of the challenge and have now completed a total of 3,422 hands.
Even with all the excitement thus far, in some ways it feels like the Challenge has barely just begun. Prior to the start of the Challenge, Negreanu and Polk agreed to play 25,000 hands, meaning that they are not even 14% of the way through. Whoever is losing after 12,500 hands also has the option to quit the match if they chose; in that case, the match would be 28% over. Regardless, there is still a lot of poker to be played, much to the approval of poker fans.
The match has been incredibly entertaining and good for poker.
Watching two people with near opposite strats battling it out deep hu is really fascinating. Also it brought @Joeingram1 out of hiatus which I couldn’t be more grateful for.— CarlMarx (@cobbpanetti) November 20, 2020
Despite Daniel Negreanu’s hot run over the last few sessions, Polk doesn’t appear to be impressed with the way Negreanu has played during the heads-up match thus far. Negreanu does, however, appear to be getting in his head a bit, tweeting that his winning has to be coming from one of two things:
Dnegs is playing a preflop strategy so insane that it has to be one of two things
1) He has found the holy grail of preflop solutions unknown to any top hunl players on the planet
2) He's playing bad
I'd say time will tell but maybe it already is
— Doug "Truck Driver" Polk (@DougPolkVids) November 20, 2020
Watch Round 8 unfold below, with Joey Ingram joined by the charismatic Nick Schulman from Ingram’s home.
Alternatively, you can watch the match through the Doug Polk Poker YouTube channel or the Upswing Twitch stream (both of which are hosted by Jaime Kerstetter and Olivier Busquet). The GG Poker YouTube channel once again also covered the action, which included a post-match interview with Negreanu himself (viewable at the 2:53:44 mark):
Negreanu was pleased how the session went down. “It was a good battle…overall, I’m happy to come out on top… I thought I played well.”
More High Stakes Feud action on Friday
Negreanu and Doug Polk will return for their third session in as many days on Friday when the pair will play again at 5:30 PM ET, as Negreanu looks to make it three winning sessions in a row. In his post-match interview, Negreanu hinted that Friday’s session may also be a longer one as the pair had a goal to put in a lot of volume this week.
Poker fans will again get their choice of a selection of streams, with your best option depending on who you are rooting for.
GG Poker Official YouTube Channel
DougPolkPoker Official YouTube Channel
Upswing Poker Official Twitch Channel
Joey Ingram YouTube channel
