Polk Wins $1.2 Million Over 25,000 Hand Challenge

Published on February 4th, 2021 8:09 am EST

Late last night, the 25,000 hand Challenge between Doug Polk and Daniel Negreanu officially came to an end.

While the exact final numbers haven't been made available as of yet, it appears as though Polk won approximately $1.2 million off Negreanu over the course of the 25,000 hand challenge.

The final session saw Polk reverse an early Negreanu lead to win $255,722 over the course of the final 1,718 hands.

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The Challenge between Negreanu and Polk started as a result of a war of words between the two men that had been going on for years.

Polk was constantly trolling Negreanu about "More Rake is Better" and other topics.

Things boiled over between the two in the second half of 2020 following Negreanu's epic Twitch rant that resulted in him getting banned from the platform. Polk put out a video on Youtube needling Negreanu about the outburst, and the resulting back-and-forth led to a heads-up challenge.

The heads-up battle started in a live setting, with Negreanu getting out to an early lead.

Once the challenge switched to the online format, however, Polk took over.

Polk was heavily favored to win the Challenge, as practically everyone (including Negreanu) agreed that Polk was the better player when it came to online, heads-up No Limit Hold'em.

Aside from an upswing roughly halfway through the Challenge, things went pretty much as expected for Polk and his supporters, as he was never in any real danger of losing the Challenge.

With that being said, Negreanu obviously took the Challenge seriously and, according to Polk, improved over the course of the 25,000 hands.

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There were many sidebets on this Challenge, with sites like Pokershares and William Hill offering betting on the outcome.

Most professional poker players felt as though Polk had a massive edge in the Challenge and bet on Polk to win, while casual fans backed Negreanu, as they were getting massive odds to do so.

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The "beef" between Polk and Negreanu seems to be over as a result of this Challenge, with mutual respect seemingly having been built over the course of the 25,000 hand Challenge.

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Filed Under: Cash Games