A wild, intense session ensued between Doug Polk and Daniel Negreanu on Day 14 of their high-stakes, heads-up battle, with the GGPoker ambassador walking away with a win. But, Negreanu needed a bout of run-good to finish up the four-hour match with a nominal profit.
Polk entered the session with a massive lead — over $570,000. He lost the previous session by a small amount, ending a string of four straight days with six-figure wins.
Day 14, as per usual, began at 2:30 pm PT and ended around 6:30. The four-hour session featured an array of massive pots going both ways, some failed bluffs, and more twists and turns than a roller coaster at Six Flags. In the end, the overall scoreboard is pretty close to where it was before the session began.
Negreanu Somehow Ends Up Ahead for the Day
On Wednesday afternoon, Negreanu lost pots of $70,000 or more with trips to a rivered full house, a king-high flush to an ace-high flush, and flopped top pair (aces) with a queen kicker to turned trips. He still somehow came out ahead.
Early in the session, he trailed by as much as $120,000. Then, he picked up some pots, picked off a bluff or two, and grinded his way quickly back to a slim lead in no time. More than an hour later, he was again back down by six figures. Then, just like that, he finally won a massive pot due to a brutal cooler, the same way Polk has won numerous pots during this challenge.
In the memorable hand, both players were holding two clubs (Polk with 3 6 and Negreanu 7 5). The board ran out J 5 8 A Q with one club on the flop, turn, and river, giving both players a small backdoored flush. Negreanu led from the small blind on the river, betting $28,663 into a pot of $38,215 and Polk ripped it all-in with the bigger stack. The GGPoker ambassador wouldn’t fold and made the call with $49,040 behind, winning a pot of $164,959. It was the biggest hand of the day, and one of the biggest through the entire 14-day challenge.
Later in the session, Negreanu won another $30,000 pot with ace-high. Moments later, in one of the final hands of the day, Polk got caught bluffing off his stack on the river. The Upswing Poker founder, who barreled the flop and turn with 9 10 on a board of A 3 8 5 Q, fired out an all-in wager of $31,000 on the river (about the size of the pot). Negreanu tanked for a brief moment before making the call with A 10, taking down the $97,663 pot.
That hand propelled Negreanu back into the lead and finished off a wild back-and-forth session. After all was said and done, the Poker Hall of Famer left the WSOP.com poker site up about $13,000 on the day. Through nearly 7,000 hands of a 25,000-hand heads-up poker challenge, he still trails in the overall match by about $565,000.
