ShareJason Koon has been chosen as Phil Hellmuth’s next opponent – or victim perhaps – in High Stakes Duel round 3, where each player will pony up $800,000 for the heads-up battle!
Hellmuth is currently 9-1 ahead in his HSD match-ups, and was expected to play Scott Seiver in a rematch, having already defeated him in the round of $400k per head.
Seiver withdrew last week, however, and that opened the way for a new challenger, the Poker Brat having already seen off Antonio Esfandiari, Daniel Negreanu, Nick Wright and Tom Dwan in the addictive SNG-style matches.
There was no shortage of potential opponents for Hellmuth, with Bryn Kenney among those begging for a shot at the champ...
The man of the moment, WSOP Main Event champ Espen Jorstad, offered up his services...
...with the added bonus of being a self-confessed “idiot from northern Europe,” a nod to one of the Poker Brat’s most famous insults.
Dan Smith and Dan Zack both put their hats in the ring to take on Phil, but the clever money seemed to be on the “Jungleman”, Dan Cates, who also took to Twitter to plead his case...
The powers that be at PokerGO, however, decided Jason Koon was the man for the job, but the GGPoker/TritonPoker ambassador will have to wait until big Phil is ready to play, it seems.
The match against Seiver had been scheduled for Next Monday, August 22nd, but Phil seems to have stamped his feet and forced a delay, perhaps in order to do some recce work on Koon’s heads-up game.
Some poker fans weren’t impressed with the time-out, Ricardo Lima tweeting: “I don’t get it. Scott Seiver couldn’t play 22nd Aug so he was out of the match. Now Koon accepted and Phil Hellmuth can’t play on the 22nd and the match is postponed? Don’t they have any kind of signed agreements? I understand he now has to study Koon’s play probably but c’mon!”
The fans also had different takes on who is likely to win, a selection of comments below:
- Phil’s playing style will win through on this one. There was a poll where Jungleman topped the list ahead of Phil Ivey to play PH next. The result would have been different with that match up.
- Wow…should be a great match. Takes some confidence to take on a guy w/Phil’s heads up record!! Jason is definitely an incredible poker player. My $ is still on Phil!
- It’ll be like stealing candy from a baby for Jason!
Who do you think will take down the $1.6million High Stakes Duel III match-up between Hellmuth and Koon? Let us know on our social media channels!
