ShareDoug Polk has been named as Daniel Negreanu’s challenger for round 2 of High Stakes Duel 4, a $100,000 per head, face-to-face, live heads-up battle in Las Vegas in August.
Negreanu and Polk have some incredible history between them, years of social media bickering resulting in their infamous Grudge Match in the winter of 2020/21.
Polk walked off with a $1.2million victory, but that match was played 99% online, and Negreanu yesterday claimed that live is a different story.
“So, here’s the deal. Doug Polk has never, in history, beat me playing live poker. It’s never happened. We played once, I obviously won – online poker thing forget about that!”
Kid Poker, who defeated Eric Persson in round 1 of HSD4, added: “We’re playing live poker, my arena, I’m going to come away with the victory, bring it!”
The rules have been updated for the fourth version of the High Stakes Duel series, which now only requires two wins instead of the previous three to walk off with the money.
As the press release for the upcoming battle states: “If Negreanu defeats Polk in Round 2, he’ll be crowned High Stakes Duel 4 champion."
“If Polk wins Round 2, then Negreanu will have the first right to a rematch for Round 3 at double the stakes. If Negreanu loses and then declines the rematch, Polk will need to face a new challenger.”
Daniel, who fell 3-0 to Phil Hellmuth in HSD2, wasn’t thinking about a loss when Polk was named as his next challenger, but he did reveal that a rematch, at $200k per head, would be most likely.
“We’re not even going to throw out the idea of him beating me,” said Daniel, adding, “but if something crazy were to happen, you know, chances are pretty good I would do a rematch, but we’re not looking at no rematches.”
The Round 2 match between Negreanu and Polk is scheduled to take place in August at the PokerGO Studio in Las Vegas. The match will air exclusively on PokerGO.
High Stakes Duels I, II and III
For those who haven’t followed the High Stakes Duel heads-up battles, Negreanu’s $400k whitewash courtesy of Hellmuth’s “white magic” came in HSD II, with Hellmuth having already scooped $400,00 by defeating Antonio Esfandiari 3-0 in the inaugural HSD.Highstakes Duel III was an altogether different affair, Hellmuth facing four different opponents before losing his crown. First up he beat amateur player Nick Wright for $50k, the Fox Sports host unable to justify spending $100k on a rematch.
Tom Dwan stepped in as a replacement for round 2, toppling the Poker Brat but then losing the $400k rematch. When a scheduling conflict meant Dwan couldn’t make the $800k decider, Scott Seiver stepped in.
Hellmuth saw off Seiver’s challenge but his next opponent would prove to be the toughest of all, Jason Koon.
First up there was talk of Bryn Kenney as the challenger for round 5, although that talk mostly came from the Brooklyn man himself.
With Kenney still under a cloud of suspicion due to cheating allegations at the time, squeaky-clean Koon got the potentially lucrative gig, and he turned up with an anti-Hellmuth strategy to win the $1.6million showdown.
With the stakes by now at the eye-watering $3.2million level, it wasn’t completely surprising that highstakes crusher Koon got no takers at the start of the year.
