H2H: Polk is running over DNegs

[JoeCool20]

poker player mentality from top to bottom.... we all remember how horrible the suckouts are that beat us, or, like daniel's kk v polk's qq running out a wheel to chop (saved polk another 60-70K hickey if i recall right.... but, when we hit the longshots, that's just part of our game and was supposed to happen....

so, naturally, both think the other has run better........ daniel offered to bet polk 2M to have any reasonable analysis run on the hand to show he ran worse, polk declined..... tells me all I need to know.

That is the easiest and simplest way to put it. They guy who donks in the 5, 10, or 15% longshot says it was "good poker" while the guy who got donked claims the guy who sucked out was lucky as hell. Then when it flip flops, and the the other guy donks in a longshot, both of the people reverse their opinion and say the opposite! The guy who sucked out starts defending his play and calling it "good poker" while the other guy cries "luck"!! LOL
When I first saw some people on here doing that and going both ways simply according to which side of the donk they were on, I thought they were joking! Until I realized they weren't joking, because they'd get mad at me when I called them out for it! LOL

[RudyRuetigger]

wow


who is watching right now?



these guys might get in a boxing ring before this over

[pablo222]

What happened Rudy?

First hand I see when I just tuned in was DN checking back river on jj1010x board with 10 7

[RudyRuetigger]

What happened Rudy?

First hand I see when I just tuned in was DN checking back river on jj1010x board with 10 7

daniel on an upswing


doug decided to limp and play basically weak to win the match




daniel in turn, is now time banking nonstop to drag this match out or tilt doug



tilt doug worked because they played 46 hands and now talking to phil galfond on the phone about this (who is arbitrator)

[ArunSh]

Seems really lame by Negreanu to me. So Polk decided to change strategies presumably to lower the variance/lower the swings to give him a better chance to win the overall match - seems like a perfectly reasonable strategy to me. Naturally he had to put himself in a position to be able to do that by winning big earlier so that's his prerogative.

Or perhaps after losing the last session he decided it would be a better strategy to play in that way - who knows his exact motivations, but you can play your cards as you want.

Negreanu himself said it's a losing strategy. If someone decides to shove on me preflop in a NL game every hand (e.g. bigblue!), I could quit the game because I don't like the way he plays, or I could do the smart thing and accept all the free EV he's offering me and gamble with him.

To instead respond to someone deciding to change their game in a way you claim is -EV for them by stalling - something which he himself has called others out on numerous occasions in the past, rather hypocritical imo. Rather shocked at how many people are saying "Well Polk changed the way he was playing so Negreanu can do the same", as if those are even remotely the same thing.

Of course, just my opinion. I'm sure if Bobbywaves was here he'd swoop in and defend Negreanu since in his view stalling every hand was perfectly legitimate since "you can use your time the way you want" (even though it's not even true according to the rules which says you are not allowed to slow down the game artificially like that). Guess can be thankful that he's gone though so don't have to hear it from him at least!

[ChuckyTheGoat]

OK. Polk just killing it now. Polk appears to be bored w/ this "challenge."

Agg > +$800k. Approaching Mill net.

[ChuckyTheGoat]

I watched a good # of hours via JIngram. Just a few wrap-up comments:

*Galfond said that he would have thought that Polk would have expected to win MORE than what he did. I didn't get this sense from listening to Polk. Polk calculated the BB per 100 hands, I think Polk feels like he came in very close to his expected earn.

I picked up on maybe two areas where DNeg was outmatched:
1) How to apply aggression.
2) How to play different stack depths.

I can think of two hands where Polk went for a heavy bluff or semi-bluff:
a) the hand where Polk 4x bet the river and DNegs held the nuts w/ 8T. Yes, Polk bet into the nuts...but he would also fold out a ton of hands that he was behind.
b) the K3 vs 56 hand where Polk shoved. DNegs just happened to flop pair + up/down. So often, DNegs just has to fold Ace-hi.

How many times did Polk do that where DNegs DID have to fold the better hand? Have to think Polk had a big edge in those spots.

Based on observation, I feel like DNegs was playing it more like a ring game. His strategy just seemed vanilla to me. Polk re-defined this approach of multiple lines, no way DNegs is on that level.

[beavis13]

Polk was a guest on the DAT Poker Podcast that DNegs is a host on, and they talk a lot about this challenge if anyone wants to hear them talk about it.