Daniel Negreanu versus Phil Hellmuth I on “High Stakes Duel” on PokerGO proved to be one of the most memorable heads-up matches ever televised as “The Poker Brat” put together an astonishing comeback to win after being down to his last few chips.About a month later, they met for Round 2 as Negreanu exercised his rematch option at double stakes, each player posting $100,000 for the 30-minute-level live sit-n-go.
It could hardly be expected to live up to the first match, which had been preceded by months of hype and went down in the wildest fashion possible. But arguably an even higher level of poker was on display as both players executed daring bluffs and turned up the aggression considerably compared to their prior meeting.
Once again, Negreanu looked to be in control, but once again, he failed to put Hellmuth away and paid dearly as Hellmuth engineered another, albeit less epic, comeback. Afterward, Negreanu could only compliment his rival’s strong play while vowing to dance one last time for Round 3.
Negreanu made boat-over-boat on a two-paired board to get things close to even, then a huge hand went down. Hellmuth limped for 300 with and called a raise to 900 from Negreanu, who had . The flop paired Hellmuth and he called 1,200. On the turn, Negreanu put another 3,100 that was instantly called.
On the river, Negreanu overbet with 13,000. Hellmuth came back with 28,000 and Negreanu clicked right back to 43,000.
“What the f***?” Hellmuth uttered softly.
He used a couple of time extensions, called, and saw the bad news as Negreanu went up about 144K to 56K.
Down to a little over 50K, Negreanu raised to 4,000 with and Hellmuth leaned forward to get a look at his stack. He moved in with .
“It would be pretty outrageously foolish of me to fold this hand,” Negreanu said. “All right.”
They showed down and Negreanu said he was “nervous” despite his lead. The couldn’t make him feel good as Hellmuth picked up more outs. The turn had Negreanu looking away, and sure enough the consigned him to another L.
Comments