With nearly 4,000 hands played, which is either close to one-third of the shorter challenge length of 12,500 possible hands, or one-sixth of the way to the total 25,000 that will be possible.

We now have a better idea of how closely matched these pair are and it seems like it’s a pretty close match up. Daniel has hit back pretty big in some sessions, with a couple of $200k+ wins under his belt.

The results so far look like this:

Session 1: Negreanu +$116,500
Session 2: Doug +$218,292 (Total: Doug +$101,792) 
Session 3: Doug +$166,239 (Total: Doug +$268,031) 
Session 4: Daniel +$87,166 (Total: Doug +$180,865) 
Session 5: Daniel +$206,994 (Total: Daniel +$25,916) 
Session 6: Doug +$93,542 (Total: Doug +$67,625) 
Session 7: Daniel +$222,832 (Total: Daniel +$155,206) 
Session 8: Daniel +$24,156 (Total: Daniel +$179,363) 
Session 9: Doug +$205,734 (Total: Doug +$26,371) 

With all that said and done, we take a look at how session 9 went…

Hero Call

Doug wasn’t buying anything from this old man speeding. Doug calls a sizable River bluff here from Daniel with his top pair on this dicey board here to win himself a $50k pot early on in this session.

Cooler Time

Doug really went for it in this hand, allowing Daniel to just sit back and happily press call. Doug raised the Flop and jammed all-in for a slight overbet on the Turn in this cooler pot where DNegs flopped a set of sevens.

Board Pair. Don’t Care

Doug didn’t slow down on this board pairing River, moving all-in with the second nut flush here and getting snap-called by DNegs with a worse flush.

This one was good for $110k going to Polk’s corner, but this pot doesn’t really matter, because regardless of who has either hand here, the pair are getting all the money in, it just happened Polk was on the winning side of this one.

Doug Gets Spicey with a Q4s 4-Bet

After juicing the pot in position with his suited Queen high, Doug ran into a board that DNegs is just never folding with his hand and with so much equity for Doug, this is just another cooler board.

Doug Jammed All-in on this board, with a straight and flush draw as well as one overcard to the board. Daniel called and his pair of six’s which also held a straight draw stood up.

4-Betting with a hand like this for Doug seems pretty reasonable, he is going to be able to take Daniel off hands like 66 on loads of boards, just not this one.

Give Him Some Rope

It’s important to have a balanced range in poker, so even when you have to call on the Turn as Doug did in this pot to hit his flush, you still want to check some River cards.

If you don’t you become too predictable, your opponent can value bet every time when checked to and fold to River bets. Daniel dodged a bullet here by checking back on this River to avoid losing more.

Barrell Time

Doug played a series of hands where Daniel seemed to get poor run-outs for his hands, in this pot Daniel gave up the lead on the Turn and Doug fired both Turn and River to win the pot.

Daniel may want to be careful in these kinds of spots, because he will be losing a huge amount of EV if he plays his hands like Tx, 88, JJ etc like this and just gives up when bad cards come off for his hand.

Another cooler

Another massive pot that the pair played was this one, Daniel chose to 4-Bet QJo from the button in this pot and ended up Turning a straight, but losing when the River paired up and Doug made a full house.

This is just a cooler the way it was played, Daniel bet small with his open ender on the Flop, Doug called and led the Turn on this 3 to a flush card and Daniel called.

The rest of the money went in on the River with Doug moving All-in and it was $104k going his way with the full house.

I think that QJo can play well in 3-bet pots, however, I can’t see the appeal in 4-Betting with this combination personally. It’s good to block hands like AQ and AJ I guess, however you will just bloat the pot and get continues from Doug when he holds hands like KQ, AQ, AT, JJ etc.

Overall you don’t do well against this range and even with a positional advantage, it’s going to be hard to navigate if you flop a piece because you could just be getting all the money in against a better hand.

How does the match look on a graph?

As we can see it’s been up and down, with Doug up nearly $300k at one point early on and down nearly $200k after session 8.

This session was a huge win for camp Polk and brings things back to even, with less that one buy-in in it right now.

Sickest Pot Yet

Check out this hand, which has to be the most insane of the heads up match so far…