In this column we deliver you the latest and most interesting news and gossip from our favourite poker people.
HU for souls – Landon Tice vs. Bill Perkins
It’s been a long while since we experienced the rise of the young online kids up through the ranks and sometimes to the live felt. We all remember Tom Dwan or Viktor Bloom as the poker heroes of our era. Since then it seemed most online wizards stayed online, live wizards grinded live, but we were missing the big exciting stories around them and the rise up to stardom.
Now there is Landon Tice from Florida who is only 21 years old and is creating massive waves in the U.S. poker scene. It all started with him showing off his skills online against Doug Polk in August 2020. He won a HU match against Polk and appeared as a guest on Joey Ingram’s YouTube channel to talk about the grind through the ranks.
In November Tice then went on to win the 2020 MSPT Venetian $1,100 Main Event for $201,529, proving that it’s not just online cash games that are his jam.
Predominantly the U.S. poker media jumped on him and Tice appeared in quite a few podcasts and poker news outlets, telling his story about his rise onto the big poker stage.
Now that the two latest exciting HU matches between Phil Galfond and Chance Kornuth and Daniel Negreanu and Doug Polk are over, it seems Tice will be involved in the next high stakes online match. It all unfolded on Twitter between him and Bill Perkins. The pair tentatively decided to play “HU for souls”, $200/$400 over 20,000 hands, though no online platform has been decided on yet.
https://twitter.com/LandonTice/status/1358192212421451777?s=20
Also, this match will have a spicy twist. As part of the deal, Tice must pay Perkins nine big blinds per 100 hands. So, if he wins $1 million during the heads-up play, he’ll only profit $280,000 as he will owe Perkins $720,000.
When and how exactly this “HU for souls” is going to happen is not clear yet. But as always, poker fans can be happy that more dramatic action is on the horizon
Another HU challenge – “Limitless” vs. “Stefan11222”
And believe it or not, that is not all this week when it comes to heads-up challenges. Besides the above mentioned upcoming HU battle between Landon Tice and Bill Perkins, two other poker players have started a heads-up battle: online grinders Wiktor “Limitless” Malinowski and Stefan “Stefan11222” Burakov.
The battle kicked off after some good old smack talk online. Malinowski made clear that he felt Burakov was clearly the worse player but felt triggered by him talking smack in the online PokerStars chat boxes.
“Stefan11222” in return admitted that he only recently started playing HU, but he felt that Malinowski was an even weaker player than him at this point. There was a bit of back and forth about the conditions of the battle, but on 6th February it did kick off.
We are now about 2k hands into the 30k hands challenge on PokerStars with $50/$100 blinds and a x2 side bet in Bitcoins. Malinowski won’t pay handicap, but will use an avatar from the movie “Revolver” during the game. The pair will play 30k hands or stop if one of them loses over $1 million. The challenge has to be finished before June.
The loser of the heads-up battle will declare himself a fish in Burakov’s blog and apologize for the disrespectful behaviour. If “Stefan11222” wins, Wiktor also must admit that his opponent plays better than Fedor Holz.
This admittedly sounds like a proper grudge match and it should be fun to follow. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that it will be covered as well as the other heads-up challenges were.
As this format starts to gain more and more popularity, what could be other interesting match-ups. Who would you like to see battling it out on the virtual felt? Let us know on our Twitter account.
“All In Pav” leaves partypoker
The departures of sponsored pros and ambassadors from the poker giants has not stopped yet. The latest leaving news revolve around online pro and streamer Hristivoje “All In Pav” Pavlovic who had been part of the partypoker Team Online for a while.
Partypoker thanked the Australian on Twitter and now the speculations are wild about where Pavlovic will resurface again. GGPoker, America’s Card Room or will he stay without a sponsor?
As he leaves @ppteamonline, we would like to wish @AllinPav the very best. Pav, we are thankful for all your support over your time with us. Good luck for the future! pic.twitter.com/7l3zZs0Rme
— partypoker (@partypoker) February 3, 2021
Rob Yong loses $1,2 million in High Stakes Feud prop bet
After the Grudge Match between Negreanu and Polk came to a conclusion, many poker people had to pay up their side bets.
Casino owner and partypoker consultant Rob Yong had bet that Negreanu would not lose more than $700k in this heads-up battle. As it turns out, Yong lost just as much in this side bet as Negreanu himself did during the match: $1.2 million.
Seeing double – Negreanu and Polk Christmas photos
And we are still not done with the high stakes feud news. As it turns out, Polk and Negreanu did end up making up, burying the hatchet and more or less respecting each other after the conclusion of the match.
But maybe the writing was on the wall all along and it was clear the both of them aren’t as different as it seemed? Upswing Poker VP Mike Brady found the Christmas photo of both the duellists and was shocked to find out there were virtually the same.
what the pic.twitter.com/WqmCRYJi75
— Mike Brady (@mbradycf) February 5, 2021
Daniel Negreanu just replied “Well that’s f***ing weird.”
