In early September, Douglas ‘WCGRider’ Polk and Ben ‘Sauce’ Sulsky announced a high stakes heads-up challenge, which instantly made it to the centre of attention, involving two of the most renowned online pros of today; ‘WCGRider’ is the most successful player at PokerStars, while ‘Sauce’ won last year’s high stakes money list contest. Full Tilt Poker soon applied to back the challenge and the room announced last Friday that the duel would launch on Sunday.
“The structure of the challenge is simple; the two stars will play 15,000 hands across a number of sessions. Play will halt if either player builds an effective chip stack of more than 250 big blinds, and the player who is ahead at the time the 15,000th hand is complete will be awarded the $100,000 put up by the losing player,” FTP wrote.
The first session took place on Sunday and lasted eight and a half hours. In the 2,460 hands played on three tables, ‘WCGRider’ built an edge of $226,716.
Polk got ahead early into the game, calling Sulsky’s 3 barrel bluff on the T-3-3-9-4 board with A-T. Sauce pushed all-in on the river with 7-6 but could not make his opponent fold, giving him a pot of $40,000. In the first two hours of the session, ‘Sauce’ remained behind $30-80,000. Soon, Polk’s profits rose over $100,000 after a major pot and it became clear ‘Sauce’ cannot really handle ‘WCGRider’, doing little better than moving one step forward two steps back. In around the 6th hour of the session, ‘Sauce’ managed to reduce Polk’s $150,000 lead to $100,000. Still, the finish was Polk’s, winning another $127,000 ($80,000 in the last 20 minutes).
The biggest pot hand was played down as follows:
‘Sauce’ raised to $600, ‘WCGRider’ 3-bet to $2,200, ‘Sauce’ 4-bet to $5,444 and ‘WCGRider’ called. The flop came
4 
2 
Q , ‘WCGRider’ checked, Sulsky bet $5,872 and Polk called. ‘WCGRider’ also checked the 7 turn, ‘Sauce’ bet $12,379 and ‘WCGRider’ called again. Polk then check-called Sulsky’s $23,207 all-in on the J river and showed Q Q for a top set against Sulsky’s K K , winning the $93,804 pot.
‘WCGRider’ did dominate the major pot hands, taking four of the five biggest. Even though he had his fair share of luck, running around $90,000 over EV, he deserved his victory.
The next session, planned to last 3 hours, takes place on Wednesday, 18 September at 18:00 CET at the FTP special challenge tables.
The current standings of the ‘WCGRider’ vs ‘Sauce’ challenge are as follows:
WCGRider: +$226,715 (2,460 hands)
Sauce: -$227,362 (2,460 hands)
“The structure of the challenge is simple; the two stars will play 15,000 hands across a number of sessions. Play will halt if either player builds an effective chip stack of more than 250 big blinds, and the player who is ahead at the time the 15,000th hand is complete will be awarded the $100,000 put up by the losing player,” FTP wrote.
The first session took place on Sunday and lasted eight and a half hours. In the 2,460 hands played on three tables, ‘WCGRider’ built an edge of $226,716.
Polk got ahead early into the game, calling Sulsky’s 3 barrel bluff on the T-3-3-9-4 board with A-T. Sauce pushed all-in on the river with 7-6 but could not make his opponent fold, giving him a pot of $40,000. In the first two hours of the session, ‘Sauce’ remained behind $30-80,000. Soon, Polk’s profits rose over $100,000 after a major pot and it became clear ‘Sauce’ cannot really handle ‘WCGRider’, doing little better than moving one step forward two steps back. In around the 6th hour of the session, ‘Sauce’ managed to reduce Polk’s $150,000 lead to $100,000. Still, the finish was Polk’s, winning another $127,000 ($80,000 in the last 20 minutes).
The biggest pot hand was played down as follows:
‘Sauce’ raised to $600, ‘WCGRider’ 3-bet to $2,200, ‘Sauce’ 4-bet to $5,444 and ‘WCGRider’ called. The flop came
4 2 Q , ‘WCGRider’ checked, Sulsky bet $5,872 and Polk called. ‘WCGRider’ also checked the 7 turn, ‘Sauce’ bet $12,379 and ‘WCGRider’ called again. Polk then check-called Sulsky’s $23,207 all-in on the J river and showed Q Q for a top set against Sulsky’s K K , winning the $93,804 pot.‘WCGRider’ did dominate the major pot hands, taking four of the five biggest. Even though he had his fair share of luck, running around $90,000 over EV, he deserved his victory.
The next session, planned to last 3 hours, takes place on Wednesday, 18 September at 18:00 CET at the FTP special challenge tables.
The current standings of the ‘WCGRider’ vs ‘Sauce’ challenge are as follows:
WCGRider: +$226,715 (2,460 hands)
Sauce: -$227,362 (2,460 hands)
