*** OFFICIAL *** 2020 Galfond Challenge Thread

[Dan Druff]

For those of you who care, Phil Galfond issued a challenge to anyone who wishes to play him heads up for a pre-agreed-upon number of hands at high stakes PLO.

Galfond was once among the game's best in PLO, but he has played little in recent years, and some suspect the elite of the game have passed him by.

He also agreed to sidebets on all six matches, most of which allowed his opponents to get underdog odds.

A good (and frequently updated) writeup is here: https://www.pocketfives.com/galfond-challenge/

The six challengers are: Online player VeniVidi1993, Online player ActionFreak, Bill Perkins, Brandon Adams, Chance Kornuth, and Dan 'Jungleman' Cates.

All of the matches except for Adams' are taking place on Galfond's RunItOnce site. Adams is playing Galfond 40 hours live. (Side note: Adams used to post on NWP as wins_pot. I also used to be friendly with him, but we lost touch many years ago.)

VeniVidi1993 is going first, and they have played 6 days.

They are playing €100-€200 PLO, with Galfond having to pay a sidebet of €200,000 if he loses, and Veni having to pay €100,000 if he loses.

Phil is getting shellacked so far.

After 3937 hands over 6 days, Galfond is down a staggering €327,016 ($360,549). They still have 21,063 hands to go! Ouch!

I should have sidebet on this. I had a feeling that an anonymous online guy willing to put up that kind of money against Galfond would likely be better than him (and perhaps is cheating with solvers on his end!)

I might sidebet on ActionFreak if I can. ActionFreak is not even getting odds in the sidebet, so even Galfond thinks he's really good.

Anyway, I think this is going to be a brutal result in the first match overall. After getting destroyed on Day 5 of the challenge, Phil mostly broke even today, but people pointed out that Phil "mostly won coolers and flips", and didn't really win anything else.

Phil will likely win some back against the inferior Bill Perkins (who's just rich and wants to gamble), but I bet he's gets crushed by ActionFreak, and I'm not sure about how he'll do against Adams, Kornuth, and Jungleman. (He's putting up 1 million euros on a sidebet against Kornuth's 250k, so this will be really painful if he loses).

Some are theorizing that perhaps Galfond sold action to the same investors who bought into the RunItOnce Poker site, which is losing money every month. Will these same investors lose even more? And if so, can that software be trusted to run these high stakes matches, if the investors (and by extension the programmers) have a vested interest in Phil winning?

That would be the one reason I might NOT buy ActionFreak. I don't think Phil would cheat, but those unknown investors and programmers... who knows?

Anyway, we will be keeping track of the matches in this thread.

[GambleBotsChafedPenis]

still early and anything can happen in the 20K hands that are left, but phil is getting brutalized...

thought that after he got his ass kicked in the first few days, he'd have pounded away with sauce123 over the weekend to plug some things up...pretty sure sauce is still one of the top PLO guys out there...either he hasn't done that or it's still working it's way through...

[duped_samaritan]

Some are theorizing that perhaps Galfond sold action to the same investors who bought into the RunItOnce Poker site, which is losing money every month. Will these same investors lose even more? And if so, can that software be trusted to run these high stakes matches, if the investors (and by extension the programmers) have a vested interest in Phil winning?

You're taking that time he turned you down for a job way too personally.

[Dan Druff]

Some are theorizing that perhaps Galfond sold action to the same investors who bought into the RunItOnce Poker site, which is losing money every month. Will these same investors lose even more? And if so, can that software be trusted to run these high stakes matches, if the investors (and by extension the programmers) have a vested interest in Phil winning?

You're taking that time he turned you down for a job way too personally.

Do you not agree with this statement?

[duped_samaritan]

You're taking that time he turned you down for a job way too personally.

Do you not agree with this statement?

No. I'm sure people are theorizing that.

[Dan Druff]

Do you not agree with this statement?

No. I'm sure people are theorizing that.

Theorizing what?

You don't think it's important to know who owns a site where high stakes matches are taking place, if the site CEO is playing high stakes heads up there, and might be backed by those same investors?

[Tellafriend]

No. I'm sure people are theorizing that.

Theorizing what?

You don't think it's important to know who owns a site where high stakes matches are taking place, if the site CEO is playing high stakes heads up there, and might be backed by those same investors?

He’s just incapable of admitting he was wrong.

[duped_samaritan]

No. I'm sure people are theorizing that.

Theorizing what?

Theorizing the things you said some people were theorizing:

Some are theorizing that perhaps Galfond sold action to the same investors who bought into the RunItOnce Poker site, which is losing money every month. Will these same investors lose even more? And if so, can that software be trusted to run these high stakes matches, if the investors (and by extension the programmers) have a vested interest in Phil winning?

You don't think it's important to know who owns a site where high stakes matches are taking place, if the site CEO is playing high stakes heads up there, and might be backed by those same investors?

No, It's definitely important for people to know that Phil owns RIO. Especially the guys who decide to play him HU on it.

Not trying to be sly here. I just think you've been jaded and rooting for him to fail ever since he turned you down for a job, and that's why youre now planting the 'maybe it's rigged' seed.