A bad start for Phil in the Galfond Challenge
Down six-figures after the first week is probably not how he had planned to start a yearlong challenge of nosebleed headsup PLO battles.
The first full week of Phil Galfond's series of heads-up challenges is now complete and it has been a very bad start for the online legend.
Galfond has booked over $3 million in side bets against 'ActionFreak', Brandon Adams, Chance Kornuth, Bill Perkins and Daniel Cates (although terms with Cates have not been agreed). His first challenge includes a €200,000 side bet against PLO grinder 'VeniVidi' and that has not gone Galfond's way so far.
After 3,234 hands (of an agreed 25,000) Galfond is already down €327,003 at €100/€200 stakes. Unlike some of his other challenges, a stop loss has not been agreed.
The nice thing about being down €327k in 3.2k hands is that you can be absolutely certain that you’re running bad!
Yesterday was the worst day yet but my focus was good, even when getting smashed, so I’m happy with how I handled what I could control. Back at it in 90 minutes! pic.twitter.com/wNcxQmrjY6
— Phil Galfond (@PhilGalfond) January 28, 2020
These challenges are a self-confessed publicity stunt for Galfond's poker room and training site, so as such you can see all of the action streamed on Twitch and the biggest pots so far have been clipped here. He is playing weekdays until the challenge is over.
One of the things that has made this challenge so engaging, as well as what has made Galfond so admired throughout his career, is how transparent he has been through the process as well as how willing he is to put himself in difficult situations. As such, he has been quite public about how tough the start of the challenge has been:
The result is nothing I haven’t faced 100 times before, but I‘ve been disappointed not by the outcome, but by myself.
I haven’t hit the level of focus and energy I used to. Must be getting old? 🙂
Plan is to fix that this week. 🤞ðŸ»
— Phil Galfond (@PhilGalfond) January 26, 2020
Unlike previous times he took on all comers online, Galfond now has a family and two businesses to support, which is perhaps one of the reasons he is struggling. He spoke very candidly this week to our friends at The Chip Race about his mental game and his approach to study for this challenge.
If you are a PLO fan you can look over all the hand histories right here, which have been made publicly available.
It's hard not to root for Phil, if for no other reason than this is just the first of many challenges he is set to embark on in 2020. Nobody wants him to have such a tricky start.
Can he turn it around? Let us know in the comments:
