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Phil Galfond suspends his heads-up challenge

The first Galfond Challenge of the year 2020 between Run It Once Poker founder Phil Galfond and mystery challenger ‘VeniVidi1993’ has been equivalent to a horror story for the former! The challenge headed into its third full week and both battled across 15 sessions at €100-€200 Pot-Limit Omaha tables. 9,927 hands were played and Galfond was down €900,240 and opted to suspend his play with the opponent for the time being.

‘VeniVidi1993’ and Galfond had a day off on Monday and were planning to play the next session of Tuesday, which was cancelled and the latter explained in his tweet saying, ‘taking a step back’. Galfond wrote in a statement that was released on Twitter, “I was playing scared. I was expecting to lose. I simply couldn’t get my brain to work properly.” Galfond pointed out that, contrary to what may be a common belief, the most difficult thing wasn’t the money, “It’s the gap between the result and your expectation.”

The founder said the two had 6 more sessions planned this month and missing those sessions will see Galfond take a penalty of €3,000 each. Galfond and ‘VeniVidi1993’ were slated to play 25,000 more hands with Galfond risking €200,000 side action to the €100,000 of ‘VeniVidi1993’. In his note, he stated suspension of sessions until at least March 1.

Galfond shared some valuable mental game insights into the downswings and how he is handling such a bad start. “Another week of the #GalfondChallenge is in the books, and the results have only gotten worse. I’m down nearly €600,000 and essentially haven’t had a winning day,” he continued explaining, “Regardless of the way that your play is affected, it’s always going to be rooted in some emotion: frustration, fear, hopelessness, an increased urge to gamble, etc.”

In the ongoing competition, Galfond has a list of other competitors which will also include Bill Perkins, Brandon Adams, Chance Kornuth and ‘ActionFreak’, and Daniel Cates. For more updates on poker from around the world, keep reading GutshotMagazine.com and stay tuned!

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