On Monday, the third session of the challenge between Douglas ‘WCGRider’ Polk and Ben ‘Sauce’ Sulsky was played down. For the first time, Sulsky walked away with winnings.
In the first two sessions of the high stakes heads-up challenge between Douglas ‘WCGRider’ Polk and Ben ‘Sauce’ Sulsky, the former built a major edge, winning $227,000 in their first and $167,000 in the second game, in a total of 3,810 hands from the 15,000 planned in total. The third session took place on Monday with 2,232 hands at the special $100/$200 NLHE HU challenge tables at Full Tilt Poker.
‘Sauce’ started the game more carefully than before and ‘WCGRider’ apparently did not mind to kill some hands with him in a major lead. In the first three hours, no major pots developed, nor could any of the players gain a significant edge. Around midway through the session, 2012 high stakes champion Sulsky started to play more aggressively and several big pots got in the middle, mostly won by ‘Sauce’. After four hours of play, he had $29,000 in profits.
In the next five hours, ‘Sauce’ managed to further increase his lead to a total of $97,000 in winnings. For the first time in the challenge, he appeared to dominate the game and forced his will upon ‘WCGRider’. For a total of 18 times, pots of over $40,000 got in the middle and 11 of them went to ‘Sauce’; still, the biggest one landed before ‘WCGRider’.
In the hand, ‘WCGRider’ raised to $480, ‘Sauce’ 3-bet to $1,440, ‘WCGRider’ 4-bet to $4,200 and ‘Sauce’ called. The flop came 3:d A:d Q:s, both players checked and the turn came 4:h. ‘Sauce’ bet $6,781 and ‘WCGRider’ called. On the J:c river, ‘Sauce’ shoved with $20,065 and ‘WCGRider’ called from a bigger stack, showing A:c 5:s to crack Sulsky’s K:c J:s.
Despite the session, Polk is still way ahead in the overall standings. However, the players are not even midway through the challenge yet, with 8,944 hands still to go.
Standings after 6,056 hands are as follows:
