A short flare-up between Bill Perkins and Doug Polk almost upset the High Stakes Feud that Polk and Daniel Negreanu are battling.
Perkins Calls out Polk for Using Software to Give Himself Advantage
The ongoing High Stakes Feud between Daniel Negreanu and Doug Polk took an unexpected turn when Bill Perkins called for the suspension of the game, accusing Polk of using big data to analyze hands that have taken place.
Perkins, who has a running bet on the outcome of the series, had a discussion with Polk and seemed to be dissatisfied with what he found out – or thought he found out at least. Taking to Twitter to publicize the issue, Perkins said that Polk had manually entered hand history in software and have run frequency analysis.
Ok this is completely ridiculous and we were talking privately but if you are going to fire off tweets lets talk about it.
The rules were, no hand histories and no huds. We both agreed and were clear on that. Neither was used. https://t.co/PYNZFmn9wM
— Doug "Truck Driver" Polk (@DougPolkVids) November 17, 2020
He described this move as unfair and putting Negreanu at a disadvantage. Polk followed up with a qui 291bet ck tweet, arguing that Perkins and him had had a private conversation of unspecified nature.
Polk refuted Perkins’ claim that huds or hand history software was used in any of the games. However, this incident had a bearing on the game and Polk and Negreanu both agreed to have an independent party analyze game data and make a decision about its fairness.
Third-Party Mediation Disproves Claims, Perkins Apologizes
The parties agreed to call on Phil Galfond as a trusted and respected community member, and who better out there to sort out a high-stakes dispute of this sort?
All good. At first I thought this was gonna be a big deal but then I realized it was only bigger than the Mike Postle incident. https://t.co/4xmp2PxOJC
— Doug "Truck Driver" Polk (@DougPolkVids) November 17, 2020
In any event, it was soon understood that no foul play had taken place. Perkins went on to apologize to everyone and Polk, correcting his statement that any analysis Polk did was done on his own without the help of any software, something that poker players do all the time when they play live games as well.
Polk assuaged the tension by accepting Perkins’ apology and the quipping that the incident was just a bit bigger than Mike Postle’s case. With calamity averted, the game could return back to normal.
Negreanu, the peace broker he is, also jumped on a tweet to clarify that there had been no foul play afoot. He reminded that under WSOP’s T&C’s the use of assistance software was prohibited and that both Polk and he had agreed not to use any.
For Negreanu, this about settled the short-lived controversy that risked upsetting the poker community once again.
