Hellmuth and Negreanu played their first battle in the High Stakes Duel

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The long-awaited heads-up match between two legendary poker players Phil Hellmuth and Daniel Negreanu finished at PokerGo studio as part of the popular poker show "High Stakes Duel".

As a result of the six-hour battle, Phil Hellmuth became the winner that didn’t come easily for him. At some point, it even seemed that their fight would never end.

As you probably guessed, the game was quite lengthy. Throughout most of this fight, Negreanu confidently held the advantage and didn’t give Hellmuth opportunity to prove himself.

Read also: High Stakes Duel II: Hellmuth and Negreanu plan to play three matches

In the first round of their duel, the buy-in of each of the participants was $50 000. Nevertheless, the winner will only be able to cash out his prize money when his opponent surrenders. 

Obviously, Negreanu isn’t going to give up so easily, given the fact that he was in complete control of the game for the first four hours. The players will soon meet again in the second round, and if Negreanu loses again, he will have to pay $100 000 to return to the third round of the duel.

In the decisive hand, Hellmuth bluffed with A-8 on a K-6-5 flop and the turn with a nine. On the river, he got a seven that brought him a straight, but Negreanu hit two pairs. After that, Daniel failed to regain his advantage.

It can be said that tighter play was Negreanu's mistake when Hellmuth began to attack. With the blinds growth, Negreanu decided to save his stack by means of folding mediocre hands. Hellmuth began to use it and eventually got the victory in the first round.