It’s the biggest game in town – this week at least – and MJ Gonzales wasn’t joking when he said it was “gonna be a war”, with a $1million stack in front of him as he started his heads-up battle against Dan Smith…
GAME TIME! Gonna be a war @DanSmithHolla pic.twitter.com/PYC1cUDw2h
— Mj Gonzales (@therealmjpoker) May 3, 2021
MJ Gonzales books $72,000 win in the first two sessions
The duo is battling it out live at the Aria, with stakes of $500/$1,000 HUNL making the potential swings enough to ruin anyone who isn’t a millionaire.
Gonzalez, who coached Daniel Negreanu through his Grudge match against Doug Polk, found that out quite early on as he was $280,000 in the hole on day one.
Recovering to just a $32k loss, he bounced back on day two of the match with a $72k win, sparking thoughts of a televised bonanza for poker fans…
Booked a small win today ($72k) against @DanSmithHolla
2 sessions down, plenty more to come.
We’ll be playing again in a couple days…Is anyone interested in watching this on @PokerGO?
— Mj Gonzales (@therealmjpoker) May 4, 2021
Another big challenge
“Cowboy Dan” was also on social media, perhaps only half-joking about how important the match is to him:
He tweeted “Me in therapy last week. “A million dollar poker challenge doesn’t really align with my life goals right now, I don’t have to play.”
“Me 15 minutes into high stakes action today “Literally nothing else in my life matters other than playing as many hours of the biggest game.”
It may well be the biggest challenge for Dan Smith, but it also might not be the only one, his recent spat with Shaun Deeb resulting in a $1million cage fight challenge…
Let’s have a cage fight for a million https://t.co/dO2PqcmZCR
— Dan Smith (@DanSmithHolla) April 24, 2021
Gonzalez isn’t short of challenges either, but he may need to take some $$$ from Dan Smith first to make the buy-in for his $3,000,000 HU Match versus Wiktor Limitless Malinowski.
It has been an incredible time for heads-up battles recently, with Phil Galfond starting the trend last year, his PLO Challenge matches kicking off a slew of live and online mano-a-mano battles.
Galfond landed victories overVeniVidi1993, ActionFreak, and Chance Kornuth, as well as a mini-match win vs Dan Jungleman Cates and a two-session lead over Bill Perkins.
Next up was the infamous Grudge Match between Doug Polk and Daniel Negreanu, the Upswing Poker boss taking $1.2million from the GGPoker ambassador.
Phil Hellmuth took his skills to the heads-up stage, beating Antonio The Magician Esfandiari three times in their High Stakes Duel battle, and then defeating his next challenger, Daniel Negreanu.
Hellmuth and Negreanu are due to play round two of their feud live at the PokerGO studios as we go to press, the stakes up to $100k per player in the SNG format fight, and VIP Grinders will bring you the best of the action as always.
