New challengers for Phil Galfond

Jungleman and Venividi accepted the Galfond-challenge, while Fernando 'JNandez' Habegger backed out.

As we reported earlier [3], Phil Galfond issued a massive challenge for the poker community, in an attempt, to promote his poker room, Run it Once Poker [4].

Galfond has been looking for high-stakes action, playing heads-up PLO against anybody, except for the coaches of his poker training site. The first person to accept the challenge was oil-tycoon and high-stakes poker player Bill Perkins.

The two agreed on a 50k-hand challenge, played at €100/€200, with a side bet of $800,000 to $200,000 with Perkins putting up the smaller amount, as he's considered the underdog.

[5]

Since then, several other names have popped up. The second challenger was said to be PLO coach, Fernando 'JNandez' Habegger. He and Galfond agreed on playing 50,000 hands with blinds of €100/€200 - similarly to the Perkins challenge -, with Phil's $1 million to Fernando's $200K on the side.

However, 'JNandez' recently announced, he's backing off, as he believes this challenge would take too much time and energy from him. He disclosed the reasons for his decision on Twitter.

JNandez's tweet

The poker community wasn't happy about his decision, with most of the comments suggesting Habegger is a p*ssy and/or scam, who only wanted a free advertisement for himself.

There are two additional players, who already accepted the challenge. High-stakes online specialist, 'Venividi1993' has been crushing the high-stakes PLO games for years, and the community thinks he's a clear favorite in the match.

The other challenger is none other than, high-stakes legend, Daniel 'Jungleman12' Cates. Cates needs no introduction to poker fans, he's been a huge winner in both online and live cash games over a decade now.

The two will play a much shorter match, however, as they've agreed to only play 7,500 of hands with €100/€200 blinds. The side-bet and the other details are yet to come, but considering how high the Jungleman rolls these days, he's likely looking for a massive bet.

Additional challengers are yet to be announced.