The rivalry between PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker has been ongoing for years. Despite the fact that both are now owned by the same company, the two have continued the battle for supremacy in online poker and now, the rivalry may be rearing its head in the form of social media battles between notable poker pros.
Daniel Negreanu, a Team PokerStars pro got into a little spat on Twitter with Gus Hansen, who is a founding member of Full Tilt over the past week. It all began last week when Hansen reminded Negreanu of their 2006 “High Stakes Poker” episode.
During the hand, Hansen showed a set of Fives while Negreanu showed a set of Sixes. At the turn, Hansen hit his one-outer on the river and made Quads. Negreanu on the other hand ended up with a full house on the river. With a total stack worth $575,700, Hansen moved all in and Negreanu took a while before he finally called, only to look devastated when he saw Hansen’s cards.
The twitter fight continued with Negreanu replies with,
@GusHansen I was going to congratulate you on your graph for 2013 but then realized I was looking at it upside down. Ouch!
After that, Hansen decided to challenge Negreanu to a “High Stakes Poker” rematch on Full Tilt. The response to Hansen’s challenge was, “@GusHansen I just may have an interesting idea for you. Will get back to you Monday sir…”
There was indeed such a response coming from Negreanu on Monday. He tweeted a video blog where he proposes a PokerStars vs. Full Tilt challenge. This will be between Hansen together with his two “Professionals” partners Viktor “Isildur1” Blom and Tom “durrrr” Dwan against Negreanu and two other members of Team PokerStars, which he will be selecting personally.
This will be a total face-off against each other in a “battleship” style heads-up match at the upcoming European Poker Tour London stop. It is going to be a best-of-three match, meaning the winning team will need at least two wins.
What makes the match even more exciting, apart from the notoriety of the players involved, is having its “battleship” style where the two players compete in person while have their backs facing each other.
As expected, Hansen approved of the idea saying, “If you and your money will be there, I can’t say no!” However, he made one request which Negreanu accepted right away.
Since you have tons of PS pros to choose from, and I have my two, I should get to pick the match ups.
The choices of Negreanu were posted in his video. The players who appeared were Vanessa Selbst, Jason Mercier, Eugene Katchalov, Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, and Isaac Haxton but his decision is still not final and he is still accepting suggestions from fans.
The stakes have not yet specified and the majority of the public is not yet aware of this battle, however many are curious if this is a possibility where Negreanu will have a chance to win back his honor that he lost those 7 long years ago.
