Phil Galfond Still Leads after ‘ActionFreak’ Bags a €74K Profit in Last Session; Ships another Victory in Jungleman Mini Challenge

Following Phil Galfond’s win against online player ‘Venividi1993’, the American pro is taking no stops in crushing the game. His major comeback in the first battle for the Galfond Challenge series made poker headline news as he cruised his way to victory after an initial €900k loss. Since then, the Run It Once Poker founder has begun taking on two new opponents as he works his way to complete the six scheduled challenges in his series line-up.

ActionFreak makes a return

Galfond’s challenge against ActionFreak began late last month and has run a couple sessions soon after. To date, the action duo has played through a total of 4,078 hands out of the 15,000 hands agreed duration with Galfond leading by € 246,512.56. The poker icon was originally dominating the scene bagging a huge profit of € 416,442.58 while the similarly-talented ActionFreak has managed to pull off hefty wins in the last two sessions cutting his losses tremendously. Galfond’s great start however, is seemingly not impossible to overcome given the larger stakes €150-300 they are playing, making swings bigger than the previous challenge.

Revealing his identity, ActionFreak namely Ioannis Kontonatsios bagged a sweet € 74,625.85 in winnings in the last session recently concluded last Tuesday. Still at a loss for over €200k, ActionFreak is not giving up and will continue on to battle the notable pro for also a chance to win their equal side bet of an additional €150k.

Bill Perkins Down

In another challenge, opponent Bill Perkins has played through two sessions of $100-200 PLO with Galfond leading again for $ 90,144.05. Given Perkins’ busy schedule, the two have agreed on playing an on-and-off match depending when the prior would be available. So far, a total of 862 hands have been completed with a set duration of 50k hands or a €400k loss to conclude the challenge. Additionally, the challenge against the successful businessman and film producer poses one of the juiciest sidebets in the series with a whopping $1M : $250K arrangement.

Galfond Beats Jungleman in Mini Challenge

As a warm-up for their upcoming match in the Galfond Challenge series, Phil Galfond and Jungleman Dan Cates decided to take part in a mini challenge playing a total of 754 hands at stakes of €100-200 PLO. Playing as Mr Falcon, Galfond dominated the match and was at one point leading by more than € 150,000. In the end, the poker pro once known as “OMGClayAiken” booked an € 86,870.52 win together with an interesting agreed side bet wherein the loser is required to release a video telling the world why the other is the better man.

Luckily for Galfond, his victory has saved him from coming through with the amusing bet and has earned himself bragging rights and a major confidence boost for the challenge taking place soon. Streaming on Twitch and Youtube, almost 4,000 poker fans tuned in to the one day mini challenge including past WSOP Player of the Year Shaun Deeb.

In a twitter post, the famed winner said, “Loving the @junglemandan vs @PhilGalfond really hope they hold off for their actual match until last so both can show hole cards”

Watching the two poker crushers battle it out on the virtual felt, many are already anticipating Jungleman’s promised losing video praising Galfond for his skills.

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A grand battle begins against myself Mr Falcons aka @phil.galfond . He won the first match, sending me into a spiraling descent into madness! Even villains have honor though, and as loser I had to pay my respects to him as the better poker player and man.

A post shared by Daniel Cates (@junglemandanpoker) on May 8, 2020 at 5:06am PDT

The pair’s Galfond Challenge sessions are likewise awaited by many, with a duration set to 7,500 hands playing at the same stakes.