Login / Signup
Menu

Gossip Column: Landon Tice & Bill Perkins Ready For a High-Stakes Challenge

Gossip Column
  • Profile picture
  • Namita Ghosh February 9, 2021

  • 3 Minutes Read

The poker community has a new heads-up challenge to look forward to! And this one promises to be another fiercely contested battle with upcoming poker superstar Landon Tice set to take on hedge-fund manager cum poker enthusiast Bill Perkins. The duo has hashed out most of the finer details of the challenge, even though the site on which the match will be played is still undecided. Like the recent heads-up challenges, this too will be a $200/$400 high-stakes NLHE match lasting 20,000 hands.

To balance the evident skill-edge Tice has over Perkins, the latter will get a 9 BB/100 hand handicap – which given the stakes of the challenge, translates to a $720,000 head start for Perkins. This means, if Tice were to win $1 Million off Perkins after the 20,000-hand challenge, he would only get paid $280,0000.

The news of the challenge sent the poker Twitterati chirping, and many in the community started speculating if the match would even take place. The duo seems determined to see this through. Tice has indicated that the contest will likely begin in May, while Perkins has announced that he will prepare for it. Taking a leaf out of the Grudge Match, both have agreed not to allow “limping” during the match.

Even before starting, the high-stakes challenge has raked up some controversy, though neither of the two challengers was involved. The proponent of the dispute was Terrance Chan, who called out PokerShares and its founder Mike McDonald for the ambiguous manner in which they were inviting bets on the upcoming challenge. PokerShares is a well-established betting website that offers players the chance of betting on the outcome of poker tournaments and has run betting marketplaces for similar heads-up challenges in the past. Chan was apparently not happy with PokerShares’ failure to clarify the 9BB/ 100 hands handicap on its website, which McDonald denied. The misunderstanding led to a war of words between the two, with PokerShares eventually updating the bet’s description.

Let’s quickly check out the sequence of the events.

 

Tice Offers to Play Perkins

It all began on February 6, when Perkins tweeted that Polk won 12BB per 100 hands in his Grudge Match vs. Negreanu. Perkins announced that he’d take up an opponent at 13/BB per 100 hands since he’s terrible at heads-up and doesn’t even know the basics.

The tweet had Polk declining the offer by saying – “I wouldn’t even play without having to pay you.”

Canadian millionaire Michal Wywrot offered Perkins a 10BB/ 100 hands for 10,000 hands. Soon, Tice pitched in, showing interest in a heads-up match against Perkins.

There was a bit of bargaining between the two, with Tice offering 5 BB/100 hands, but Perkins stood firm at 11.5. Rice upped his offer to 8, to which Perkins suggested 9.3, and finally came down to 9 BBs. Tice grabbed the offer, stating that he was ready for the challenge.

Perkins instantly agreed, inviting people to place their bets.

The next day, Tice announced that the challenge was on!

 

Who’s the Underdog Here?

All of 21, Tice is an acquaintance of Joey Ingram and demonstrated his skills in high stakes cash games last year, also winning a $1,100 NLHE event at The Venetian for $201,529 in November.

He has been producing poker videos with Ingram and is currently writing his own newsletter about his poker career.

Tice has been studying the game passionately. With his strong technical poker know-how, he is likely to have a significant edge over Perkins, who is more of a recreational player but has tons of experience playing high stakes poker.

However, both of them have little experience playing heads-up challenges – Tice has admitted he has been playing heads-up poker only for six months, and Perkins self-admittedly is like a fish out of waters in terms of HU skills. The last we heard, Perkins had even lost a mini-heads-up challenge to Phil Galfond.

That said, Perkins is all upbeat and gearing up for the challenge! He tweeted that he planned to represent the business crowd well. Perkins also invited Galfond to be the arbitrator for the match in his subsequent tweets and admitted that he’d never studied heads-up NLHE until now!

Clearly, Tice is also super excited and has already started preparing for the match that he shared might start in May.

Taking some learnings from the Grudge Match and given the generous handicap Perkins has, entering the challenge, the duo has agreed not to allow limping through their match.

 

Terrance Chan Calls Out PokerShares For Misleading

PokerShares have labeled Tice a 7/10 favorite in the challenge, and the betting market is open on the website.

Intrigued by the odds, Terrence Chan put in a max-bet on the match. He was hoping for the odds to change like in a dynamic marketplace, but they didn’t, and he put in another max bet. All these bets he placed without being aware of Perkin’s 9BB/100 hands handicap.

Within minutes, he received an email confirmation from PokerShares stating that the site had a $1K max-bet on the challenge and also that Tice would have to win more than $720,000 to come out on top. Chan was upset that the $720,000 handicap was left out of the bet’s description on the website.

Chan went on to say that he got a personal message from Mike McDonald, who claimed that all content surrounding the match references the 9BB/100 handicap that Landon is laying to play Perkins.

Chan responded to this by saying, “You might want to put that in terms of your own bet? You seriously calling me dumb when you don’t even put 9BB/100 under your own terms.”

Mcdonald insisted that there was no ambiguity – “If Tice wins 9 BB/100 and thus Perkins profits 1 BB/100, do you think anyone would considered Tice the winner?”

Chan said he didn’t think there was any ambiguity in whether Tice wins or loses money, but – “a lot of ambiguity in what your put on your site if you think people are supposed to magically infer Landon winning 9BB/ 100.”

McDonald said he would still update the terms of the bet to prevent this from happening again. “It’s about who will win the challenge; we’ll try to spell out more clearly.”

Meanwhile, PokerShares canceled Chan’s two other tickets, which didn’t sit well with Chan, who called out the site and McDonald over the issue.

These last few months, we’ve been treated to two other high-profile heads-up duels. Perhaps the more talked-about of the two was the Grudge Match, aka High Stakes Feud between GGPoker Ambassador Daniel Negreanu and Doug Polk. Even the Galfond Challenge between Phil Galfond and Chance Kornuth pulled in the crowds. That makes us wonder – will the Tice vs. Perkins duel build up to attract as much attention?! Well, it`s certainly off to a great start!

5 1 vote
Article Rating

Popular on PokerGuru

Related Stories

Gossip Column: Dan Bilzerian Sues His Dad For $50 Million in a Family Feud Fit for a Reality Show

Gossip Column: Poker Dealer Caught Red-Handed Stealing From the Pot at JACK Cleveland Casino

Gossip Column: Sean Perry Turns Up the Heat (and Loses His Shirt!) at PokerGO`s Cash of the Titans II

Gossip Column: WSOP Suspends Michigan Online Player of the Year Kevin Ruscitti Amidst RTA Allegations

Gossip Column: Did Norman Chad Throw Shade at Maria Konnikova’s WSOP Bracelet Win?

Gossip Column: Patrick Antonius and Jared Bleznick Face Off in High Stakes Duel 5 on PokerGO This November
Subscribe
Notify of
0 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Top Online Poker Rooms

Top
PokerGuru

PokerGuru - The ONE Stop for Indian Poker Players

Follow us on social media
icon-angle icon-bars icon-times
Share
Tweet
WhatsApp