Matt Berkey

Berkey and Bleznick Set to Battle on PokerGO’s High Stakes Duel

Poker tournaments and ring games make for fun viewing, but nothing quite gets the juices flowing like watching two elite players go head-to-head at the felt with obscene amounts of money in play.

Matt Berkey, one of the best live poker players in the world, recently announced on his “Only Friends” podcast that he would be playing the one and only Jared Bleznick in a heads up match at the PokerGO Studio this week.

The match will be played as part of the popular High Stakes Duel show, but the format will be quite a bit different than what we have grown accustomed to.

Instead of playing heads up sit and goes with progressive buyins, Berkey and the Blez will play a mix of NLH and PLO $200/400 cash game.

Each player will sit down with a minimum of $100,000, and the two will play for a total of 12 hours over two days. The game will rotate every three hours with some adjustments in order to balance out the number of NLH and PLO hands played.

How Did the Match Come About?

It is still somewhat unclear how Berkey and Bleznick agreed to play the match, but Matt did disclose a few key details across two episodes of his podcast.  

For one, these two are old friends, and they have battled quite a bit in online heads up games, as well as in some live ring games that ended up turning into heads up in the late night hours.

According to Berkey, Jared only agreed to take part in the match if one half of the hands would be PLO, to which Matt hesitantly agreed.

The stage is set for Bleznick’s next opponent

Being neither a heads up or a PLO specialist, Berkey will have his work cut out for him, as Jared Bleznick rates as one of the best PLO players in the world.

Unlike Matt’s previous heads up opponent Nik Airball, Bleznick is actually on good terms with Berkey, and the two have a friendly relationship, which means the match will be less about trash talking and more about the game itself.

Can Berkey Repeat His Airball Triumph?

In the spring of 2023, Matt Berkey took on a similar challenge to play a heads up match against Nik Airball, his Hustler Casino Live arch-nemesis at the time.

The trash talker he is, Airball provoked Matt into playing the match despite his initial reluctance to get involved, which ended up paying off for the Solve for Why founder.

Berkey played Airball over a series of live cash game sessions at Resorts World in Las Vegas, and ended up beating him for a cool $1,000,000 over just 60 hours of play at $200/400.

Matt never claimed to be a heads up specialist, but his overall poker skills were enough to dominate Airball, who was extremely inexperienced at heads up poker, and far less experienced at poker as a whole.

Going into his match against the Blez, Berkey will need to bring his absolute A-game, as his opponent is an extremely savvy poker player, especially when it comes to the PLO portion of the match.

Bleznick Hot Off His Win Against Antonius

Much more recently than the Berkey-Airball match, Jared Bleznick was involved in a heads up match against his own against one of the most legendary poker players in the world, Patrik Antonius.

The stoic Finn took Bleznick on in a series of heads up matches that featured the same 50/50 format as the upcoming match, but were all played as heads up sit and goes.

Despite Patrik’s incredibly intense presence and notorious poker skills, Bleznick was able to win three matches in a row, taking home $350,000 in the process.

The Blez beat Patrik Antonius on High Stakes Duel

Antonius decided to stop after three losses and refused to take the next step and play the fourth round, and Bleznick celebrated his win by announcing that he completely outplayed the Finn before the board was even dealt on the final hand.

A win this significant is bound to give Jared the much needed confidence going into the match with Berkey, who is one of the most experienced live poker players in the world.

Who Will Have the Advantage?

The heads up match between Jared Bleznick and Matt Berkey came together quite abruptly, which means neither player had much time to prepare or study for the match.

Being completely unstudied in PLO, Berkey admitted he will be playing by feel in this portion of the game, which should give “The Backer” a significant advantage.

On the other hand, Matt also talked about “doing quite well” against Bleznick whenever they played heads up NLH in the past, which makes a lot of sense given Jared’s lack of experience with the format.

With both players likely to have significant leaks in one portion of the match, it is hard to give anyone the upper hand, especially given the fact they are only playing 12 hours of live poker.

Yet, what we can know for sure, is that these two will give each other a ton of action and likely fold way less than they are supposed to across the board.

For the fans at home, this means an incredibly exciting round of High Stakes Duel, which should be aired on PokerGO sometime next week.

While the match won’t be live-streamed, it is likely that the first time we get the results of the match will be when the game is released on PokerGO, giving us some amazing poker content to look forward to in the very near future.