Now this is fun.
In the lead-up to this summer’s Landon Tice vs. Jeremy Becker crossbook bet, Tice, the Only Friends podcast co-host fired a shot across the bow by besting a 512-entry 2024 Wynn Million $400 No Limit Hold’em event for $32,025 – putting Becker on notice and giving him the needle by posing in the winner’s photo with Becker’s traditional three-five offsuit card combo.
The bet, which is actually between Daniel Negreanu (Becker’s backer) and Matt Berkey (Tice’s mentor) is set to take place during the 2024 World Series of Poker. While as of this writing, all the details have yet to be formalized, it’s a crossbook between the two young rising stars. Essentially, they will play 25 agreed-upon events between May 28 and July 18, and whatever the difference is in winnings/losses between the two is what will end up being owed (with a proposed $500K cap per event).
While the edges between the two pros are debatable, the implications of the bet could be enormous if one of the two goes on a downswing while the other catches a heater.
Over the past couple of weeks, Tice and Becker have leaned into the rivalry with playful jabs on social media. However, it’s not always been playful between Berkey and Negreanu who have a history of actually having beef.
However, at the core of the bet is an ideal central to modern poker itself. Tice has adopted the nickname “Child of the Sim”, a well-documented student of solvers and theory he represents the GTO approach to playing the game. Becker on the other hand is a modern-day grinder. A candidate for the “who loves it more crowd”, Becker has stated many times that even if he won the WSOP Main Event, he’d be in the Wynn daily the next day. He’s a rise-and-grind purist who, allegedly, doesn’t even own a laptop.
“This is great,” Negreanu said on the latest episode of his podcast. “I feel like Don King. I think what’s so unique about the bet…just the vastly different backgrounds these two guys have. They’re both young guns who haven’t made it yet. They’re both on the come up and they’re both doing it very different ways.”
“One guy’s doing it very solver-related and one guy’s doing it old school street. For me, I do think there’s another benefit to poker as a whole of Jeremy winning and it’s the idea that…the intimation of becoming successful at poker today, we’ve created this narrative that the only way to do it is to spend 15 hours a day cramming solves, right?…but is the dream dead?
“Is the dream dead for the average, casual guy who just gets a feel…just kind of figures it out through watching? Can they succeed? I do think that it’s a little bit more romantic, it’s a little bit more relatable. And for the growth of poker, for people coming into the game…you can also be successful by being observant and soaking it in just by playing.”
The difference in Becker and Tice’s styles, the high-profile backers, and the excitement for the oncoming World Series of Poker has turned this bet into one of the most interesting storylines headed into the 2024 WSOP.
— Jeremy Becker (@Jbex2417) February 29, 2024