With almost 80% of their epic contest in the books, Phil Galfond is within punching range of his nemesis VeniVidi as the two men head towards the climax of their Galfond Challenge meeting.

The first meeting in this series of at least five matches, the Galfond Challenge could hardly have got off to a more intriguing start. Down $900,000 after around 40% of the match, Galfond went deep into the tank, and emerged declaring that he was ready to resume play.

Since that decision, and his lowest ebb in terms of losing, Galfond has bounced back in spectacular style. Having won consistently over the last fortnight, Galfond is now within range of VeniVidi, with the difference between the two men just €154,287.93 in VeniVidi’s favor.

With Galfond now closing in on parity, what are the chances he gets there, or even overtakes VeniVidi on the home straight? Well, of the 25,000 hands that were scheduled to be played, the two men have only completed 19,363 of them. With just 5,637 hands to go, the market for the outright win on Poker Shares has VeniVidi as the favourite, but not a huge one.