Doug Polk

Douglas K. Polk was born on December 16th, 1988, In Pasadena, California, and is widely thought of as one of the most established poker players in the game. Polk has always been a strategy game player after being introduced to chess at a young age. In high school he played the popular strategy game – WarCraft, under his well-known alias, “WCG Rider”. Fast forward and now Doug Polk is at the top of the industry, being the founder of popular poker training site, UpSwing Poker as well as a partner at The Lodge Card Club and co-founder of the Poker At The Lodge live stream.

Doug Polk’s Early Poker Days

During college, Doug was playing No Limit Hold ‘Em cash games where he would make enough to support himself. At 19 he decided to drop out of college, move to Vegas and pursue poker full-time. Doug struggled to get off the ground and even reevaluated his choices of pursuing poker in the year to follow until he met fellow poker player, Ryan Fee. Polk claims his poker career took off largely due to his friendship with Fee, where they were able to bounce ideas off each other and ultimately level up together.

After quickly building a six-figure bank account playing 6-max, Doug shifted his focus to heads up and intended to beat everyone. He ran through all challengers and created for himself the opportunity to play heads-up against one of the best players in the world at the time, Ben Sulsky AKA Sauce123.

Special Matches

In September 2013, Doug Polk and Ben Sulsky set up a challenge of 15,000 hands at $100/$200 blinds $20,000 buy-in NLHE match, as well as a $100k wager on the side. After nearly 2 months of play, Doug ran away with the challenge, as well as scared off any future heads-up opponents.

In April 2015, a top university in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Carnegie Mellon, approached Doug as well as a few other players with the challenge of playing 20,000 hands against their heads-up poker bot “Claudico” for $100,000. Doug played 8 hours a day for 2 weeks to come out on top and “led the way to a large victory for humanity”. 

Tournament Poker Results

Polk started playing a lot of live tournaments in 2014 and in just 6 events he won a WSOP bracelet, finishing 1st in a $1000 NLHE Turbo Event. Less than one month later, he won a NLHE Super High Roller Event in Las Vegas, cashing over $1.6 million, setting a personal record at the time for biggest live cash. Doug’s most notable cashes in 2015 were at The Aussie Millions Poker Championship, where he finished 3rd and cashed $807,709, as well as at a WSOP NLHE 6-handed event where he finished 2nd and cashed $406,261. 

In July 2016, Doug won his second WSOP bracelet, finishing first in a NLHE Tag-Team event and cashing $76,679. Before the year ended, on December 29th, Doug secured one more promising result of a top 3 finish at a NLHE event in Vegas, with a prize of $86,400. On June 2nd, 2017, in his first live tournament of the year, Doug set a new personal record for biggest live cash, finishing 3rd at a WSOP High Roller event in Las Vegas and winning $3,686,865. Doug played another five tournaments in 2017 with top 5 finishes in 4 of them, with the biggest cash of $468,000 coming at a $50,000 NLHE event in Las Vegas.

Streaming

Polk started streaming on Twitch during the Poker streaming boom in 2016/17. For a time, he held the record for biggest cash on a Twitch poker stream, after cashing $455k in a $10k High Roller WCOOP Event. Doug started making highlight content and streaming on YouTube as well and has since amassed over 350k subscribers. Doug doesn’t stream his play anymore but still regularly posts videos on his YouTube channels, “Doug Polk Poker” and “Doug Polk Podcast”. He reviews and deeply analyzes hands that he and others have played as well as gives his take on things happening in the poker world, with a little bit of a comical factor on the side. Doug also regularly appears on Poker At The Lodge live stream cash games where he plays mid to high stakes. 

Conclusion

In 2018, Polk announced his retirement from professional poker, but he continues to stream and create content on his YouTube channel. Overall, Doug Polk’s poker streaming career is marked by his exceptional skill, entertaining personality, and dedication to the game. He remains a popular figure in the poker world, and his contributions to the community will be remembered for years to come.

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