Douglas K. Polk (born December 16, 1988)
is an American professional
poker
Poker is a family of comparing card games in which players wager over which hand is best according to that specific game's rules. It is played worldwide, however in some places the rules may vary. While the earliest known form of the game w ...
player. Polk played under the alias WCGRider, specializing in heads-up
No Limit hold'em
Texas hold 'em (also known as Texas holdem, hold 'em, and holdem) is one of the most popular variants of the card game of poker. Two cards, known as hole cards, are dealt face down to each player, and then five community cards are dealt fac ...
(HUNL).
Early life
Polk was born in
Pasadena, California
Pasadena ( ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is the most populous city and the primary cultural center of the San Gabriel Valley. Old Pasadena is the city's original commercial district.
I ...
, and has loved strategy games ever since he was five, when his father taught him chess. His family moved from California to Raleigh, North Carolina, during his childhood. In 2007, he graduated from Wakefield High School. At the age of 15, Polk was a competitive ''Warcraft 3''
electronic sport
Esports, short for electronic sports, is a form of competition using video games. Esports often takes the form of organized, multiplayer video game competitions, particularly between professional sports, professional players, individually or as ...
s player competing at multiple World Cyber Games tournaments under the name T-Rider before transitioning to poker in college.
Polk is a fan of the
Vegas Golden Knights
The Vegas Golden Knights are a professional ice hockey team based in the Las Vegas metropolitan area. They compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Pacific Division in the Western Conference. Founded in 2017 as an expan ...
.
Poker career
Polk attended the
University of North Carolina Wilmington
The University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW or UNC Wilmington) is a public research university in Wilmington, North Carolina. It is part of the University of North Carolina System and enrolls 17,499 undergraduate and graduate students eac ...
, but dropped out before graduating to pursue poker full-time. He started playing $0.01/$0.02 stakes at
PokerStars
PokerStars is an online poker cardroom that was a part of The Stars Group until it was sold to Flutter Entertainment on May 5, 2020. It can be accessed through downloadable poker clients for the Windows, macOS, Android and iOS. It is the large ...
and ran a $20 deposit into $10,000. During this time, Polk described himself as a "breakeven
rakeback Rake is the scaled commission fee taken by a cardroom operating a poker game. It is generally 2.5% to 10% of the pot in each poker hand, up to a predetermined maximum amount. There are also other non-percentage ways for a casino to take the rake ...
pro".
[
In 2011, Polk was nearly broke and decided to fully focus on the game. By 2013, he was considered one of the best online cash game players in heads-up no limit hold'em. He played fellow professional poker player Ben "Sauce123" Sulsky in a highly publicized match of 15,000 hands. Polk walked away a $740,000 winner and received an additional $100,000 bonus for winning.
Polk was vocal about ]Daniel Negreanu
Daniel Negreanu (; born July 26, 1974) is a Canadian professional poker player who has won six World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelets and two World Poker Tour (WPT) championship titles. In 2014, independent poker ranking service Global Poker Ind ...
's challenge of beating the $25/$50 stakes with two weeks of practice, criticizing him for underestimating his opponents. In mid-2015, Doug started the poker training site Upswing Poker with longtime friend and fellow poker professional Ryan Fee. Polk started a YouTube channel
Doug Polk Poker
in 2016.
In 2015, Polk was selected to play heads-up no limit hold'em against A.I.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech rec ...
poker bot Claudico
Claudico is an artificial-intelligence computer-program designed to play no-limit Texas hold 'em heads-up.
History
Claudico was designed by Carnegie Mellon professor Tuomas Sandholm and his graduate students. The name means "I limp" in Latin, a ...
, along with professional poker players Dong Kim, Jason Les, and Bjorn Li. Each player was set to play 20,000 hands against Claudico for a team total of 80,000 hands. The human players ended up defeating Claudico for 732,713 chips, with Polk beating the bot for 213,000. The team received a total of $100,000 for the victory.
Polk was involved in an argument with fellow poker player Ben Tollerene over a coaching deal.
In June 2017, Polk won the WSOP One Drop High Roller tournament, outlasting 130 players.
As of September 2017, his total live tournament earnings exceed $9,400,000.
In September 2018, he said he will quit playing poker
Poker is a family of comparing card games in which players wager over which hand is best according to that specific game's rules. It is played worldwide, however in some places the rules may vary. While the earliest known form of the game w ...
but continued to add videos to his YouTube channel
YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second most v ...
.
On March 16, 2020, Polk uploaded a video saying he doesn't like the game anymore and is formally quitting the poker industry after retiring from play in late 2018.
In July 2020, Polk challenged Daniel Negreanu to a high-stakes heads-up no-limit hold'em match, and Negreanu accepted. Polk subsequently came out of retirement to practice for the match, and played on HUNL on WSOP.com. The duel ended on February 4, 2021, with Polk winning approximately $1,200,000 over 25,000 hands. He won an additional $530,000 in public side bets, with speculation that there were many more private ones.
Without including side-bets, Polk's combined winnings from his two heads-up challenges exceed $2,000,000. Including public side-bets, they approach $2,600,000.
In 2021, Doug Polk moved to Austin, Texas
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the county seat, seat and largest city of Travis County, Texas, Travis County, with portions extending into Hays County, Texas, Hays and Williamson County, Texas, Williamson co ...
and has been playing live poker locally. He has made appearances on Texas Card House Live in Austin and The Lodge Live Stream in Round Rock
Round Rock is a city in the U.S. state of Texas, in Williamson County, Texas, Williamson County (with a small part in Travis County, Texas, Travis County), which is a part of the Greater Austin metropolitan area. Its population is 119,468 as of ...
.
References
External links
Hendon Mob profile
{{DEFAULTSORT:Polk, Douglas
1988 births
American poker players
World Series of Poker bracelet winners
People from Pasadena, California
Living people