Doug Polk

Melvin Schroen

PokerListings Author

November 4, 2022 · 5 minutes to read

About Doug Polk

Current Residence	Pasadena, CA, United States
Born	December 16, 1988
Birth Place	Austin, TX, United States
Total Winnings	$9,596,008

Doug Polk Trivia

Founder of UpswingPoker and LodgePokerClub.
One of world’s best Heads-Up players in No-Limit Hold’em.
Won three bracelets during the World Series of Poker.

PLAYER SCORE	8,9/10
Aggressiveness	9
Looseness	9
Limit	8
No-limit	10
Side Games	8
Steam Control	8
Against Strong Players	9
Against Weak Players	10
Tournaments	8
Short-Handed	10

Doug Polk is one of world’s most iconic poker players of the last decade. Build his name at the online cash game tables and continued his legacy in the High Stakes poker felt, followed by introducing a website for poker study content and streaming his often ‘controversial’ view on the poker world via the likes of Twitch and Youtube.

The Upcoming of WCGRider

Doug Polk grew up in Pasadena, California, and quickly learned that strategy games were his thing. In his younger years he learned to play chess from his father, which would eventually develop into digital strategy games such as Warcraft III with which he even reached the top by traveling the world for the World Cyber Games tournaments. In the meantime, having moved to another city, he finished his High School at Wakefield High School. It wasn't until he went to college that he was first got introduced to poker. The drive to succeed at poker was so great that he dropped out of university.

In the beginning of his poker career, he started playing $0,01/$0,02 stakes at PokerStars and eventual turned his $20 deposit into $10,000. Doug Polk set foot on land at the cash games, but it did not go as smoothly as everyone imagines. In 2011 he was even close to put his poker ambitions aside as he went broke for the first time in poker. Little did everyone know that in two years from then, he was going to be the one of the best No-Limit Hold’em Heads-Up Cash game players in the world.

Conquering the High Stakes Poker World

In 2015 he played a heads-up match over 15,000 hands with poker friend Ben ‘’Sauce123’’ Sulsky and walked away with $740,000. From then onwards he kept challenging Daniel Negreanu for a heads-up match as he thought Daniel was underestimating his opponents structurally. Unfortunately for the poker fans it did not happen until 2020.

Within that year, Doug Polk also launched his own poker training site called Upswing Poker, together with long time friend Ryan Fee. He then started off his Youtube career as well called ‘Doug Polk Poker’ in 2016.

There were many controversial moments in Doug Polks career, with one of them being an argument about a coaching deal with Ben Tollerene. To get fans to his Youtube Channel and recently launched Podcast, he challenged almost the whole poker world and openly spoke about their fails and don’ts. But he mainly used his channel to bring mysteries to light in the poker industry, somewhat which until the day of today is still being highly popular and appreciated by the poker fans.

In 2017 Doug win his first major live tournament with the WSOP One Drop High Roller, besting a field of 130 players. With this cash he would reach to the $10,000,000 landmark in profits. However, in 2018 it seemed he would retire from poker as he didn’t like the game anymore, he then shared this with his poker fans in 2020 on his social media platforms.

Comeback Combo

Halfway July the time was finally there. A heads-up ‘grudge’ match against poker superstar Daniel ‘dnegs’ Negreanu. Within the game he completely crushed Daniel, but eventually had to give something back, he took home approximately over $1,200,000 over 25,000 hands. There were also many side-bets on this match and Doug presumably more than doubled his winnings with these bets.

In 2021 Doug Polk moved to Austin,Texas and became member of The Lodge Live poker club, including a cash game stream.

YouTube and Podcast Poker Icon

If you would ask anyone in the poker industry who is following podcasts and youtube content about poker, who is the main guy from that specific platform? It would be an instant answer which would either be: Doug Polk or Joey Ingram.

Doug Polk has made many controversial but immense popular content over the past years and he did not leave one stone unturned. The most famous one is the ‘’The Postlegate’’ with Mike Postle in the spotlights. Doug went on a hunt and literally showed every single detail about the whole saga. The main episode of Doug Polk has been watched by almost 4 million people.

Another one is the more recent scandal which went on in Hustler Live Casino, where Robbi Jade Lew made an incredible abnormal call with J4 against the high stakes cash game regular Garret Adelstein. Polk had spent hours on his research and his show was watched by more than 500,000 people.

Doug Polk, considered as one of the best poker players alive, might have taken down a notch or two in regards of Poker. But if there is one thing we will know for sure, Doug never backs down from a Heads-Up NLHE match or any popular subject in the poker scene on which he can make great interesting youtube- or podcast material.

Doug Polk High Scores

Date	Tournament Name	Buy-In	Place	Cash Prize
Feb/14	Aussie Millions 100K Challenge	$ 100.000	4th	$ 770.237
Feb/14	Bellagio High Roller	$ 25.000	2nd	$ 112.044
Apr/14	WSOP #28 Monster Stack, Las Vegas	$ 25.000	3rd	$ 118.200
Jun/14	NLHE Super High Roller II, Las Vegas	$ 100.000	5th	$ 602.910
Jun/14	WSOP #23 NLHE Turbo	$ 1.000	1st	$ 251.969
Jul/14	NLHE Super High Roller II, Las Vegas	$ 100.000	1st	$ 1.648.350
Feb/15	The LK Boutique Challenge, Melbourne	$ 225.000	3rd	$ 807.709
Jun/15	WSOP #37 NLHE 6-handed	$ 10.000	2nd	$ 406.261
Jul/16	WSOP #61 Tag-Team NLHE	$ 1.000	1st	$ 76.679
Jun/17	WSOP #6 NLHE High Roller for One Drop	$ 111.111	1st	$ 3.686.865
Sep/17	Poker Masters, Las Vegas	$ 50.000	2nd	$ 468.000
May/22	The Lodge Championship Series, Round Rock	$ 3.000	4th	$ 142.000