Despite having one of the most popular You Tube pages in the poker world, despite the millions won, if you’re heart isn’t in it, it is time to go. Doug Polk, who has done a great deal of this in the poker world, has decided that it is time to “retire” officially from the world of poker. He did so in a final poker related You Tube video released this last week.
“Didn’t Want to Make Poker Videos Anymore”
In a 15-minute video on You Tube, Polk took his final lap around the poker world. “This is going to be my final video for this channel,” Polk bluntly stated at the start of the video. He reflected on the four-year journey that his You Tube channel took, through strategy, news, poker discussion and “some fun stuff.” “I got to a point where I didn’t want to make poker videos anymore…I kept doing it…because I had that dumb prop bet with Joey (Ingram),” a bet of 80 poker videos (versus Polk skydiving) that Polk ultimately won.
“My heart’s just not in it anymore, I don’t like poker anymore,” Polk continued. “I punted off my stack at the World Series of Poker (Championship Event) just because I wanted to leave. You can never play poker like that…I’m done, I’m not interested anymore.”
Polk also cited the advances in computer technology and its availability as a reason to leave. “Back in my day, unsarcastically, I used to have to figure this s**t myself,” Polk said. “when I used to crunch numbers, spreadsheets after losing $300,000 to ‘Isildur,” then get back out there and win back a half-million. That s**t was AWESOME!”
The computer programs, Polk says, have
taken all the “fun” out of it and talking about strategy. But he wanted to keep
going because of his responsibilities to those who worked for him. “But my
heart isn’t in it anymore, even if it does continue to grow this channel.”
What Polk wants to do, he says, is “Segway” (sic) into more “mainstream”
videos. “I want to be able to talk about different topics…I don’t want to wake
up and have to make videos talking about pocket Jacks. I can’t keep pretending
I care, because I don’t. I’ve made a new channel…I want to see what I can do
outside of poker.”
That new channel already has 17 videos and, more importantly, 26,000 subscribers.
The End of An Era
Polk, if he truly is done with poker as a career, has put into ten years what most take a lifetime to do. A three-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner, Polk made his name in the game as ‘WGCRider,’ first beating up on Warcraft gamers before terrorizing the online poker world. Legend has it he took a $20 deposit and run it up to $10,000 in the late 2000s. Focusing on heads-up No Limit Hold’em, Polk made his bones in beating Ben ‘Sauce123’ Sulsky in 2013, finishing a 15,000-hand match over $700,000 up plus a $100,000 bonus.
Even though he arguably reached the pinnacle of the game in 2017 in winning the WSOP One Drop High Roller event, he was beginning to feel pinched in by the game. The next year (after the WSOP Championship Event fiasco), Polk “retired” from live poker, sitting on those three WSOP bracelets and over $9 million in career earnings.
Polk arguably might have sealed his fate in a tete a tete he had with poker legend Doyle Brunson, which also occurred last week. After Polk tweeted about the current news in the world, Brunson fired back a rather religiously themed tweet regarding the Bible of his own beliefs. Polk responded, “If I wanted to read a fictional work, I’d start with Super System,” which naturally didn’t go over very well with some people.
If I wanted to read a fictional work id start with Super System https://t.co/kSxYZzOYgV
— Doug Polk (@DougPolkVids) March 13, 2020
The decision by Polk to totally disconnect himself from poker altogether has a feel of seriousness to it. Sure, some have said in the past they were “retiring” from the game (we see you over there, Vanessa Selbst), but Polk’s recent activities seem to be a napalming of the bridges. Whether he wanted to or not, Polk may have made his exit and made sure there wasn’t a way to make a return.