Former poker professional, Doug Polk recently released a final video in his YouTube Poker channel claiming to leave the poker medium for good. While the heads-up legend has stopped participating in the live poker scene for a while now, Polk advises that he would also abandon production of poker videos despite his channel having over 288,000 subscribers.
His channel garnered a lot of attention from the poker community, becoming the second biggest of its kind on the platform right behind his long-time rival, Daniel Negreanu.
“I got to a point where I didn’t want to make poker videos anymore,” he said in the video.
“But I kept doing it because I wanted to make something, and also because I had that dumb prop bet with Joey (Ingram) where I had to jump out of a plane if I didn’t make 80 videos.” Polk ultimately won the bet back in 2019.
In his post, he highlights his disinterest in poker and how he simply just does not want to do it anymore. He added that the last time he played poker was at the World Series of Poker (WSOP) 2019 Main Event, in which he says he punted his stack right away.
Later on, he realized he wanted to lose so badly so he could leave. He also noted that he only kept making videos to not let his fans down, as well as the people he works with. The poker icon made his name through multiple online heads-up victories as “WCGRider” followed soon after by winning three World Series of Poker Bracelets, taking down the High Roller One Drop for just over $3,000,000. By the end of 2017, Polk had over $9 million in career tournament earnings.
Late last year, Polk released a statement saying “It’s probably better to not say this, but I want to be honest with my audience. I don’t see myself making another poker strategy video. I’ve made hundreds of them, don’t enjoy making them, and I don’t feel I have new things to add any longer. Hanging up the 🥊’s on poker hands.”
Complicate time for poker content creators
As shown in his recent video, Polk also opens up about the hardships poker content creators experience nowadays. With videos being striked and flagged constantly, he considers this a tough time for people who do poker content. He also made known how he is faced with lawsuit letters from multiple poker companies and is continuously getting demonetized due to his poker posts and recordings.
A new channel
With such, the controversial figure is keen to transition into a different YouTube channel to serve as an outlet for his ideas. His new channel now has a total of 18 videos uploaded along with close to 30,000 subscribers. In his recent clips, he tackles more mainstream topics such as the Coronavirus pandemic affecting globally. Politics and entertainment are also some of the issues this channel will revolve around. Sad to see Polk leaving the poker scene for good, his fans fortunately will not see the last of him and still have a chance to support the icon in his newly created channel.
Louis Hartwell
Graduated in Media Communication at the University of Lausanne, Louis Hartman is a co-founder of somuchpoker.com. He began his career in Cambodia as freelance journalist. In same time he was making his living by playing poker every night at that time. Intense learner, he read dozens of poker strategy books to improve his skills during many years. With a strong interest about poker "behind the scene" in Asia and his communication skills, Louis launched Somuchpoker in 2014.
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