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Updated
10/9/2025

Doug Polk’s Biography

Douglas Polk
Douglas Polk (36 years)
USA
Male
12/16/1988
over $10 534 855
Offline prizes
exact amount is unknown
Online prizes
The best result:
$3 686 865 (1st place at the WSOP High Roller for One Drop for $111 111 in 2017)
Main achievements:
3 WSOP bracelets, created his own poker school Upswing Poker, co-owner of the Lodge Card Club
Can be found by nickname:
PokerStars: WCGRider
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Douglas "WCGRider" Polk is a successful American professional who is rightfully called one of the best heads-up players in the world. He has earned several million dollars playing poker, having started his way with just $20.

The First Steps in Poker

However, Polk has not immediately found the right place for himself in the game. Initially, he used to play 6-max and 10-max No-Limit Hold'em tables online and won relatively small amounts. In 2009, Douglas switched to the heads-up game and climbed quickly from a $2/$4 limit to $50/$100. PokerStars and Full Tilt regulars knew "WCGRider" well, as they lost a lot of cash playing with him. The player could be noticed in tournaments sometimes.

After Black Friday, when online poker was banned in the USA, Polk started thinking about changing his profession or finishing the studies he had left before. But as a result, Doug decided to move from Las Vegas to Vancouver (Canada) and began to live “between two houses”.

Doug’s Switching To Live Poker

There were some advantages in such a decision – Douglas Polk started to play in live events more often. The guy’s first offline prize money is dated 2011. Over time, he has become a frequent guest at Las Vegas casinos, WSOP, WPT and Aussie Millions series. Currently, it is often possible to find Polk’s name in a participant list of high roller and super high roller tournaments. The poker player’s total amount of prize money in live events exceeds 9 million dollars.

In addition to playing poker, he is engaged in coaching activities at his own training site. Douglas Polk actively streams his game on Twitch and makes videos on YouTube (often these videos include hand analysis from popular poker tournaments and shows).

The Key Spotlights of Polk’s Career After 2017

After finishing 2nd with a $468,000 prize in the Poker Masters event in 2017, Doughlas had a break from matches and even talked about a “retirement” on his YouTube channel. Despite this, in 2021, Doug competed with Daniel Negreanu as part of a Heads-Up Grudge Match. Polk won and took a massive prize of around $1.2 million. A year later, Doughlas joins the Lodge Card Club in Texas as a co-owner.

In 2023, he stunned the audience with another excellent performance. The player was second at $25,000 No Limit Hold'em - Heads-Up Championship. In this event, he grabbed $313,362 of prize cash.

$40,000 in $1,200 No Limit Hold'em in 2023 was his latest big cash won at The Lodge Mayhem Poker Series. Since that time, the player has focused on his Twitch streaming, YouTube channel, but also uses the opportunity to take part in live tournaments.

Douglas Polk's photos

Interesting Facts about Douglas Polk:

  • Early in his career, he turned $20 into $10,000 by playing at various poker rooms in just a few months. In 2016, Doug launched a marathon, which he started with $100, and earned $10 000 ("The $100 to $10 000 Challenge"). Polk rarely played for the marathon and finished it only in August 2018, while having played just 58 game sessions in 2 years.
  • In poker, Polk is considered to be one of the most powerful heads-up players in the world.
  • Douglas hasn’t got higher education, since he has opted for poker and left the university.
  • Before he started poker, WCGRider had played online games professionally and had several times taken part in the prestigious WCG international e-sports tournament a few times, in honour of which he picked his nickname later.
  • In one of the interviews, Douglas Polk has admitted that at the beginning of his career (around 2010), he managed to beat "wobbly" and Randy "nanonoko" Lew most of all. According to his words, they might have been good players, but their heads-up game was terrible (and this fact only played into the American’s hands).
  • In 2015, Douglas "WCGRider" Polk played for the team of humans in a poker heads-up battle versus a No-Limit Hold'em bot – Claudico. The team also included Dong "DongerKim" Kim, Bjorn Lee, Jason Les. Each of them played 20 000 hands against the poker bot. As a result, the team of humans won. A year later, in 2016, the team of people was beaten by the Libratus bot, but Polk did no longer participate in that confrontation.
  • Douglas Polk has created his own online poker school called Upswing Poker. Ryan Fee, Doug’s friend and colleague, has become his partner.
  • Polk has got three WPS bracelets. The first WSOP bracelet Douglas Polk earned in 2014, having won the Turbo NLH for $1,000; the second bracelet he got in 2016, having become (together with Ryan Fee) the Tag Team No Limit Hold'em champions for $1,000. He got the third trophy in 2017 in the popular High Roller for One Drop tournament for $111,111, which brought Doug the biggest prize in his career (over $3,860,000).
  • As of 2025, Doughlas is in 163rd position in the global All Time Money List, and is the 74th in the US version of this ranking.

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