Meet The Upswing Poker Pros
Doug Polk -"WCGRider"
What's up guys, my name is Doug Polk.
In Upswing Poker's flagship courses (The $7 Postflop Playbook and The Upswing Lab), I teach you the strategies I've spent years developing -- the same strategies that got me to the top of poker. Rather than forcing you to browse the web and sift through the abyss of poker strategy content out there, we have created the most efficient way for you to learn about poker and improve your game.
For those who don't know anything about me, here is a bit of my background:
I've excelled at strategy games my whole life. My online screen name, "WCGRider", comes from the game WarCraft 3 where I participated in the national qualifier for the World Cyber Games.
My parents raised me to be a free thinker and decide for myself. I happen to be the kind of guy that is dedicated to success, so I pick something and focus my energy to achieve excellence. Here at Upswing, that means you benefit from me pouring my soul into all of our poker training content and courses.
Initially, I started out mostly playing 9-handed No Limit Hold'em Cash games and eventually started making enough money to support myself. At 19 I decided that poker was something to pursue full time. I dropped out of college and moved to Las Vegas to pursue my passion.
Even though people today have seen me win at the highest stakes, things weren't always so easy. In fact, back in 2007, I was on the brink of quitting poker because things were just not going well, and it was stressful (I'm sure many of you can relate). My poker career really turned around when I met one of my fellow Upswing partners, Ryan Fee. Through our friendship and his great poker mind, we were able to bounce ideas off of one another and push each other to dramatically improve at poker.
As I improved, I moved up to $5/$10 and $10/$20 I gravitated more towards the six-handed games. It was an amazing feeling to have gone from the verge of quitting to having a six-figure bankroll. After playing 6-max for a while I fully graduated to heads-up. I focused on that for a couple years, taking on all comers. Eventually, I was out of opponents to play because no one wanted to go heads up when they considered themselves outmatched.
The only person who was willing to take me on was Ben Sulsky. (By the way, much respect to Ben who is still one of the very best players in the world at multiple forms of poker.) At the time Ben, AKA Sauce123, was thought the best player in the world. After looking at his game I concluded that he was a tough opponent but also someone against whom I would have an edge.
We set up a challenge, 15,000 hands at $100/$200 blinds $20,000 buy-in No Limit Heads Up match with a $100,000 side bet.
Things went well.
I won in a convincing fashion.
After my victory over Ben in 2013, I had reached the pinnacle of the game and thus almost 100% of players were unwilling to play me.
Beginning in 2014 I started playing live tournaments. After hard work and a long year and a half of grinding I have to date had over $5,000,000 in tournament cashes. Additionally in 2014, In just my first year of playing a large slate of tournaments, I won my first ever World Series of Poker Bracelet.
In 2015, I set my eyes once again on a new challenge. Carnegie Mellon, a Leading University in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, offered me a challenge: to play their heads up poker bot for 20,000 hands.
I took on the top computer program in the world in the game that was my stomping ground, heads up No Limit Texas Hold'em. This challenge was going to be a giant experiment in artificial intelligence and I was going to be on the forefront of helping its development.
It was a grueling two weeks, playing eight hours a day, all streamed live on twitch. At the end of it, all the humans had prevailed. The computer was no match for us and I led the way to a large victory for humanity. They might have taken over chess, but we still had a fighting chance in poker!
"Man, this guy just never seems to go on tilt..."
In 2017, I won the $111,111 buy-in One Drop at the WSOP for $3.6 million. I also have a poker YouTube channel you might have heard of.
After taking a bit of a break from the game, I returned to the felt to battle my longtime rival Daniel Negreanu in a 25,000 hand heads-up challenge. When the dust settled on the months-long challenge, I won $1.2 million from Kid Poker.
My session by session graph playing $200/$400 vs Daniel Negreanu.
I've since offered a $100,000 heads-up challenge to the world. Anyone can come to my card room in Texas (The Lodge Card Club) to take me on. I have no plans to close this open challenge -- as long as there are willing opponents, I'm ready to battle.
I would say I am one of, if not the, most distinguished poker players in the world. My resume proves it and I'll be sharing everything I've ever known about poker with you right here at Upswing. If you are a low to midstakes no-limit holdem player, we have made The Lab exactly for you. Check it out here.
I'm also in charge of selecting and vetting coaches for the Upswing Lab and our advanced courses. We only accept the best of the best players to train Upswing members, so you can always be confident you're in good hands.
One last thing: I'm working on a brand new advanced heads-up course alongside Fabian "Frabb" Adler (the most brilliant player I've ever met). Expect that course in late 2023.
Meet The Upswing Poker Pros
Inactive Lab Coaches
The valuable training content made by these pros is still available in the Upswing Lab
