Four Doug Polk MTT Hands Reviewed by Two of The Best Tournament Players Ever
Doug Polk built Upswing Poker, but he’s still best known as a heads-up cash game specialist. That’s what makes his hands from this $125k Triton Main Event so interesting.
In Modern Tournament Mastery, the new MTT course from Timothy Adams and Daniel Dvoress featuring Stephen Chidwick, several key spots feature Doug navigating high-pressure tournament situations against one of the toughest fields you’ll ever see. In the video you’ll watch, Timothy and Stephen Chidwick analyze some of these spots where Chidwick himself was at the table. Enjoy this free lesson preview from the course dropping this May.
This isn’t about memorizing charts. It’s about understanding what actually pushes close decisions one way or the other.
Let’s get into the most instructive Doug Polk hands from the course. They are as follows:
Table of Contents
1. Ace-King in a Multiway Collision
Doug opens under the gun with As Ks at around an average stack.
Immediately, things get awkward.
Dan Smith looks down at 9h 9c in the Lowjack with 28bb, and Adams points out how uncomfortable this spot is. In a lot of ICM solves, you don’t see much flatting here, sometimes none at all. Hands like 88, 99, AQ, and KQ often end up taking a 3-bet-or-fold approach.
But Adams isn’t just blindly following that.
There are still 22 players left, and pay jumps are small at this stage. Dan isn’t under serious pressure yet. And most importantly, he’s playing people, not a solver.
In practice, flatting works better than it should. Players behind don’t squeeze enough, and postflop isn’t played perfectly, so you end up realizing more equity than equilibrium expects.
Dan goes for the 3-bet anyway, and things escalate fast.
Brian Rast wakes up with Qc Qh and jams. It folds back to Doug.
There’s a lot going on, but this one’s simple: Ace-King suited is too good to fold.
Doug calls, Dan gets out of the way, and an Ace rolls off on the river. Doug scoops a huge pot and knocks Rast out.
2. Know Your Thresholds: Folding Pocket Eights
Nick Schulman opens, Matthias Eibinger jams ~20bb, and Doug is in the Small Blind with 8c 8d. At first glance, this feels like a call. Eights are strong, and Eibinger is definitely capable of jamming wide enough.
But Adams and Chidwick both land in the same place: this is right on the line. Hands like AQ and 99 are clear continues. AJs and 88 are where it gets dicey.
The biggest issue is that Doug isn’t closing the action.
If he calls, Schulman can still reshove. Doug might have to fold after putting in a big chunk, or end up committing way more than he wants. That alone makes these borderline hands worse.
Then you zoom out a bit, and take a look at the big picture.
Doug already has a great stack with the final table getting closer, and that matters. It’s nice to win more chips, but losing chips here is more punishing than winning them is valuable.
That’s the kind of thing a solver can’t really capture cleanly. If a spot is clearly good, you take it. If it’s close, this is where you start passing.
Doug folds pretty quickly, which Adams calls out as sharp. Eibinger later shows 9d 9h, so it looks great in hindsight, but that’s not the point.
This hand is a great example of understanding your thresholds: when to continue and when to let it go.
3. Small 3-Bets, Big Implications: Ace-Jack on the Button
With 20 left, Doug is on the Button with As Jd facing a Lowjack open from Chidwick.
Adams says he’d mostly flat here. Keep things simple, avoid inflating the pot. Doug goes the other way and 3-bets small to about 6bb.
The small 3-bet tells you a lot about Doug’s overall preflop strategy.
If you’re mostly flatting, your 3-bets tend to be bigger and more polarized. Doug’s small sizing suggests he’s just 3-betting more often instead, with a more linear range.
Chidwick calls, and the flop comes 8c 7d 6h. This is a really bad board for Doug. Chidwick has all the pairs and connected stuff, while Doug has a lot of high cards that just missed. On top of that, ICM tends to pull Doug’s range even further toward those high-card hands.
Chidwick leads, targeting exactly the kind of hands Doug has here.
Doug folds.
Not much to the result, but it’s a good reminder that your preflop strategy (and the range that comes with it) shows up immediately on certain boards. This is one of them.
4. Blind vs Blind: Small Blind Jam with King-Ten
Doug open-jams from the Small Blind with Kc Td for around 20bb. Dan Smith is in the Big Blind with Qh Th.
At a glance, this looks standard. But Adams digs into how this works.
At these stack depths, Small Blind ranges aren’t just “jam your decent hands.” They’re structured. You need some weaker, middling hands in there to make the Big Blind indifferent with a lot of their range.
Hands like T9o, Q5s, and other middling combos are supposed to be part of the mix. They fold out better hands and make the overall strategy work.
If those hands aren’t there, the range becomes too strong, and hands like QTs perform worse. Because Doug isn’t primarily a tournament player, it’s not clear to Dan whether those hands are even in his range.
Adams even suggests that KT offsuit might not be a pure jam. It could prefer a limp or small raise depending on the setup.
Then there’s the bigger picture.
If Dan expects softer spots after a redraw, folding becomes more appealing. If he’s stuck battling this lineup, he may need to take the edge now.
He ends up calling, runs into domination, and is out.
It’s a brutal spot, and exactly the kind of decision this course spends time on.
The Bigger Takeaway
Across these hands, Doug:
- Wins a huge pot with AKs
- Finds a disciplined fold with 88
- Takes a linear preflop approach with AJo
- Puts real pressure on the Big Blind with a Small Blind jam
But the real value here isn’t the outcomes.
It’s how Adams and Chidwick think through the spots.
They start with a baseline, figure out how close the decision really is, and then adjust based on what actually matters in the moment.
Stack sizes, future spots, who’s left in the field, how people really play: those are the things that push a decision one way or the other.
That’s the gap between knowing the “right” play and actually playing well in tournaments, and that’s exactly what this course is trying to close.
