Doug “WCGRider” Polk Wins $455K Live On Twitch In Record-Breaking Online Poker Tournament

Posted on September 22, 2016 - Last Updated on March 1, 2019

[toc]Doug “WCGRider” Polk finished runner-up to Phil “Grindation” McAllister in the $10,300 World Championship of Online Poker High Roller event at PokerStars this week.

In doing so, he broke the record for the largest-ever poker win broadcast live on Twitch.tv; his $455,000 prize topping the €250,000 Spin & Go win streamed by hilariously-named player “SolidPenis” back in July.

Twitch were obviously keeping track of events, as they immediately tweeted their congratulations to Polk as soon as he was guaranteed a fourth-place finish and the Twitch record.

This is the second time Polk has held this record, previously having streamed his $162K win in the PokerStars Mountain series.

The WCOOP $10,300 8-max High Roller

The $10,300 buy-in didn’t put off 278 high-stakes players, with an additional 78 re-entries giving us a total prize pool of $3.56 million.

The tournament took place over two days, with 56 players advancing after 18 levels of play and Doug Polk leading the field.

They reached the money bubble of 40 players after two hours, with McCallister bursting the final table bubble some hours later.

The multi-million final table

The final table involved some big online poker names including “€urop€an” and Keven “Stammdogg” Stammen. Polk was moving steadily up the chip counts to the delight of his Twitch audience, needing to come fifth to make a profit on his WCOOP and third to break the Twitch streaming record.

A record-breaking deal

With the elimination of Mexican222 in fourth, Polk had officially broken the record.

The three remaining players negotiated a deal, with Polk asking for a little more than the chip numbers gave and eventually getting his $455,000, leaving $71,200 for the winner. McAllister then found a pair of kings against €urop€ean’s top pair to leave us heads-up.

Polk vs. McAllister

McAllister began with a chip lead of nearly 3:1, with 5.3 million to Polk’s 1.8 million and blinds at 24K/48K.

Polk took a big hit to lose almost half his stack on the first hand, gaining back some steam over the next few and then winning a big pot to get over the 2 million milestone before out-flopping McAllister’s kings to take the lead.

It took a big cooler to change the momentum as Polk’s A-K couldn’t get ahead of McAllister’s Q-Q, taking WCGRider back down to 1.2 million. Despite doubling again, he then ran 5-5 into Q-Q which sealed the deal for McAllister.

The final table results

The following players took home final table prizes in the event. The prizes reflect the three-handed deal undertaken.

  1. Phillip “Grindation” McAllister: $584,415.23
  2. Doug “WCG|Rider” Polk: $455,000.00
  3. €urop€an: $459,529.71
  4. Alexandros “mexican222” Kolonias: $263,731.20
  5. LLinusLLove: $194,561.47
  6. ShefanHilaly: $143,532.79
  7. Chris “Big Huni” Hunichen: $105,887.92
  8. Keven “Stammdogg” Stammen: $78,116.36
Matt Perry Avatar
Written by
Matt Perry

A veteran of the online gambling industry, Matt Perry has worn a number of hats since he first began working in online poker and iGaming in 2007. He currently writes for a variety of publications focused on legal online gambling, and in the past has served as an editor, copywriter, content manager and reporter.

View all posts by Matt Perry