Editor
Doug Polk’s $100K “Code Doug” challenge, which has been ongoing for nearly a month, finally ended on Saturday, April 5th. At last check, he had regained hope that he would reach his goal.
After 27 sessions of play, Polk ended the entire challenge barely in the green with a profit of $1,421. Overall, it was disappointing for Polk as he fell well short of his goal of making a $100,000 profit. But he did at least avoid going into the red, which would have meant a head shave punishment.
On the final day of the challenge, Polk faced off against the enigmatic Eric Persson. Polk was hoping to take advantage of him for a final big win, which was evident by his raising the stakes up to $50/$100.
Polk began the final day up more than $18,000, so he would need a massive winning session of at least $82,000. If there were any opponent you would choose to try and achieve this goal against, Persson would be high on that list.
Polk did not start the final session well, as he was victim to a big cooler. He recovered and got into the positive, but he was never close to threatening to reach the $100,000 mark.
Once it was evident that he would not be reach his goal, the focus became simply finishing in the green to avoid shaving his head, which had been determined as the punishment if Polk finished in the red. In many ways, traditional poker strategy went out the window in the final hour of the final session as both tried to finish ahead.
Persson’s trash-talking nature added some spice to the back-and-forth battle. There was real tension with the possibility that Polk would be forced to endure his punishment, much to Persson’s delight. However, Polk was able to win enough hands late to remain afloat and avoid going into the negatives.
Overall the challenge was a long month-long process that had many high-profile opponents face-off against Polk. It led to a lot of streaming entertainment for poker fans and a lot of hand-wringing for Polk over the past 30 days, who had a busy month outside of the felt as well.
The final result of the challenge being a minuscule win for Polk that fell far short of the $100,000 goal may not have been the most flashy result, but the challenge was still a positive one for ClubWPT who got a lot of promotion throughout the process.
