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It’s been a busy week in the life of one of poker’s most notorious players. Doug Polk is rarely out of the headlines in 2025, and the past seven days have been no exception. From going into battle on live television for poker players in the gambling tax scandal, selling Upswing Poker to his new partners ClubWPT Gold and completing a challenge on the WPT site too, Polk’s world has hardly stopped spinning.
A Fight to Restore Gambling Taxation
Many poker players are concerned about the proposed tax changes for poker players - and all gamblers - in Donald Trump’s so-called ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ but few have done what Doug Polk has in fighting them. The passion Polk has shown for protecting gamblers’ rights to lose money and not pay taxes on it is admirable, not least because Polk is never likely to be in a situation where taxation could seriously hurt his bankroll.
Taking to X or YouTube to give his point of view would have been easy for Polk to do but it was at this crucial stage that he took part in a lively debate on News Nation with their host Blake Burman and Marc Short, the former Chief of Staff to the one-time Vice President Mike Pence.
In the segment, Polk presented his - and other gambling professionals - case very well, advocating the recreational impact as well as the hit professionals would take under the new proposed tax.
“Most people that gamble, at least at some serious sort of level, if you’re a winning gambler, your margins are small,” Polk described. “You might gamble, let’s just say, $1 million a year and make $1.1 million or $1.05 million. So you might be making $50K, $100K, $150K. This law essentially makes you irrelevant. You no longer can even exist in your career path.”
With the tax change still currently set to be passed as law in 2026, the amounts stated would impact players to a massive degree, with players taxed as if they had won $200,000 rather than $100,000. Clearly, Poker and many others believe that to be unfair and the battle to avoid the tax rages on with bipartisan support.
Polk Sells Upswing Poker to ClubWPT Gold
In what was already a pretty busy week, Polk turned next to his own affairs and the ownership of his poker training site Upswing Poker. Selling the site for an undisclosed amount to ClubWPT Gold, a partner of Polk’s, the legendary three-time WSOP bracelet winner told fans on YouTube about the purchase in a video.
“It used to be the Upswing was my baby and the only thing I was working on,” he told fans. “Now it’s starting to become more and more and more things. It came up that there was a good opportunity for someone to acquire the company. That made a lot of sense for everyone.”
Everyone knows by now that Polk is an ambassador for ClubWPT Gold thanks to his frequent mention of ‘Code Doug’ to sign up. We won’t mention ‘Code Doug’ specifically here, but Polk even put up several signs saying ‘Code Doug’ in the background of his TV interview and has frequently dropped “Code Doug” quotes into his interviews in recent weeks. continued.
“In all seriousness, this purchase by ClubWPT Gold, we talked it over, we had a dinner. We hashed out some details. Honestly, this was a lot more painless than I thought that it might be. I’ve actually gotten to see what kind of goes on behind the scenes in some of these deals. It was a pretty easy negotiation process, and we got this thing hammered out pretty quickly.”
Having created Upswing Poker alongside Ryan Fee and Matt Colletta a decade ago, Polk’s decision to sell can’t have been an easy one but as he stated, it wasn’t at the expense of students, who wouldn’t notice the change in ownership.
“All of the people currently working on Upswing will remain working on Upswing, I’m still going to be doing marketing for Upswing and I’m still going to be doing coach recruitment for Upswing,” he said. “We’re trying to find good quality candidates to come work at the company. I think we have extremely competitive pay. For the advanced signature courses, it’s thousands and thousands of dollars an hour. We are actively recruiting coaches. Mike Brady and Matt Colletta both will stay on as well to help oversee things and make sure that this goes smoothly, and that the Upswing brand continues to flourish.”
Here's how Polk announced the news in full.
ClubWPT Gold Challenge? Completed.
While much of his week was spent away from the poker tables, Polk ended it at the virtual felt on, you guessed it, ClubWPT Gold. Playing a challenge for a bet, Polk had to win a No Limit Hold’em hand with every card combination in the deck... within 12 hours. The novel prop bet put the co-owner of the Lodge Card Club near Austin in The Lone Star State in competition with Lodge Card Club regular Taras, who wagered $60,000 that Polk would fail to achieve the target.
For every hour Polk played the challenge, he had to pay Taras $5,000. If he achieved the goal, Polk would bank the $60,000, so he was up against the clock too. Failure to achieve the target in 12 hours would equal a $60,000 payment to Taras. Not did Polk have to win a hand with every single starting hand but he had to do so at the highest stakes available on ClubWPT Gold.
Playing up to four cash game tables at a time to achieve the goal, it took Polk six hours to get down to just four starting hands remaining. That meant he only had to win with those four hands to complete the challenge and win the bet. At that stage, he’d be down $30,000 for the six hours elapsed but ahead $60,000 for completing the challenge.
Incredibly, it took another two hours to tick off two more starting hands being converted into winning ones. Three-betting all-in with queen-five suited, Polk got folds all round and that left just a suited jack-three as the final remaining hand he needed to win with.... or did it?
Nine hours into the stream, Polk announced that his staff member had erroneously ticked five-four offsuit from the list of hands to win with.
“I just want to be the first person to take responsibility for what a f***ing idiot my staff member was,” Polk announced. “There's no one to blame here other than him, and I want to be the first to take full responsibility for that. No one is perfect, particularly him. Please add five-four off back to the grid, even though I've probably been dealt it 15 times by now. It's going to cost me thousands of dollars. But don't you worry, I'll dock his next paycheck.”
Winning with that hand under an hour later, a fortunate full house against pocket kings put Polk one hand from glory and just before the 10-hour mark elapsed, he had done it. All-in for 39 big blinds with jack-three of clubs got a fold and Polk did a lap of his room.
Hilariously, while Polk won the challenge, he still lost money. On the challenge front, Polk ended up winning approximately $10,900 from Taras. But in the cash games he was playing, Polk’s push-or-fold nature to the hands meant he ended the session around $15,000 down, meaning Polk’s night of ClubWPT Gold fun cost him $4,100.
It won him a lot of fans, though as you can see in the challenge video here.
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