Doug Polk Challenges Phil Hellmuth to Heads-Up Battle

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For someone that claims to be retired from playing poker, Doug Polk has been very active in the poker community as of late. First, he crushed Bill Perkins for $250,000 in some late-night heads-up poker. Now, Polk is challenging Hellmuth to a heads-up match. Polk is even offering a free $1 million side bet to Hellmuth to play. Hellmuth is a master of trapping, and likely see this one coming a mile away.

Doug Polk Crushes Bill Perkins

Doug Polk is supposedly retired from poker and even moved away from Las Vegas to Austin, Texas. However, this doesn’t stop him from playing online poker at select unregulated online poker sites. A couple of weeks back, Polk took on Bill Perkins at 200/400 NL Hold’em online for around 1,650 hands. The results were in Polk’s favor as he won over $250,000 off the millionaire high stakes amateur.

Perkins was mainly trying to get some practice in before taking on Landon Tice in a major heads-up confrontation. Back in 2020, Tice defeated Polk in a brief heads-up poker match. Tice is hoping to make short work of Perkins as well.

just casual 2000 hands of 200/400 until 4 am, standard stuff retired poker players do https://t.co/1TH9PjTu2e

— Doug Polk (@DougPolkVids) April 29, 2021

Overall, Perkins lost about 5.5 buy-ins. As he admitted on Twitter, he made two “egregious mistakes” that cost him 3 of the buy-ins. If Perkins hopes to have any shot against Tice, he will need to correct those mistakes. Otherwise, he probably should just go ahead and donate to Tice now.

Hellmuth Next Target on Polk’s Radar

We all know that Phil Hellmuth has defeated Daniel Negreanu in the first two rounds of High Stakes Duel II. Now, Doug Polk is looking to get some action against the “Apex Predator.” He has proposed to lay Hellmuth at 200/400 Heads-UP NL Hold’em for 25,000 hands.

To try and sweeten the pot, he has offered a $1 million side bet. This isn’t your typical $1M vs $1M bet or even a bet with odds. Instead, Polk is offering to give Hellmuth a free milly if he will just show up and play.

Hey @phil_hellmuth

25k hands 200/400 HUNL 2 tables 100 bb

I'll put up a free 1 million dollars if you win.

My $1,000,000 to your $0

Come get some

— Doug Polk (@DougPolkVids) May 7, 2021

However, it doesn’t appear that Hellmuth is interested in playing online heads-up poker with Polk. While he sang a little duet with Polk online in response to his challenge, he has not made any sort of a deal to play.

Honestly, this is not a smart move for Hellmuth. Online poker is not his strong suit as much of his game focuses on getting reads from opponents. We all know how great Phil is in live poker, but outside of a few rare deep runs in online poker tournaments, Hellmuth has no real online poker results to speak of.

Now if Hellmuth can somehow get Polk to step into the live arena, we could see a bit of a battle. If Polk were to agree to live-action poker, he should try and convince Hellmuth to stick to cash game poker. Hellmuth is a master at tournament poker and every heads-up victory to date has been in tournament format.

Will Polk Continue to Cherry Pick Opponents?

One has to wonder whether Polk is feeling bored or his recent challenges are a way to stay relevant in the poker world. Polk made a name for himself playing heads-up poker online and then later as a crypto Youtuber. However, he supposedly retired from both ventures.

He lists himself on his Youtube profile as a “Professional overrated HU SNG player bumhunter and entrepreneur/investor.” The first part is a needle but one has to wonder if he plans to continue dabbling in poker despite leaving Vegas. If that’s the case, we might continue to see these random challenges, especially against players that Polk feels he can easily crush.