Charlie Carrel talked a lot about this on the pod yesterday.
Basically he thinks Doug is great and hilarious and upswing is fantastic for mid-high stakes but terrible for new players trying to beat the micros. And that there is no good content anywhere for these specific people.
Charlie is starting a new micro training site to fill that niche and starting the BRC to promote it.
He's very critical (of his misguided perception) of "playing GTO" to beat the micros and will advocate heavy exploitation and adjustment.

My opinions that you can feel free to ignore:

I must be a douche for a second and note that Charlie thinks that the reason for bluffing is to (lol) be unexploitable so it's worth taking his opinions on theoretical play with a pinch of salt.
Though I don't feel like that much of a douche because he misrepresented DP and implied DP advocates bluffing to be unexploitable when DP has said that you bluff to win the pot most often, NOT to be (lol) unexploitable.

The way Charlie speaks of DP it seems like he saw one or two Polker Hands vids and got the idea that DP is some kind of strict GTO, f**k exploits guy when DP has said in the past that while he was coming up in HU he thought many people were fundamentally stronger than him but he would still destroy through adjustments.

Felt like he strawmanned the **** out of DP in that pod but w/e, Charlie seems like a nice well meaning guy, hope he finishes the BRC within his 2 month prediction.

Lets just see if he can get out of the 10 NL streets first. I don't think he's even a favorite there to be honest.

And going after Doug is a bit of a ****** move. How can you argue with Doug's approach thats made him millions of dollars playing against the Sauces and the Isildurs of the world and that allowed him to turn $100 into 10k in like 40 sessions.

How is he not a favorite on 10NL? Please explain. Everyone who plays hs mtts and has a half of a brain is a favorite in those games. Hell even Negreanu is probably a favorite in those games. And it took ~60 sessions for Polk to close the challenge.

He seems to be a natural talent for streaming and really interested to see how he plays NL100+. Does he change to more gto style etc.

I think the main reason why the "**** GTO"-approach could be misleading to micro/smallstakes players is because they might get the impression that fundamentally strong, "correct" poker is not necessary. However, if anyone was to make it anywhere, fundamentally sound and strong poker is the key and unfortunately this also entails bluffing, bluffcatching and some understanding of balance etc.

Of course if you already have a really good idea about how "correct" gameplay looks like in a lot of spots and enough experience and intelligence to make good exploitive reads and adjustments, it is easier/better to play well exploitively. Carrell obv can do this much better than any micro/smallstakes player, which is why it is easy to say for him that anyone should do it. Also helps that he ran a few million above ev in his MTT career so far and everyone gives him a lot of credit^^

lmao attention ho

why ride the coat tails of another?

Charlie apparently has an axe to grind because Doug said he didn't know who he was when a Twitch chatter asked about him. He has since complained about this on a bunch of podcasts and interviews and seems very hurt by it.

That's really weird. Would think that he could care less because he seems to be all hippy and happy happy joy joy. And hippies don't care about sheet.

What's the thing with these high stakes players taking 10K from the player pool to promote themselves (I'm including Doug in here). The rake is already too high, we don't need sharks coming there to take 10K away from other winning(and losing) players that usually play those stakes.

And then they sell coaching videos to the players they "took" the money from, nice touch bros. We have Doug, Elias, Charlie and I'm sure many others have done it in the past and will do it in the future.

i really dont know who charlie carrel is either but if hes not entertaining and doesnt make good content nobody is really gonna care. and is it really a shock that playing diff v micro dumpers than you do v johnny nosebleed is necessary?

also, its not impressive for someone with a million plus in the bank to do a bankroll challenge like this. stay in your lane rich boys, leave the true grinding to the heroes who have 1/4 of their money on the table after paying bills at the beginning of the month

Man you truly are completely pathetic. You come defending doug EVERYWHERE do you search for his name everyday? You are in love with him or something wtf is going on.

Doug kinda had the same sentiment during the meltdown video the micros, he basically was like everybody sucks and there's not point in bluffing. It was a tilt meltdown moment and a pretty epic video.


I have no clue who this other guy is other than he did a Joey podcast.

I don't think Doug would play a hand a certain way for the sole sake of balance/GTO.

He would do so because it's part of his default strategy + adjustments based on estimations of population frequencies (which get better over time). It doesn't matter how good someone is fundamentally they can't know very accurately how population pools (i.e 2NL) are going to play if they have no volume there.

Is a top player like Doug with little population freq knowledge of a pool better than a mediocre player with good player pool knowledge? Idk. But eventually it won't take long for Doug to get population freq reads, adjust the strategy, and outperform the other regs there.

The 2 main branches of playing well are:
1.) how good your default strategy is
2.) how well you can adjust your strategy to exploit another's

Top players are very good at both of these. They can look at huds/population stats and determine how to drive a truck through the holes.


I mean even if I have a hand that fits perfectly into my bluff range, if I think someone is calling too much, I won't bluff.

A few things affect this though;

-how smart and perceptive is the player--how does that affect future hands? Sometimes I'll pass margin spots with bottom/top of ranges for the sake of keeping players unaware of where I'm adjusting and thinking they're off.
-how confident am I that the player is off the frequency mark and by how much--is it worth deviating from default? Yes, if someone isn't bluffing enough, you can fold all bluffcatchers, but I prefer a more step-wise approach.


It's not that GTO has to go. Everyone should be working on developing their best balance default strategies, just learn how to adjust them for different population freqs and player types.

Am I missing something? This seems pretty obvious.

lol how is what I said defensive? Charlie being overly sensitive and Doug being a bad guy are not mutually exclusive ideas.

Admittedly, maybe it is a bit pathetic that I've been reading NVG most days for the last 8 years and have racked up thousands of posts. Point conceded. Not sure why everyone is suddenly mad at me for still posting here though.

I think it's since you became the Scrappy Dop to Doug's Scooby Doo

Haha fair enough. Sucks that I can't have opinions anymore, but maybe it'll good to go be more productive with my time.

Never heard of charlie carrel.

I don't expect Doug to know all random pros.

I don't care if someone is better then Doug in crushing micros-low stakes, have to think there is full time micro-low stake crushers who study and play 8-16 hours/day + have way more experience with theses games/population tendencies (Because this potentially making way better adjustments/exploitative plays then Doug make) and who have better winrate then high stakes pro turned into youtube/twitch entertainer Doug.

I don't think Doug ever positioned himself as having biggest winrate ever in theses games.

Why do so many British guys have that haircut/style where they’re constantly sweeping the hair out their eyes? If you don’t want hair in your eyes get haircut mate.

(fanboy cringe warning)

The price that Doug had to pay the day he became a youtube personality was that people would forget how good he actually is at poker.
I remember how excited I was when I was watching his first stream, that I could ask the world #1 HUNL player a question and he would likely respond (he did btw).
As he's been establishing himself as a memer and a troll it's been impossible to at the same time retain that respect and notoriety.
Which is why he annoyingly gets the 2p2 crowd on one side and the Carrels on the other side questioning his skill.
There's a reason why Tom Cruise never interacts with fans on twitter and Elon Musk's persona is going down the drain because he does. Familiarity breeds contempt.
I'm glad that Nick Frame chimed in, because clearly as someone who was there and actually battled the guy, he hasn't forgotten how good Doug is at poker.

Beatles.

The problem with Doug Polks challenge was that it was more or less pure gambling for a bulk of the profits earned. This doesn't prove much.
I'm sure most who watched were entertained though, which is possibly more important since the premise that a high stakes crusher (even if he was crushing said stakes a few years ago) couldn't beat the micros is absurd and laughable.

Aww cmon dude dont play that game.

Plus we both know you wont be doing anything more productive,
so just continue to be DougPolkPR and accept the jabs that come with it.

Maybe his Seven Minute Poker course is a minute shorter ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJgzXJ4AX_Y

Just looked like he was providing some context to those out of the loop on the dynamics of the two in question tbh

did u even watch the BRC, it wasn't even remotely close to pure gambling at any point in time, pure gambling would be if he sat on blackjack tables with whole roll