Watched the whole of yesterday's BRC stream and IMO this is by far Doug's best vehicle for promoting himself in terms of gaining a true connection to his audience. He answered many, many questions posed by people in the chat and just freestyled through a few hours of streaming.

Because success came so quickly to him on YouTube and Twitch as a poker personality, (through skill and hard work), he maybe almost forgot how valuable streams are to connect to the audience in a more personal one on one feel basis. The stakes played are almost irrelevant in this respect.

Well yeah, but its also safe to say he underestimated the stakes somewhat. He's winning but he likely thought he'd be running over 25NL & 50NL for winrates that have proved unattainable. He's rationalized this by claiming highstakes players r dropping down to "mess with him" but the real reality is that those are just regular micro/smallstakes tables nowadays. My 25 & 50Nl tables on party are just a bunch of Eastern Europeans.

It is funny how many of these bankroll challenges are started by higher stakes guys, only for the person to realize its not quite the donation factory they'd imagined. Ironically, JNandez is another example. If its so easy, then can someone just do it please lol (P.S I know it's doable because I've done it myself).

He freely admits he hates doing it but just wants to do it, & has quite rightly recognized that MTT's are the way to go about it

I dont know why Polks nme is even in this threat, that guy demolishes the microstakes
its the highstake tourneys he cant beat. YOu guys think it was random he lost the 320 twice but won 2 of those micro ones?

"I could be wrong. Maybe he still enjoys it?"

You haven't payed any attention to this, surprise. I am sure the rest of your post is just as informed.

Ike.

He probably is bored because he realizes that people take "cheeseburger stakes" very seriously and it's not full of people spewing off stacks left, right and center like he initially thought.

That's not to say he can't beat micros. He clearly can. But it's no walk in the park. Even a guy like him has to put in quite a lot of work and effort. That's just the reality of how tough online cash games are these days, right down to the very lowest levels.

So I think this goes for all poker coaches -- you have to ask yourself if they are so great at the game why are they coaching instead of making CEO level wages playing the game?

They either love the game theory and want to share and perfect theory or are a charlatans that realize they can't make that much money playing poker.

The former are going to either freely share their knowledge, or charge a nominal fee for the time/money it cost them to put together their thoughts, host a website, write software, etc. And the later are going to try to hard sell you on paying them to rehash info that they got from the first group.

Those must be some ****ty CEOs who are only making poker-player wages.

Yep. As the old saying goes ; "if you cant do, teach".

Because poker unlike some other professions (e.g. financial trading, manufacturing, retail) is nowhere near as scalable for an individual, and to the degree where it is scalable, at high stakes, the opposition tends to get better and the liquidity shrinks.

Even discounting the above, the best players can afford to sell coaching courses in volume because a) many players will never reach a high level even with coaching and b) the person coaching can still make money playing even if the eco-system has more good players in it.

But the first paragraph is the most relevant one to the question.

So whats the bankroll at now then?

I think everyone would agree that the challenge should look something like play 10k hands of 2 NL, 10k hands of 5 NL, 10k hands of 10 NL etc up to 200 NL to finish the challenge. It should be shown that all the stakes were beaten in Hold Em Manager.

Right now theres no blueprint or plan of attack for the challenge what so ever. It's pointless. There's nothing to be learned from it.

I'm actually surprised that such a hard working and smart guy can go about the challenge so thoughtlessly and so unprofessionally.

If he won that 320 tourney the challenge would have been a total joke.

Something like 1200$ I think. And the hem part is impossible.

I think they do it to balance out the variance of playing. Doug hasn't really played much lately because it's so easy for him to dominate any level that he is now just looking for a new challenge. I mean, he rose up from the microstakes to dominate the nosebleeds. He built a thriving business from scratch, so I think he is now looking for the next adventure.
I happen to have it on good authority that he is planning on running for president in the 2024 elections. He intends to be the second President Polk in the history of the United States.
#polk2024

Doug enjoys streaming and interacting with people. He's typically going to be having a good time while streaming for this reason alone.

It doesn't mean that he enjoys playing 25nl or 5$ buy in tournaments.


But like I said, maybe he does...only he knows.

Actually I know because he flat out said he doesn’t enjoy poker multiple times, high stakes or micros.

I coach because it's fun, makes you connected with other people
And satisfies the need for attention whoring :]

There's also something to be said about having a project, seeing it from start to finish like setting up a coaching series, or something stupid hard like a long term bankroll challenge - you don't get the sense of achievement and completeness in the daily grind, it's nice to create something that stays out there.

He is on record saying he doesn't like playing poker anymore. Simple as that.

I was going to post on here before, but decided not to because I figured it would it to be a joke. Anyhow, Doug, and Im sure others have too, have addressed the "not beating able to beat micros claim." And to that I have to ask anyone who asks that question, "are you serious?"

1. He started with $100 and is now above $1,000 (If he wouldn't have used very bad BRM he would be way higher)
2. He has played very little volume.

End of story.

Pros cant beat micros due to a sort of reverse "scared money" syndrome. You just cant get your head in the game for stakes you dont care about.

pretty much this ... never understood, why doug cares so much about BS

anyway, OP got a few replies from him and we got a video, so worked out pretty well

Well yeah, but almost none of it has come from cash games. The man has binked at least 3 tournaments in this challenge - he should way beyond 1.2k.

He cant have won much, if anything at all, from the thousands & thousands of hands he's played of cash. Of course he can beat it, but he cant beat it at anything like the clip he clearly thought possible when he made the challenge. He thought he'd amass huge winrates & sail through this thing in a month if he put in the volume, but it just didnt work that way. And that's less to down with highstakes guys dropping down to "mess with him" & more that the landscape has gotten way tougher. Several of the players causing him problems @ 25 & 50NL were just normal regs like JonBlaze - they're not HS bosses.

If you'd told Doug at the outset that he'd have to play exclusively tournaments in order to do this challenge then he wouldnt have started it even you'd put a gun to his head. He was trying to show how to do it playing cash. Unfortunately, all this cluster has done - as with the JNandez attempt & all the others who've tried similar - is merely demonstrated just how big a challenge it is unfortunately.

Been reading through this thread and I know it's been asked and answered several hundreds if not thousands of times in other areas on this board. But Doug says he won 900 in 40 sessions. I would like to know what a significant and meaningful sample size would be to determine whether or not you can beat any stake, micros, mid, or high. Number of hands, not number of sessions.

20,000? 50,000? 100,000?

This seems like a crap challenge when he can't post a database, especially if he's playing both mtts and cash games. If there's no way for a database, which is the case with the site he is playing on, than he needs to just stick to one or the other. There's no way to know if he's grinding a real winrate in cash this way. He could be break even or even losing a little and just bink a few tourneys here and there and it makes him look like a winner.


I'm not saying he isn't winning at cash, it just muddies up the results too much when there is no database and makes it hard to follow. Maybe he should record bankroll between sessions so he can put it into a spreadsheet and pop out a graph at least. As it is there is no measurable way to follow this other than, "his bankroll is at xxx now". That's pretty lame.

Does anyone have a rough figure of how much of his profit has come from cash games and how much has come from tournaments and sngs?

Would be a function of winrate and standard deviation as well as # of hands