Doug Polk

Douglas Kevin Polk is an American professional poker player, entrepreneur, and content creator best known for his elite online heads-up career under the screen name WCGRider. Before poker, he was a competitive gamer, playing Warcraft III and participating in World Cyber Games events - the origin of his famous online alias.

Polk attended the University of North Carolina Wilmington with plans to study political science and potentially pursue law, but left college to play poker professionally. He eventually became one of the most prominent heads-up no-limit hold’em specialists of his generation and was selected in 2015 as one of four professionals to compete against Carnegie Mellon University’s Claudico poker AI.

Beyond playing, Polk built a major business and media presence around poker. He co-founded Upswing Poker in 2015, later became involved with poker-training software company Lucid Poker, and joined Brad Owen and Andrew Neeme as an owner of The Lodge Card Club in Texas. He stepped away from active management of The Lodge in 2026 while retaining his ownership stake.

Polk is also one of poker’s most recognizable media personalities, with a large YouTube audience and years of poker commentary, analysis, interviews, and livestream content. His interests have extended beyond poker into cryptocurrency and esports, including a separate crypto-focused YouTube channel and a brief competitive Counter-Strike project.