Doug Polk mocking Matt Berkey for supposedly refusing to play Nik Airball $500k heads up

[ReformDorm]

Srslysrs is the trump card in all of this. Held by Polk. Dude has skills.

Srsly made two very good videos during this whole battle -- the bashing of Solve for Why and the recent AI-generated Rounders parody.

However, I don't think that's going to be enough to save Doug here. While Srsly's first video temporarily turned the tide back over to Doug's favor, Doug is now shooting himself in the foot again.

As I said on radio, Doug's whole "MUH EMPLOYEES" justification for attacking Berkey is fooling nobody, and is just angering people. While Berkey is seen by some as an arrogant douche, there's no question that he's got a great reputation for honesty and integrity. Additionally, it is clear to most people that Berkey is playing defense here -- people are attacking him, not the other way around. And that's consistent with Berkey's entire brand, where he really doesn't pick fights with others in the industry.

Doug is coming off as a bully here, and what's even worse, he's not even being honest about his motivations. Instead of just plainly stating, "I've never liked Berkey and always thought he was a douche for X and Y reasons", we are getting these lol excuses about how he's just trying to protect his employees from Berkey's criticism of The Lodge. For a guy who is usually straightforward and direct, Doug is being surprisingly disingenuous here. It's like he's afraid to admit he just plain hates Berkey and always has, so he had to dig for a flimsy reason to justify the most recent wave of attacks on him.

Doug would be best advised to just drop this whole matter with Berkey. And if he doesn't want to drop it, at least be honest that he's simply attacking a guy he's never liked. The "I'm doing it for the people working for me" is just off-putting to read, and nobody is buying it.

It is possible that, when this whole thing is over, everyone will come out looking worse. If Berkey loses to Airball, he will forever be dogged by allegations of being a phony and a fish. Airball already has turned off a ton of people with his behavior, win or lose. Doug has already turned off a lot of people -- including longtime fans -- with his weird obsession with attacking Berkey. Eric Persson has long jumped the shark, and people are tired of his chest-pounding roided "I'm keeping it real and I own 27 casinos" routine.

What a mess.

Honestly this whole thing is boring as hell now to me. It's stupid worthless drama day after day and tbh it's not the least bit interesting drama either. I'm honestly surprised Polk still has as much credibility as he has after he duped so many people to invest in his scammy coinflex crypto garbage. It really seems to me the poker world just picks and chooses who they hate when a new scam emerges. I'm just so over this at this point. Way too much poker drama on twitter and it's mostly all stupid and dumb and boring and I could care less anymore.

[Mission146]

Srsly made two very good videos during this whole battle -- the bashing of Solve for Why and the recent AI-generated Rounders parody.

However, I don't think that's going to be enough to save Doug here. While Srsly's first video temporarily turned the tide back over to Doug's favor, Doug is now shooting himself in the foot again.

As I said on radio, Doug's whole "MUH EMPLOYEES" justification for attacking Berkey is fooling nobody, and is just angering people. While Berkey is seen by some as an arrogant douche, there's no question that he's got a great reputation for honesty and integrity. Additionally, it is clear to most people that Berkey is playing defense here -- people are attacking him, not the other way around. And that's consistent with Berkey's entire brand, where he really doesn't pick fights with others in the industry.

Doug is coming off as a bully here, and what's even worse, he's not even being honest about his motivations. Instead of just plainly stating, "I've never liked Berkey and always thought he was a douche for X and Y reasons", we are getting these lol excuses about how he's just trying to protect his employees from Berkey's criticism of The Lodge. For a guy who is usually straightforward and direct, Doug is being surprisingly disingenuous here. It's like he's afraid to admit he just plain hates Berkey and always has, so he had to dig for a flimsy reason to justify the most recent wave of attacks on him.

Doug would be best advised to just drop this whole matter with Berkey. And if he doesn't want to drop it, at least be honest that he's simply attacking a guy he's never liked. The "I'm doing it for the people working for me" is just off-putting to read, and nobody is buying it.

It is possible that, when this whole thing is over, everyone will come out looking worse. If Berkey loses to Airball, he will forever be dogged by allegations of being a phony and a fish. Airball already has turned off a ton of people with his behavior, win or lose. Doug has already turned off a lot of people -- including longtime fans -- with his weird obsession with attacking Berkey. Eric Persson has long jumped the shark, and people are tired of his chest-pounding roided "I'm keeping it real and I own 27 casinos" routine.

What a mess.

Honestly this whole thing is boring as hell now to me. It's stupid worthless drama day after day and tbh it's not the least bit interesting drama either. I'm honestly surprised Polk still has as much credibility as he has after he duped so many people to invest in his scammy coinflex crypto garbage. It really seems to me the poker world just picks and chooses who they hate when a new scam emerges. I'm just so over this at this point. Way too much poker drama on twitter and it's mostly all stupid and dumb and boring and I could care less anymore.

I agree with both of you guys.

Doug Polk has totally jumped the shark and sold out to manufactured drama and performative outrage over things. I'm really not sure who the target market is because the sort of people who are enraptured by this kind of bullshit, for the most part, probably wouldn't have the cash to go to The Lodge and play poker anyway.

It really is a shame because Polk's content used to be pretty good. I've watched more of his hand breakdown videos than I care to admit. I also followed the Polk/Negreanu heads-up event at least somewhat closely. Even a few years back, when Polk was contemplating getting out of poker, and started a general news commentary motif, I think I watched the better part of those videos because I liked his presentation and found him pretty balanced.

Polk was also endlessly humorous, but there's no humor in anything he has been doing recently. He, and most involved in the so-called, 'Community,' have spent the last few months behaving like catty twelve year old girls.

To top it all off, you have the whole Garrett/Robbi thing where Polk jumped aboard the cheating train, almost immediately, despite the fact that nobody could have possibly conclusively known anything (unless there had been cheating and you were one of the people in on it) at the time.

On that note, if you ever want to know what Garrett Adelstein's dick smells like, schedule yourself a trip down to Round Rock, Texas, head on into The Lodge for some poker and all you need to do is get close enough to Polk to smell his breath.

[BetCheckBet]

I think we can all agree how horrible online streaming poker is. If any decent production company chose to get into this area they would blow away these horrible streams and lineups.

When you have a 4 hour stream of poker and only 5-10 mins is interesting it should be clear there is a problem

[Dan Druff]

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/LandonTice/status/1652894109072334849

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/LandonTice/status/1652894532835463169

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/LandonTice/status/1653166053004832771




Not going well for Airball.

Imagine making $10k because your opponent doesn't feel like playing today. Sweet deal.

[Small_Banana]

Airball should take a crash course in heads up and just keep paying the 10k fine until he is ready.

[nunbeater]

Airball should take a crash course in heads up and just keep paying the 10k fine until he is ready.

imagine having doug polk as your HU coach and still losing at this rate

[Dan Druff]

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/The_Brownballa/status/1654996428710903808


Donk down.

Airball bought in for 350k -- exactly the amount which would put him down $1m overall if he lost.

He is busto, and his friend Brownballa is reporting that the match is now officially over, with Airball down $1m.

What a boon for Berkey. He made a cool million (unless he laid off action), and his reputation got better in several ways, as a result of all the surrounding drama.

Airball also lost like $285k last night on Hustler Casino Live. I wonder when the money runs out.

[Dan Druff]

LOL Garrett Adelstein.

Keep in mind he despises Airball and this is more of a needle than anything else (though of course he'd love to play).

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/GmanPoker/status/1655001854185721856

[Dan Druff]

A few post-match comments:

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/LandonTice/status/1654997618487861250


My opinion of Young Landon went way up recently when he challenged Veronica Brill's attempt to cancel me, even though he and I are not friends. Took a lot of guts to do that, when the easy thing to do was either to take shots at me or say nothing. Good kid.

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/DougPolkVids/status/1654998179119607809

Doug maintaining his sense of humor after the rough week.

[Dan Druff]

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/nikairball/status/1655017650156892160

[Dan Druff]

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/DGAFPokerPlayer/status/1655435557089198081

[dwai]

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/nikairball/status/1655017650156892160

[Dan Druff]

I made a did take when I saw the title of this one.

But it turns out the title was about Airball, and none of the episode was about me or PFA.

[simpdog]

Did you lose 1 million lately?

[Dan Druff]

Did you lose 1 million lately?

This site loses money every day, not just lately.

[BetCheckBet]

I admit I was somewhat interested in this when it first came out. But as someone who enjoys shitty reality tv it really says something when even I have completed lost interest in this. Can we please move on? It’s an embarrassment to poker that high school gossip is the top trending story. I blame Twitter spaces.

[Dan Druff]

Airball made a statement essentially walking back the Berkey hate and admitting he was intentionally an assholes for attention, but claims that he's going to tone that down going forward.

My Statement on the HU Match with
@berkey11
:

First of all, I want to congratulate Matt Berkey on his victory.

There was a lot of shit talking, most of it for fun and to add excitement to the match, but in the end I have to give credit where credit is due. He played well, and he played better than I expected he would. He won fair and square, and he deserves to celebrate his win.

I want to apologize for the comments I made about Matt being a scammer and the negative comments I made about his business. That was out of line and I regret making those comments. I got caught up emotionally in the heat of the moment and said some things I shouldn’t have said, and for that I apologize. Matt showed during this match that he is a true professional.

I have a lot to learn as a poker player. I have a newfound respect for heads up poker. I didn’t have any experience in heads up, but I learned a lot while studying for and playing this match, and I have a lot more to learn. My experience is in live ring games, and that’s where I feel most comfortable and have the most fun.

I also have a lot to learn as a person and a public figure in the poker world. My close friends know the type of person I really am and the character I have. But in poker, I enjoy being an exuberant polarizing character. I believe that poker needs characters, but sometimes I go too far with it, and that’s something I need to work on. I’m never going to change how I really am - fun, loud, social, sometimes obnoxious. But I can work on being better at not making comments that can be hurtful. In the end, I just want to have fun and play some poker.

Thanks to everyone who supported me throughout this match. It was a fun journey, even though I fell short. Even to the haters, I appreciate all of you as well.

Link: https://twitter.com/nikairball/status/1656066807718109184

[Dan Druff]

Beef squashed, apparently.

Too bad Airball had to chunk off a million dollars to come to this realization. He could have simply apologized to Berkey right after calling him a scammer, and this would have had the same effect, without the million dollar loss.

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/berkey11/status/1656068493882818560

[Dan Druff]

While Airball's statement is getting a ton of praise, here is a counterpoint:

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/DColpoys23/status/1656115557782163456