Polk Slams Berkey Over Failed Live at The Bike Appearance

Doug Polk’s YouTube broadside this week against fellow highstakes pro Matt Berkey for not appearing at a big cash game has sparked a Twitter storm which has seen the vlogger himself accused of hypocrisy and click-bait journalism.

Polk, one of the biggest names in the game for his high-stakes play and no-holds barred vlogging, used his YouTube channel to launch an attack on Berkey in a piece entitled ‘I am sick and tired of players who do this’ – as Polk states at the beginning, “a subject that I think a lot of people have different emotions and feelings on” – basically well-known, even world-famous, players not turning up as scheduled for their televised game, in this case the heavily-publicised Live at the Bike cash-game.

It’s a good 7-minutes into the 14 minute vlog before Polk gets to the point, first setting the backdrop to the issue – reasons why it’s ok to pull out, reasons why withdrawing at the last minute lets down not only other players, but especially viewers tuned in to see their favourites battle it out for instance.

The Live at the Bike game Polk is annoyed about was supposed to feature himself along with Dan Cates, Joey Ingram, Garret Adelstein, Ryan Fee, ‘Gil the Plumber’, Josh Macciello – and Matt Berkey, the ‘Solve for Why’ guru who has close to $4million to his name in tournament cashes despite being primarily a cash game beast.

However, “a bunch of shenanigans went down turning this game on its head” says Polk, as not only the start-time was changed, but when he got there he was told:

"This person’s out, this person’s out, this person’s out, this person doesn’t want to play anymore."

First up for Polk’s wrath was Josh Macciello, quoting his tweet ‘I’m not playing that game. They are all monsters man,’ which was later followed by an apology that a ‘family event’ prevented him from playing. Hmmm, thinks Polk – this doesn’t add up.

Weakest Reg

Polk is famous for having previously called Jason Mercier a ‘bad reg’ – and here he takes an even bigger dig at Matt Berkey, calling him ‘the weakest reg’ and again showing a tweet from earlier on the day of the game…

and then a later tweet…

“Sorry Berkey, but I’m just not buying it”, says Doug, launching into a typical moment of disbelief and sharing the LAtB’s own Twitter feed as proof that Berkey knew all along what the stakes were.

Berkey, for his part, limited himself to very few lines as the argument raged, preferring not to sling mud along the way if at all possible…

Jumping to Berkey’s defence as the story grew out of all proportion was Patrick ‘Pads’ Leonard, himself a target of Polk’s often provocative vlogs after an ‘angle-shooting incident' at PokerStar’s Barcelona stop earlier in the year…

…in which he states:

"…there was supposed to be a big game, some people didn't show and then on twitter people kind of gave the benefit of the doubt to a couple of the guys because they are fishy or whatever but Matt Berkey didn't escape criticism and lot of people were giving him ****. Doug made a fb live post about the situation and a lot of people took their frustrations out on Berkey."

The spat drew in many of the biggest or most outspoken names in the game, Justin ‘Stealthmunk’ Schwartz seemingly tweeting for almost 2 days straight on the subject, including a long discussion about how the stakes at the big live games (with straddles and double-straddles) actually operate…

Now, without wanting to spoil the ending of Polk’s vlog for you, you could always just skip the first 12 minutes and listen to his final digs at Berkey… Polk almost ensuring that a new ‘flame war’ or long-running feud!