Doug Polk and fellow YouTube poker stars Brad Owen and Andrew Neeme revealed that they had become co-owners in The Lodge Poker Club & Card Room in Austin, Texas back in January. Just shy of five months after making that announcement, Polk came within a few spots of winning a major tournament at his own club. Polk, a three-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner finished fourth out 617 entries in the $3,000 buy-in Lodge Championship Series no-limit hold’em main event to cash for $142,000. The six-figure payday likely helped take the sting off after the $2,000,000 guaranteed event had an overlay of $334,100 when registration closed in the final of six offered starting flights.
Before Polk took to the final table in the tuxedo tank top he is pictured above wearing, he made a Twitter post noting the reaction his deep run in the event was drawing and how deep he would have to make it to surpass certain financial benchmarks.
Some thresholds
~6th place to be unstuck at the lodge
~2nd place to cover how much we overlayed
~1st place to have people complain about this event for the rest of time— Doug Polk (@DougPolkVids) May 23, 2022
In the end, France’s Alain Bauer emerged victorious with the title and the top payout of $374,800 after striking a heads-up deal with three-time World Poker Tour main event champion Eric Afriat. Bauer also secured 1,260 Card Player Player of the Year points as the winner, enough to move inside the top 50 in the 2022 POY race sponsored by Global Poker.
Polk entered the final table, which was live-streamed by The Lodge Card Club on its YouTube channel, as the short stack with six players remaining. Farid Jattin had just missed making the broadcast, finishing in seventh place for $59,600 and 315 points. This was the Colombian poker pro’s eighth final-table finish of the year, with three titles won and more than $850,000 in year-to-date POY earnings accrued. Jattin now sits in fifth place on the overall leaderboard as a result.
Daniel Jones (6th – $78,600) was the first player to be eliminated when his Q-6 suited lost out to the the J-10 suited of Steven Rivero. Not long after that, Bauer won his first key all-in of the day when his A-K beat the pocket queens of Nir Cohen (5th – $105,200).
Polk’s run in this event came to an end when he shoved around ten big blinds from the button withJ-9. Rivero made the call from the small blind with A-J and flopped two pair to leave Polk in dire need of help. A blank on the turn left Polk drawing dead and he hit the rail with his latest six-figure tournament payday. This was the first time he had cashed in a live event since 2017. The score increased his career earnings to just shy of $9.6 million.
An interesting pot took place during three-handed play that shaped the outcome of this event. Afriat picked up A
A
on the button and raised. bauer three-bet with A
K
and Afriat four-bet.Bauer called and the flop came down Q94. Bauer checked to Afriat, who made a continuation bet of 1,000,000. Bauer then check-raised all-in for 11.3 million total. Afriat eventually folded his pocket aces face up, only for Bauer to show his bluff with A-K. Check out a video clip of the hand from The Lodge Live
YouTube channel below:
Bauer then won a big hand with a turned broadway straight beating the flopped set of queens of Afriat to further extend his lead. Afriat closed the gap slightly by knocking out Rivero in third place ($194,400) when his A-8 outran his opponent’s pocket kings.
Heads-up play began after the two came to a deal that redistributed the remaining prize money. In the end, Bauer closed out the win when he flopped top pair with J-8 on a jack-high board. Afriat had the same pair with a deuce kicker and got all-in. The turn and river brought no help and Afriat was eliminated as the runner-up ($320,000).
Here is a look at the payouts and POY points awarded at the final table:
| Place | Player | Earnings (USD) | POY Points |
| 1 | Alain Bauer | $374,800 | 1260 |
| 2 | Eric Afriat | $320,000 | 1050 |
| 3 | Steven Rivero | $194,400 | 840 |
| 4 | Doug Polk | $142,000 | 630 |
| 5 | Nir Cohen | $105,200 | 525 |
| 6 | Daniel Jones | $78,600 | 420 |
| 7 | Farid Jattin | $59,600 | 315 |
| 8 | Schuyler Thornton | $45,400 | 210 |
| 9 | Mohammad Bagheri | $35,000 | 105 |
Bauer photo credit: Jamie Thomson / Pokernews. Polk image via his personal Twitter account (@DougPolkVids).
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