Gossip Column: Sheriff Doug Polk Tames Cowboy Dan Cates, Books $53K Profit in $200/$400 Heads-Up Match at The Lodge

A special edition of poker night held at Doug Polk’s card room — The Lodge turned out to be an exciting one with the two poker biggies, Dan Cates and Doug Polk, who have a ton of history between them, sitting across each other for a $200/$400 NLHE heads-up poker match.

Hosted by Polk, the friendly match was a high-stakes one, with each player buying in for $50,000 initially (125 big blinds), but they both topped up several times through the session. Ultimately, the co-owner of the host venue, Polk, came out of the match smiling after booking a profit of $53,000.

Livestreamed on The Lodge Live YouTube channel, the poker match was rather entertaining with both the players dressed up as specific characters, Polk was the Sheriff, and ‘Jungleman’ came in like a cowboy. Both players played their part and attempted to remain in character for much of the six-hour-long session.

The players, who are also good friends, have faced each other, although not recently, in heads-up cash games, with ‘Jungleman’ enjoying more wins in their past encounters. But the outcome of their match on Friday evening was a bit different! You can watch the match in its entirety below.

It was undeniably a good day for Polk as he managed to rake in big pots early on and, at one point, even had quite a bit more than the end result. A few chopped pots gave away his chances of whisking away an even bigger victory.

Cates, too, had his share of fair chance when he won a fairly sizable pot against Polk, but he couldn’t manage to hold on and led off quite a bit of his chips trying to bluff his opponent.

The biggest hand of the session turned out to be a chopped pot. Polk with raised to $900 on the button and then was three-bet to $4,100 by Cates in the big blind, holding . The action returned to Polk, who four-bet to $11,000 before snap-calling an all-in of $61,000. The good thing for Polk was that the players decided to run it twice as the second board opened , and the pocket aces held up, resulting in a chopped pot. The first board had run that gave Cates the winning full house.

The Cowboy managed to gain some chips back in the second last hand of the day as he hit the nut flush to finish it off in a slightly better position.

Will we see the dynamic duo in another follow on match?! With the 2022 WSOP now well underway, it could be several weeks before we get the chance to report another similar encounter between two top guns from The Lodge.