Poker Pro Doug Polk: Fellow Pro ‘Ben Tollerene Scammed Me’

Poker pro Doug Polk has released a video to discuss a controversy brewing in the poker community involving him and fellow high stakes player Ben Tollerene.

Before  we get to Polk’s video, Tollerene (Ben86) first offered up his take on the matter via the Two Plus Two forum in order to provide some background as to how this feud transpired:

Here's what happened, this was about 4 years ago. Doug moves to my building in Van and we hangout a couple times and talk about swapping NL and PLO coaching. I am interested, I think it's a good idea. Doug coaches me first, I think about 4 sessions and half of that focused on a hu match. I sell him a piece and we do really well. I tell him I have to talk to my partner in PLO (who is on his way out of poker) before we can talk PLO. The guy I did all of my work with. I am confident that since my partner is leaving poker and we have done extremely well together that there is no way sharing with Doug will be a problem, and I'm thinking he will get pieces of the action so this is just positive for everyone. My partner surprises me and says no. I have to respect it, so I apologize to Doug and say I can't do it. I still did let him sweat me a few times and we talked a little about PLO, but nothing great. I admit he got shorted, and it was not my intention. I sincerely thought it would be fine and once my partner said no I had no options.

We are fine after this. Doug doesn't bring up having an issue with it, I think he made like 70k and understood my intentions and what happened. Then we go out drinking one night, it's late and we're wasted. Doug starts giving his #1 in the world speech and I tell him I don't agree, his sample is too small, etc. We argue for a while and he eventually breaks down and get's really upset. We talk it out until about 5AM in his room, hug each other, and we're cool. I wake up the next morning to an essay on Skype about why we cannot be friends anymore. Given that I already didn't like being around Doug very much, I thought ok fine we aren't friends anymore and left it at that. We had another deal at this time which he unilaterally closed with absolutely no right to do so, but I didn't say anything because being done with Doug was agreeable.

A year later I sit him at CAPNL because I'm a pro poker player and I think I can beat him. He sits out. Then in Vegas we are both playing the 100k at Bellagio and he walks up to me and goes "so sitting me at the ole 500/1k eh?" I said yeah, and then he said something that I can't remember along the lines of "that's kind of ****ty". (Doug and I never talked CAPNL strat). I suggest we talk and he says "no I'm good". So again I'm just content to have no Doug relationship. Apparently he held a grudge.

I don't think anyone in the entire HS community other than you thinks those things about me and you're way out of line talking like that. Please tell me who these people are. Tell me what horrible things I've done. I've never cheated or scammed anyone. I've had business relationships and done 6-7 figure transactions and balances with most of the nosebleed community and never had a problem with anyone (other than you).

“This is a video I have debated making for some time now, mainly because of how upsetting the event was for me. I have now decided that I want to get this off of my chest. With both my personal and business dealings with Ben Tollerene, I have had issues and want to bring those to light,” Polk wrote.

Polk begins his video with a four-minute rambling that may not be of much interest to many viewers so we would suggest starting at around the 4 minute mark of this nearly half hour video.