Poker Player Doug Polk Building a Competitive Team in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

After beating Daniel Negreanu for a cool $1.2 million in Heads Up Grudge match, Doug Polk announced on twitter that he’s building a competitive team in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) video game.

Searching for players on ESEA

Doug posted an ad searching for talented players on ESEA forums, an online league & community for gamers and offering a salary of $1000-$2000 per month, depending on the player. He said that now that he’s done with winning money in high stakes poker duel, he’s back to CS:GO and looking to build a team for the future. Players have to be NA based.

He wrote: “I have a different philosophy on strategy and how I want to run a team. Im going to spend at least 6+ months trying to build something that could make a run in premier. Looking for really strong players who want to play in a committed/dedicated environment.”

His post actually received some backlash, mostly regarding the offered salary. If you don’t know anything about CS:GO or eSports in general, like admittedly we don’t, then you might think – of course, Doug is lowballing these poor souls, like a true poker player he is. But no, quite the contrary. Biggest backlash seems to be that offered salary is too big for this level of play.

Three confirmed players

Doug is building this new team around three players. The first one and the player in charge is going to be the man himself. On twitter he said he’s going to have a serious commitment to strategy and theory. He won’t be playing highly exploit based and will focus on fundamentally sound theory.

The other two players are Momo^-^ and sezi. You can check Doug’s CS:GO profile on ESEA, where he uses his known handle WCGRider and it looks like his team name is called Upswing.

Sounds like a really exciting project and we’re eager to see where this leads in the future. But you will have to tell us if his team is actually any good or not.

André Akkari’s FURIA one of the best

Doug won’t be the first poker player with an eSports team, though. Co-Founder of FURIA, one of the best CS:GO teams in the world is André Akkari. In November last year they’ve announced a partnership with PokerStars.

In general collaborations between poker players and eSports organizations is nothing new. Currently the biggest poker streamer in the world Lex Veldhuis is part of the most famous eSports team in the world Team Liquid. Same team signed with GGPoker’s Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier in 2015 for their Hearthstone team.

What is Counter-Strike: Global Offensive?

CS:GO is a popular and highly competitive free-to-play multiplayer first-person shooter video game developed by Valve (Steam) and Hidden Path Entertainment. Gameplay consists of two opposing teams (Terrorists and Counter-Terrorist) spawning on opposite ends of the map.

In eSports games are usually played in Bomb Defusal mode, where Terrorist team plant a bomb in one of the designated areas, while Counter-Terrorists are there to prevent it from going boom. Each match has 30 rounds and the first to 16 wins gets the victory.

CS:GO also feature buying weapons with cash rewards collected during the rounds for either killing opponents, completing objectives and winnings rounds.

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