Doug Polk Accused Of Being Sexist After He Targets Maria Konnikova

Doug Polk has a habit of stirring up things and staying in the headlines based on the things he says and the way he says it. Polk recently targeted Maria Konnikova in-directly after he took offense to a CNN article which described Maria Konnikova as a top poker player.

CNN recently came out with an article that focused on navigating risks in the pandemic and used the phrase ‘top poker player tells all’ in the title.

The top poker player that CNN was referring to was Konnikova who only started playing poker in 2016. Konnikova who was born in Russia asked top poker pro Erik Seidel to mentor her and she has had a few good runs at the poker table since then.

Konnikova has just over $300,000 in live poker winnings and her best cashout till date was $84,600. She has a Ph.D in psychology and published a book titled ‘The Biggest Bluff’ in 2020.

Doug Polk has over $9.4 million in career prize money and his biggest cashout is $3.6 million. Polk was not happy with CNN labelling Konnikova as a ‘top poker player’ as her achievements did not justify the tag. However, Polk acknowledged that he wasn’t targeting Konnikova but CNN over the use of top poker player.

“Top Poker Player” Maria Konnikov pic.twitter.com/klioDG5jxn

— Doug Polk (@DougPolkVids) June 8, 2021

Poker pro Liv Boeree jumped in to defend Konnikova saying that she would have had no choice in deciding what headline CNN used in the article and reminded Polk that editors like using clickbait to get the attention of their readers.

Bear in mind Maria will have had no choice in the headline they run with – editors *love* to go max clickbait.

Afaik she’s never claimed to be a top pro, but she’s a great writer & this kind of mainstream promo is surely great for the game on net

— Liv Boeree (@Liv_Boeree) June 8, 2021

Maria Konnikova responded via social media and clarified that she did not know that ‘top player’ was used in the headline to describe her and never considered herself a top poker player. She went on to say that she has always been transparent about her poker background which is why she wrote the book ‘The Biggest Bluff’.

Liv is right–I didn’t see the headline. In fact, even the writer of the piece likely didn’t see it. There’s a separate editorial team for that. And I’ve always been completely transparent about my poker background. There’s a whole book about it ;). Top pro never enters into it.

— Maria Konnikova (@mkonnikova) June 8, 2021

Jaime Staples Calls Polk Sexist

Jaime Staples went after Doug Polk and called his behaviour sexist. Staples said that Polk had to jump in and stir things up when he found a female poker player getting attention. Staples said that Polk reacted to the headline only because the top poker player they were referring to was a woman.

Polk defended himself and said he wasn’t sexist and that gender should not be used to determine the accomplishments of a poker player.

Whats weak is thinking gender should influence how we view someone’s accomplishments.

— Doug Polk (@DougPolkVids) June 8, 2021