Doug Polk Message Following Las Vegas Tragedy

“Hey everybody, Doug Polk here, and I just wanted to let you all know — that I know we had a podcast scheduled for Noon today with JNandez for a big announcement.

But given what has happened in Vegas over the last 12, I guess 12-ish hours, we’re actually going to go ahead and cancel that because I just feel like it would be kind of insensitive — to make an announcement about an Upswing course during such a tragic thing that happened here in my… where I live in Las Vegas.

For those of you guys who don’t know what happened, last night a gunman on the thirty-second floor of a corner suite at the Mandalay Bay shot out the windows and gunned down many people at a country music festival that was going on nearby. 58 people are confirmed dead, over 500 more are injured.

This — as far as I know — is one of the deadliest mass shootings we’ve ever seen in America.

And it happened not only right here in my hometown, but also in the poker capital of the world. This is — as far as poker players go — there are more people here than there are probably anywhere else that play poker. This is really poker central.

So when you think about that… when you think about the context of that, there were poker players at this event who could have been killed. I mean, Dan Bilzerian was there. He posted a short video that he saw someone get shot in like, the face or the head. I think that there’s at least one other poker player who I’m not sure if they want to come forward that they were there or not, that I know was there, who is safe. But had to take cover under a table hoping to not be killed.

I mean, we’re talking about 58 people came to Las Vegas or were in Las Vegas — died to automatic machine gun fire where there were 500 more people injured.

So I just wanted you guys to know that I’m safe. All my friends… and family is — that I know of — everyone is safe. I haven’t heard any news that anyone that I’m close with has been injured in any way at all. I don’t think I actually knew anyone of my friends — or close friends or family who was at the concert to begin with. So I’m safe. Everyone I know is safe. Hopefully all the poker players that we know are safe.

But also hopefully, no more people died. Because whether someone’s a poker player or not, the fact that so many people were killed senselessly by this shooter who then took his own life afterwards, it’s honestly tragic.

I really don’t know… a lot of people are trying to take this somewhere where we’re going to talk about what gun laws should be like in our country. I’m not really going to be the one to say what they should or shouldn’t be, or whether they would help or not.

I also think it’s a little bit… I guess I would just say not cool to just immediately spring to make this a political issue. You already see people trying to make it about politics. But really I think it’s important to just take a step back and think.

These people came here and died. They got shot down and just terror… terror took over that event. Terror took over thousands of people as they ran for their lives. I mean, this is America. This happened in America. You know, this happened, of any place in the world it happened right here.

So yeah I just didn’t really, it didn’t really feel right making an announcement about this new course we’re launching. We planned it out in advance but again sometimes you got to audible if it doesn’t seem like it really makes any sense. So I hope you guys can understand why we’re going to not have the podcast today. We might try and to do it tomorrow. We might do it later this week. But we’re gonna find another date and time to do that.

So I hope that all you guys are safe. I hope that all your friends and family are safe. I hope that we get some more information and that no more people die here, but I just wanted to let you guys know that we are not going to be having the podcast today.

Thank you guys for tuning-in. That’s going to be it. And if you guys want to know when we will be having it or what’s going on with the channel, you can always follow me over on Twitter @DougPolkPoker — see you guys.“

Doug Polk
Upswing Poker