“I Don’t Need the Beef in My Life”: Chris Hunichen on Doug Polk’s Allegations

Who Are Doug Polk and Chris Hunichen?

Douglas K. Polk, better known as Doug “WCGRider” Polk, is a U.S. professional poker player and co-owner of Lodge Card Club.

Aside from his stellar poker performance, Polk also found his claim to fame with his YouTube channel where he posts poker-related content including journalists-like investigations and op-eds on some poker controversies.

Chris Hunichen, on the other hand, also known as “BigHuni”, is an U.S. professional poker player, crypto investor, and Phenom Poker Ambassador.

If you needed to know anything about him, it’s that he’s a relentless online and live grinder, who became famous after he made two ITMs for more than $5M in WSOP 2024 events:

To make it even more impressive, the two events were held the same week.

What Caused the Conflict Between Polk And Hunichen?

On July 24^th, 2023 Chris Hunichen took to X to share a GoFundMe page made by his mother and sister to help cover funeral and memorial expenses for his late father and help with certain home renovations. The post stated:

“My mom and sister setup a gofundme to help with some final expenses with the autopsy/funeral/burial etc and mainly for repairs to help my sister fix up my dads house so her and her 4 year old can continue to try to live in the house. 

There is a lot of work that needs to be done and they both depended on my dad greatly.  This loss has been brutal for all of us and especially them.  I hate to even ask but I know I constantly help people all the time so even if small if you can pitch in a little to help it will be very greatly appreciated and will help take a little of the load off me at a pretty rough time in my life.  Thank you!”

People started to donate money. The original goal was set to $15,000. However, they managed to raise just $6,020 from 59 donors.

The poker community quickly moved on from this, meaning that the while story could have ended there if not for Doug Polk. On November 4^th, 2023 Polk recalled this crowdfunding post and not in a charitable way. He noticed a tweet of Chris asking: “Anybody planning to charter a jet to Bahamas from Vegas for WSOP?” — and reacted instantly:

Hunichen was quick to replied and in detail:

“I didn’t do a gofundme, I shared a gofundme my sister and mom did.  I actually didn’t share it for a bit because I knew there would be some backlash but they begged me too. 

The people that donated also know the situation.  I have financed my entire family for two decades, put both my siblings through college, they were tired of asking for my help for everything and wanted to do a gofundme.  I can’t stop them. 

Also I paid for the entire funeral myself, the gofundme went to helping my sister fix my fathers house so her, as a single mom, could live in it with her 3 year old kid.  You are a f****ing idiot and you and ur crew have tried bullying me for a lifetime now, you can truly go f**k yourself.  Don’t speak on something you have no fucking clue what you are talking about you f***ng loser!”

Polk wasn’t convinced and remained still on his view of situation:

“You are arguing semantics on your first point to shift taking responsibility for what you did. If you promote a charity donation to your family, do not follow it up with lavish spending on social media.”

With ongoing discussion involving other players for more than a half-year, Polk and Hunichen continued their online beef. By July 2024, Doug dubbed Chris’ actions a “pure scum”, called Hunichen a “shameless grifter” and asked:

Chris answered by saying the allegations were “bullshit” and “nonsense” and calling Doug an “idiot” who made it all up “just for clicks”.

Chris Hunichen’s Side of the GoFundMe Story

In August 2024, Dan Cates invited Chris Hunichen to his podcast, providing Hunichen with a platform to tell his side of the story.

Hunichen wasn’t shy when sharing this thoughts, saying:

“Everyone who knows me knows that I’m far from cheap. I’m probably the most generous person in the whole community. The people that know me know what’s up.

Basically, my dad died. My mom wasn’t even married to my dad anymore, she has a new husband, they live on the east coast, I live on the west coast.

I’ve been paying for everything for my family for a long time. It was just a situation where my mom and my sister started that GoFundMe. They just wanted to help out. They just knew, obviously, it’s sad times for me, I’m going through a lot, and they just wanted to feel like they were contributing to something.

So, they made that GoFundMe — I didn’t even know about it for several days after they had launched it. I didn’t even know and then they finally messaged me, asked me to share it a couple times. I kept telling them “no” — because I knew it would just cause a bunch of drama. They just kept on asking like: “You have a lot of friends that you helped out. I’m sure, they won’t mind helping back out”. And I was like: fine, I put it on Twitter for the people.”

Hunichen claimed that Polk’s response was a cry for attention:

“It’s like he’s out making this big deal. I don’t know, he thinks I’m scamming or whatever the f**k it is, being cheap over a few thousand dollars. He knows the type of money we spend on a regular basis and the things that we do on a regular basis and the tournaments I play and it’s just a joke, man.

I think, he’s really just doing it for clicks. He likes to use people that have bigger names or just people that have success or whatever. He likes to sh**t on them. But I’m pretty over it. I was kind of giving him a bunch of sh**t on Twitter afterwards, I would keep like tagging him, but I’m passing it. I’m ready to put it to rest. I have no beef for anybody in the world except him.

Anyone with a working brain knows what’s going on here. He’s a smart guy. Doug’s a smart guy. I refuse to believe he’s that big f**ing idiot. I know he’s not. So, I don’t understand what he’s doing or why he’s running his mouth like that.

But this is what he does. This is how he gets clicks. He grips off the community, his little community, he makes a lot of money off these little people. So, whatever they want to believe — those people would don’t matter to me, so it’s cool.

I’m ready to put it in the past. I got more important things to focus on. I got two kids, I got a family. This g

So, How Did the GoFundMe Story End?

As Hunichen stated, he didn’t just cover the funeral expenses for his late father but also gave money to charity shortly after:

“The thing about this GoFundMe is I have donated 10x the amount of money that GoFundMe raised to other people’s GoFundMe’s. Just like last month I donated $1,000 to Bob — you know, Bob had a new hip.

I spend five figures, sometimes close to six figures a year just feeding homeless in Vegas. So this little $3K — $4K whatever — it was that the poker community gave back to my mom and my sister to help.

And the thing was I ended up paying for the whole funeral. That money was to help my sister who was living with my dad. She’s got a a kid, she’s a single parent and the dad has not been in the picture since day one, I’ve actually never met the guy. It’s tough for her and my dad’s house needed a lot of work.

When he was alive, he was kind of stubborn, and wouldn’t let it happen. So the money that she raised went to help her fix up the house. She had to put brand new flooring because the flooring was sinking.”