The Lodge, which brought the first of two big game streams this weekend, gave viewers some intense action during the first session. Headliner Nik Airball took a profit of around $40,000 after four hands, but was soon down $120,000. A top-up of an extra half a million followed, and well, the full-fledged fun could begin.
In one hand, Nik exposed his good friend Eshaan "Brown Ball" Bhalla all in on the flop for $53,700. Bhalla, who called with his double gutshot and both players agreed to double up on the turn and river. Both run-outs scooped Bhalla, giving him the entire pot.
The game everyone is talking about
But the aforementioned session will go down in history thanks to a hand that is said to be the longest hand in the history of The Lodge's live poker broadcast. The action began when Airball raisled at the $100 BB for $500 with . "Tesla," one of those players who doesn't like to fold, called from the CO with Brown Balla calls on the button with "Stache," in the big blind with , which only convinced Balla to fold.
In three of a kind, we go to the flop , from which after three chucks the waiting turn iswho hit his straight but was drawing dead, bet $5,000 and Airball raisied to $16,500 with his combodraw. Tesla, sitting with the nuts 3-bet to $31,625. Both players called to look at the river Stache checked, as did Airball. But Tesla, still with the nuts straight, fired out a bet of 125,000 . When Stache called, Airball found himself in a tough spot.
He immediately tanked, and at some points it seemed like it was going to take forever. The high-stakes cash game regular tanked for so long that The Lodge co-owner Doug Polk, who was the stream commentator at the time, entered the room to speed things up and announced that Nik had to make his decision in the next 2 minutes.
No player in the game had called time by then, so that was changed by the aforementioned Polk, who started the countdown. When the clock reached zero seconds, Airball made the correct decision to discard his cards into the muck. Tesla won a pot of $353,225 and Nik Airball saved $125,000, otherwise his day would have been even worse.
Source - YouTube, PokerNews, WSOP