My Poker History
I started betting Sports way back when I was around 18 years old trying to make my way up in stakes. During that time Expekt was one of the bookmakers that I used and I saw they also had a poker room which sparked my interest. After trying it out and losing a bit initially, it became somewhat of an obsession to get better at it. Eventually I did and the games in those days were just really soft while there was no such thing as solvers. So I managed to use poker earnings to boost my betting bankroll while quitting school and paying for everything I needed. However, 10+ tables of 1$-2$ buy-ins were the maximum stakes I reached and once I went up to 400NL cash games it started to get a lot harder. It also felt like a job while I managed to grow my betting stakes to a point where it was not worth the time and mental suffering anymore (poker gets you tilted pretty easily). Ever since I stopped playing but in that time I watched a ton of Televised poker which I did enjoy.
New Poker YouTubers
Recently, I got recommended a video or a short from Abbey Poker which I clicked. As I watched a couple more of them since I related to the idea of dropping out of school to persue gambling as a career, the algorithm started pushing a couple others. The 3 that stand out to me are...
AbbeyPoker
She's a hot 24-year old Girl who documents her Journey of making a living through poker in a fun way. Especially the daily short videos in the series 'playing poker every day until I earned 10k$' (now 25k$). This in what feels like a realistic and honest way which I appreciate. I pretty much watch this series daily kind of rooting for he to do well but not too well :)
She also is friends with some other Poker players and especially the dynamic with Corey Eyring is very fun to watch since there is always a romance angle as it's clear that the guy likes the girl more than just friends but doesn't want to lose the friendship.
Corey Eyring
The entertaining thing about the Corey Eyring channel is that he's trying to take a shortcut by gambling just way above his league at stakes he clearly can't afford. The main theme tends to be that he's always gambling his entire net worth which makes it interesting and gets the views but it always forces him to go more and more extreme. So it's a train wreck about to happen which everyone can witness on the fist row.
Recently he's been playing High Stakes in Poker At the Lodge, which first started out with 5$/10$ stakes just a couple weeks ago where he took a shot with a irresponsible large part of his bankroll. By now, this has gone up to 50$/100$ a couple days ago where he's pretty much risking his entire net worth! (See Hand Below)
Another one I really enjoy mainly because the high entertainment value of the videos with good editing and story telling is LockedIn Poker. He recently dropped out of collage and is playing stakes that feel way too high for his bankroll.
What all of these have in common is that it's only a matter of time before a bad streak will wipe them out as they are forced to keep it entertaining for their YouTube views. At the same time, their rising fame will give them other earning opportunities and it's just enjoyable and somewhat relateble to watch. In betting, you either have the 'boring' disciplined grinders like me who often do well but take a very long time to really get up there, or the kamikaze high risk guys who have a shot at quick riches but with the odds stacked against them.
The Most Interesting Hand of The Year!
So it was Corey Eyering who a couple days ago was playing the 50$/100$ game at the lodge (Live Stream link) which became a crazy ride. He started off pushing A8s in a multi-way pot where one of the players tried to squeeze out many of the calles with KQs. That player called which Corey (who has been running like god for weeks now) takes it twice to more than double up from 30k to 64k.
Around halfway the session he was down 40k Dollars and actually lost some more.
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A little later when he was down over 65k and the desperation was really noticeable. He pushed in his last 28k with AQs and was walled by another AQs and someone with 66 that has one of the suites he needed leaving im with a 78% chance to fully be broke.
He was lucky the others had more chips and the 66 pushed out the other AQ. They run it twice, and somehow he wins both of those pots giving him 90k which still puts him down on the night as he put 100k in with rebuys.
This now puts him at the table with around 90k which on it's own must be extremely stressfull. However, what followed was the craziest pot and outcome that I have witnessed in a long time.
Basically there is a heads up pot where the flop is 789 of hearts that goes to the river which is a 10 of hearts with both players only having around 5k invested in the pot. The crazy aggressive guy who was down on the night out of nowhere pushes 85k dollars in the middle as a bluff while Corey has the Nut Fush. However, both a Jack or 5 of Hearts still beat him and he needs to make the call for his entire net worth and a pot of 180k!
For me, this situation would have been an easy fold even though he had the better hand. The difference between having 180k or 90k is just way smaller compared to having 90k instead of zero. There are still 2 cards that beat him and it makes no sense whatsoever to pull a bluff like this as it could have been done with similar outcome with much less.I would say the situation somewhat is similar to call with a Queen high flush knowing the Ace and King High still beat you.
However, the fact that he has to make it interesting for the viewers and folding makes it boring even if it would have been the right call, Corey comes up with the coinflip setup where he lets someone pick one of his cards. If it's the Ace of Hearts it means he calls and if it's the other card it means he folds. This really put the tension to a max also because I kind of ignored the fact that he couldn't lose but more thinking in a position where the other guy could have a straight flush.
The way it turns out is that he gets lucky (again) as the ace gets picked making him win a 180k dollar pot.
Video of this hand (Starts at 5 Hours 15 Minutes 40 Seconds)
A crazy 7-hour poker session with swings where he was up a lot, down a lot, getting a 22% chance not to lose his net entire worth (or what was left of it) only to trippe up instead and go on to have a pure coinflip that won him 180k in a spot where he easily could have been dead in the water. All of this and at the end he's up only 27k which is just crazy degenerate gambling but it was super entertaining.
Conclusion: It was the first time since long that I watched some live poker as it's fun to watch some of these College Dropout Poker YouTubers test their luch with their entire net worth. It produced the most fun poker hand I have ever witnessed and I'm looking forward to see what's next as it's only a matter of time before it all implodes upon itself during the first bad streak. The pressure of making good content is simply too high for him to escape the upcoming slaughering.