Hedge Fund Manager Drops $750k on Poker at the Lodge Live Stream
4 minutes
Last Updated: January 16, 2024
The new year kicked off right where the 2023 left off, with some incredibly high stakes poker games available for live streaming at absolutely no cost.
Poker at the Lodge is a stream that typically does not bring the highest of stakes, but last night it gave us one of the biggest shows in recorded poker history.
Doug Polk and the rest of the crew at The Lodge were able to bring together a star-studded lineup that included Nik Airball, Brown Balla, Charles, Polk himself, and one of the most volatile poker players in the world, Bill Perkins.
The billionaire hedge fund manager came into the game some two hours late but put on a show, eventually dropping just under $750,000 in a span of about nine hours of play.
He was not the only one to bring the big bucks and play hard either, as the likes of Doug Polk, Bulldog, and Alex all played some massive hands and ended at varying ends of the cumulative winnings table at the end of the show.
The game set a great example for upcoming Poker at the Lodge shows as the Austin-based poker room continues to build momentum and the stream keeps growing and attracting enough viewers to compete with the likes of Hustler Casino Live.
Polk Covers the Table to Start the Stream
Doug Polk, who is one of the co-owners of The Lodge card club and one of the biggest poker training sites was the biggest star of Sunday’s game, although he certainly wasn’t the only well-known name to the poker community in the starting lineup.
Polk showed up for the game with $300k in his stack, or 30% of the million dollar stack he brought to the game, 10% of which he decided to sell to his fans via PokerStake for the sake of entertainment value.
The stakes were set at $200/400, which meant such a deep stack wasn’t truly necessary, and most other players bought in with closer to $50k, while Bulldog came into the day with about $100k in chips.
Polk decided to buy in deep and prepare for whatever the night would bring, and the decision proved justified as stacks swell up quickly and allowed for some very deep-stack play.
Bill Perkins Joins the Game
Some two hours into the stream, Bill Perkins joined the table, and things went off the rails pretty soon after that, with pots quickly ballooning to new heights.
Perkins initially bought in for $100k, but that was just the first of the many bullets he would fire throughout the night.
The hedge fund manager approached the game with the same gun-slinging bravado we have grown accustomed to seeing from him, creating a lot of action and some massive pots.
Unfortunately for him, the cards did not cooperate on the day, as he kept bricking out on his big draws and getting there just enough to pay off some of the biggest bets of the night.
A mere hour into his appearance, Perkins was sitting on a $200k stack and would fire a three-barrel bluff with A♦5♦ into Alex’s J♠9♠ on a board of J♥6♣Q♠7♠5♠.
Holding one of the best possible hands, Alex had an easy time paying off the massive $111k shove on the river and banked himself a full double-up.
Just twenty minutes later, Perkins was again on the losing side of things, but this time with a hand, as his A♣8♦ was no good on the river against Doug’s As6s on a board that read 6♣Q♠A♦5♥A♥.
This time around, it was Perkins who was put to the test and he decided to pay off the bet of $132k on the river, sending him deeper into the hole.
Bill was quickly stuck hundreds of thousands and would not get unstuck for the remainder of the session as things kept going from bad to worse.
Perkins and Polk Lose Big, Alex Dominates the Game
The bad string of cards continued for Perkins as the night went on as Alex was able to make a good fold against him holding a straight against full house some three hours before the end of the stream, only for Charles to stack him an hour later with a full house of his own.
Bill then folded the best hand to Bulldog’s brave Jack-high river bluff, but was able to win over $150k back minutes later against the same player holding just a pair of Eight, this time catching the bluff at the right time.
An hour before the stream ended, Perkins saved himself over $200k by folding trip Kings against superior trip Kings, but even that was not enough to save him a massive loss for the night.
As the night came to an end, Bill Perkins was losing nearly $750k, with Doug Polk joining him as the game’s other big loser with a hefty $288k downswing.
On the other hand of the spectrum, it was Alex with a $590k win, along with Brown Balla (+$255k) and Taras (+$237k) who ended up crushing the game and walking away with smiles on their faces.
It was a big day for The Lodge regular, who became the venue’s second biggest winner according to Highrollpoker.com after yesterday’s session, with more than $750k won over 87 hours of streamed play.
The likes of Charles (+$93k), Nik Airball (-$71k), and Bulldog (-$75k) all had mediocre nights considering the size of the game, with both the wins and the losses well within what you would expect from the stakes and lineup in question.
More live streams from Poker at the Lodge will be coming soon, with plenty of massive action and million dollar swings guaranteed throughout 2024.
