Forget Negreanu's HCL Debut, High Stakes Poker Stole the Week

6/16/09 12:09:33 PM -- Las Vegas, NV, U.S.A --Dealer Sara Abdich, 26, tosses out a card during the World Series of Poker at the Rio hotel-casino in Las Vegas -- Photo by Steve Marcus, Freelance ORG XMIT: SM 36601 WSOP 6/16/2009 (Via MerlinFTP Drop) XXX _WSOP SD10998.JPG S USA NV In a week of poker livestreams that was supposed to be dominated by Daniel Negreanu's first-ever appearance on Hustler Casino Live, it was the OG cash game poker show itself, High Stakes Poker, that owned the narrative, putting on an absolute spectacle in how high-stakes poker content should be done.Credit for that goes largely to one of the endbosses of live cash game poker, Andrew Robl, who helped assemble some of the craziest games we've ever seen, all livestreamed for free on YouTube by PokerGO. Robl had actually been disappointed by the opening days of the High Stakes Poker marathon, and made his feelings very public on X:"Tuned into 'High Stakes Poker' yesterday and saw everyone with 80k stacks, and a gentleman apparently having a seizure while betting 51k on the river with the nuts… But it's over, this shit ends Friday, I'm ready for war. I'm going to personally see to it he (Wasserson) loses every single chip he puts on the felt, and his stream winnings get reset to zero."And deliver he did. We went from the mediocre, over-cautious games that have sadly become the standard of a lot of livestream poker, to an absolute rocket ship of a cash game.A poker record that didn't last 48 hoursThe blinds were $2,000/$4,000 with a $20,000 big blind ante, and the cast was stacked: Robl, the always-aggressive Michael "Texas Mike" Moncek, Eric Wasserson, Alejandro "Papo MC" Lococo, Justin Gavri, Sameh Elamawy and Rick Salomon. At one point there was well over $10 million on the table.Eric Wasserson, the long-time Las Vegas cash game pro, was at the center of it all. Just days after taking down a $2,478,000 pot against Robl, then the largest in High Stakes Poker's 20-year history, he blew his own record out of the water with a staggering $4,260,000 pot. All against Texas Mike.The High Stakes Poker record-breaking handWasserson, already up around a million on the day, raised to $20,000 with 9♦️7♦️. Texas Mike three-bet to $80,000 on the button with 10♣️7♣️, and Wasserson called.The flop came A♦️K♦️9♣️, giving Wasserson bottom pair and a flush draw, and leaving Texas Mike with ten-high and backdoor straight and flush draws. It of course didn't stop him. After Wasserson checked, Moncek bet $100,000. Wasserson called. The turn was the 4♥️, a total brick, and Moncek fired again for $330,000. Wasserson called once more.Then the 5♦️ landed on the river, completing Wasserson's flush. He checked, and Texas Mike, holding ten-high, shoved all in for effectively $1,607,000.Wasserson took his time. "I kind of want to fold," he admitted, nervously laughing, before throwing in the call and dragging the biggest pot in the show's history.Was it a nitroll?The call sparked a mini-saga in the poker community: was Wasserson tanking with a flush a nitroll against someone as action as Texas Mike? Moncek certainly wasn't happy in the moment and accused him of exactly that. "I've never played a pot that big before," Wasserson replied.Here's my take. The money is absurd, life-changing for almost anyone, so it's completely understandable to take a second. But are you ever actually folding a flush there? Definitely not. I'll let you make your own judgment.To his credit, Texas Mike later apologized for how he reacted. In the very next hand he rallied, stacking Robl's ace-king with pocket kings for a $2,337,000 pot, the fourth-biggest in HSP history. He'd lost $4.2 million and won a chunk of it back inside two hands. That is high-stakes poker.A masterclass in how high stakes poker should be doneI've always thought the best livestream cash games are the ones with minimal commentary, where you feel like a fly on the wall just watching the game go on. At one point we were watching Robl and Texas Mike play heads-up with millions on the table. The stakes were genuinely absurd.The nosebleed insanity even brought Rick Salomon to the table, the private-game legend perhaps still best known to the mainstream for his early-2000s tape with Paris Hilton, but to poker people as a man who's battled the likes of Tobey Maguire, Alex Rodriguez, former Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg and director Nick Cassavetes, according to Vulture. As is tradition at these games, the stories flowed as freely as the chips, at one point Salomon claimed poker pro Kenny Tran owes him an eye-watering $6 million. By the end, Wasserson had booked around $3.3 million across four sessions, making him the winningest ring-game livestream player of all time.Negreanu's Hustler Casino Live debut was the headline everyone expected. But it was High Stakes Poker, and a ten-high bluff into a $4.26 million pot, that reminded everyone why the OG can still be the best show in the game.