The Lodge Card Club in Austin, Texas is no stranger to unpredictably sick hands on their cash game live streams. There was another entry into the crazy hand catalog this past week which resulted in Lodge owner Doug Polk being unable to believe his eyes, ultimately losing a massive pot.
Mariano Grandoli
The beneficiary of this wild hand was poker vlogger Mariano Grandoli, known simply as “Mariano”, a poker vlogger from Argentina. Mariano is a popular figure in his home country and has about 174,000 subscribers to his poker content. Many South Americans follow him and look to emulate him by playing on a variety of South American poker sites such as Ya Poker.
A fairly regular participant in these streamed cash games at the Lodge, Mariano would have the chance to play this past Saturday. Little did he know he would make a bigger name for himself thanks to one hand.
The Hand
The stakes of this cash game were nose-bleed with blinds at $50/$100/$200. There were multiple big clashes and a lot of money exchanging hands across the table but the headliner was a clash between Polk and Mariano.
- Mariano held the 10♦7♦ on the button and raised to $500 pre-flop
- Polk was in the big blind and three-bet to $2,000 with big slick A♦K♠
- A player named “Josh” was in the straddle and moved all in for $9,400 with A♥8♥
- Mariano called the all in as it was not a lot more to commit. But he then saw Polk re-shove for $56,350.
- Even though he had a very weak preflop holding with ten-seven which would be very low on the poker cheat sheet hand rankings, Mariano nonetheless decided to gamble and called to make for a pot of over $120,000
- The flop came 8♦8♣9♦ to give Josh trips and Mariano an open-ended straight draw.
- The 6♣ on the turn gave Mariano a straight and the 10♣ river secured the entire $121,300 pot for the Argentine.
Thanks in large part to this hand, Mariano ended the session as the biggest winner with $69,400. As for Polk, he ended the stream $71,025 in the red.
While there is plenty of online poker in Texas already, this hand only increases the reputation of the Lodge as being the place to go for crazy cash game action. It also gives more credence to the idea of Texas poker pantomiming the wild west feel in live poker.