Watch the Biggest Pot in Live at the Bike History
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Live at the Bike continues to position itself among the most popular forms of livestreamed poker available on the internet, and last Friday night was a prime example of why. As the show's production value has gone up over the years, so have the blinds, the buy-ins and the pots. In one particular big game last week, the show surpassed its record for the biggest pot in LATB history when a hand went down that resulted in a pot of $438,900 being shipped to a LATB regular.
The Hand
The blinds were $100/$100/$200/$400 and the hand in question involved three high-stakes cash game regulars — Andy, Jacky and Garrett Adelstein.
Andy kicked off the action raising to $1,300 with Q♣10♥ in the cutoff, Adelstein three-bet to $4,800 on the button with A♣K♣ and Jacky flat-called in the big blind with 9♥9♣. There were no more callers and these three went to the flop with effective stacks around $212,000.
The flop came down Q♦9♠6♦ giving Jacky middle set, Andy top pair and Adelstein a whiff. When it checked around, commentator Bart Hanson said, "A queen would be a disaster card for Andy," just before the Q♥ appeared. While Jacky improved to nines full, Andy was behind with his trip queens. Jacky led for $8,000 into $15,300 with his full house and Andy raised to $19,300. After some time, Jacky put in the three-bet to $55,000 and Andy called.
From a strategic standpoint, this is probably the most polarizing decision point in the hand. Many would argue for just a call from Andy when the big blind leads out on this board, not seeing many worse hands that Jacky cold-called with preflop that he can get value from. However, considering the flop checked around, Andy has less information about the strength of Jacky's hand.
Plenty of other factors were undoubtedly at play, and as mere viewers of the game it's hard to know all the dynamics like how the game is playing, history between the players, how the session is going for each player involved, etc. Adelstein still left to act could have also played some part in Andy's decision. As it were, Andy opted to raise Jacky's lead, presumably for value, and it was met with a three-bet.
Once he decided to call, there were plenty of river cards that would have allowed him to escape without putting any more money in the pot, but unfortunately for Andy, the 9♦ was not one of them.
Action Card
With the pot ballooned now to over $125,000 and effective stacks of around $156K, the two players saw the case nine complete the board. As Hanson said, "You can't make this stuff up."
Sitting now with quads against a potential top full house, Jacky checked and Andy fell into the trap with a hand beaten only by quads. He bet $70,000 or nearly half of his stack. Jacky rather quickly moved all in to get the rest of the value with his quads, and Andy paid it off. The look on Andy's face was befitting a professional who has seen it all on the felt.
You can watch the full clip of the hand below:
Lessons Learned
Most reasonable players will forgive Andy for going broke in that river spot, though credit is also due to the savvy river check-raise by Jacky to ensure he got the full value from a queen, while also potentially inducing a bluff from any hand that does not have a queen in it. Some will argue that there were other points in the hand where Andy could have pot-controlled for some damage control, or maybe gotten away from the hand before the river, but that's neither here nor there.
One important lesson from the hand which Joey Ingram pointed out in his hand review video, is to always make sure stacks are counted out correctly and that you only pay what you owe. Right after losing a huge pot, it's easy to be in a state where mistakes can be made with counting money or chips, and it's important that players protect themselves in this regard.
Apparently, Andy paid the river bet in cash to keep chips on the table but overpaid his opponent to the tune of around $21K, though the mistake was caught by cameras and made right after the show.
As game organizer and LATB commentator Ryan Feldman points out in his tweet, the huge pot marked a significant milestone on the show, which has clearly grown into one of the most-watched streamed poker games in the world, with some of the biggest action to back it up.
This is a hand that @LIVEattheBike fans will be talking about for a long time...
— Ryan Feldman (@TheRyanFeldman)
You can watch LATB streams for free online, but you will have to pay a monthly subscription fee if you want to be able to access recordings of previous streams.
