In five years of blogging, never have I encountered a hand as jaw-dropping as this one, but the final of the PartyPoker’s World Poker Open has brought a truly remarkable hand that will leave poker fans aghast on the small screen.
Watch the Quads Over Quads video with comments from Andrew Robl, Toby Lewis and also Mike Sexton and Jesse May who were in the commentary box:
Poker’s a tough ol’ game that requires tough skin, but Robl’s going to need a layer of leather to absorb that one as it’ll pray on his mind for a long, long time. Everyone who saw it certainly won’t forget, and despite watching it first-hand on the screen in front of me, I can’t wait to see it on the TV.
The 6th season of World Open airs on Channel 5 every Wednesday night at 11.55pm in the UK. If you are outside the UK, stay tuned to the PartyPoker blog for the episodes after they have been shown on the TV.
How the Quads over Quads unfolded
This is how the hand was covered during the PartyPoker blog’s live coverage:
The fireworks commenced as Toby Lewis lit the first with , raising it up to 6,000 from the button. Andrew Robl evaded a three-bet to just flat call with in the small blind. Seeing value in the hand, Yevgeniy Timoshenko called in the big blind with meaning we headed to the flop with three pairs.
The three community cards were sent straight from the depths of poker’s cruelest chambers in hell as the dealer lay a onto the felt to deliver a cooler that would make the Antarctic look like the Bahamas.
I don’t know if I imagined it because I could see the destruction derby that lay around the corner, but the tension seemed to heighten as both players began to work out how best to extract the optimum value out of their behemoth of a hand. What one of them didn’t know, however, was that the following several minutes would turn out to be minutes that would later haunt them in their most vivid of nightmares.
The flop action was possibly unorthodox as Robl opted to lead out with his flopped full house with a bet of 18,000. This maybe wasn’t the best situation for Timoshenko to get his hands dirty, and he duly side-stepped out of the way, allowing Lewis to pop in a raise to 65,000. Robl made the call.
With both players continuing their hunt for Oscar glory, we reached a turn where Robl set the supposed trap by checking into Lewis. Lewis fondled his column momentarily before firing out for 65,000. In an effort to keep his hand disguised, Robl flat called.
The river satisfied all the sadists in the truck as a bone-crunching hit the river. At this point, both players were as quiet as a mouse in a library, analysing every possible angle in their minds and, Lewis in particular, likely wondering what the hell the other player could have. Then, the silence was suddenly broken as Robl announced all-in, and Lewis called quicker than a jet-propelled whippet.
There was a slight mumbled exchange where Lewis may have revealed his hand, but when the hole cards hit the felt, Robl’s face turned milk sour. He threw his arm in the air and rose from his seat, stunned and unable to quite soak in what had happened. Lewis pursed his lips and mouthed “oooooooh” as if someone had been kicked in the groin, whilst Timoshenko’s usually stoic expression turned into one of shock and amazement as his jaw slumped against the floor.
As Robl shook hands and left, and Lewis stacked his chips, Timoshenko’s mouth seemed permanently ajar, and it will likely remain so until someone arrives with a bodybuilder and a vice. The rail, and the commentary team who screamed down my ear, were equally stunned, and continued to talk about the hand well into the next.