Players would vie for the pot by assembling the best five-card hands using their hole cards and the shared array. After that, the dealer would add a single card (“the turn”) followed by one more (“the river”). The first face-up batch, called the flop, would consist of three cards. Five community cards were then to be dealt face-up in three rounds, with opportunities for betting in between. Like all games of Texas Hold 'Em, the most widely televised form of poker, the action began with each player receiving two face-down cards-the hole cards. Yet, as usual when he appeared on Stones' livestream, Postle was shredding the competition he was the evening's chips leader by a comfortable margin.įive hours into the show, a curious hand took shape. One pro from Las Vegas had flown in on a chartered jet with $50,000 in cash. The September 21, 2019, game, which Stones was broadcasting to audiences via YouTube and Twitch, had attracted several top players to the casino's card room, a gaudily lit space done up like an Old West saloon. The moonfaced 42-year-old was deep into a marathon poker session at Stones Gambling Hall, a boxy glass-and-steel casino wedged between Interstate 80 and a Popeye's in suburban Sacramento.
