Andrew Neeme may have taught a generation of poker vloggers a trick or two when it comes to creating content but the O.G. of the poker vlog isn’t above learning a lesson about the game himself when mixing it up on the felt with some of those he inspired.
Take for instance this wild hand from the WPT World Championship livestreamed $25/$50 Vlogger Cash Game where Neeme clashed with fellow vlogger Lynne Ji and learned that Ji doesn’t give up that easy once she’s put some money into the pot.
The action kicked off in earnest well before the cards were even dealt when Cedric Trevino (aka Poker Traveler) tried to convince Frankie Cucchiara from the Next Gen Poker crew to put on a $100 straddle.
“I’m going to pass this time,” Frankie said. But there was no passing allowed, this hand was moving up in stakes. Mere moments later Ji flipped a black chip in Cucchiara’s direction, paying for (and essentially forcing) the first straddle to be on. Trevino took the hint, knew what this meant, and double-straddled to $200. This allowed Ji to bump the starting price to $400.
The action folded around to Neeme in the big blind who looked down at the
. With $775 in the pot and being out of position, Neeme looked to take it down immediately by making it $1,400.
Cucchiara surrendered his straddle, Trevino followed suit. But Ji wasn’t ready to give it up just yet. Not even close. Even though she, not mistakenly, was looking down at 
.
“You have 4 or 5 [thousand] more?” she asked of Neeme. He guessed he had $5K, she wanted to put him to the test for all of it. She stuck her $11,000 stack in the middle.
A grin crept across Neeme’s face. “I mean, I’m probably going to call…,” he said. And a few seconds later, he did. All the money was in the middle creating a pot of more than $12,500 with Neeme’s hand completely crushing the aggressive Ji.
“I have a jack,” Ji said, laughing, knowing that her hand was…likely not good but the pair opted to run it twice.
“I’ll take two threes if that’s ok,” she said to the dealer as the table erupted in laughter once again, her hand officially revealed.
When the flop came 
it looked like the first runout was headed Neeme’s way. Ji was left with just 5% equity headed to the turn. But then the dealer did as he was told and peeled the 
off on the turn. Before you knew it, the 
hit the river and Ji was freerolling to the second runout.
Neeme couldn’t help but laugh as he was forced to sweat just to try and make half the pot back. There was considerably less drama in the second runout as Neeme’s considerable pre-flop edge held across the second board and the pair of vloggers chopped it up – each adding just a small share of the blinds and straddles.
Ji disappointing shrugged having not won both runouts, looked at Neeme, and playfully said, “Fair.”
As Neeme dragged his stack back across the line, Ji said for all to hear “Let it be known, I do not surrender my straddle.”
Lesson learned.