Ultra-high-stakes pros Chris Brewer and Espen Jørstad are no strangers to playing high-pressure hands when massive amounts of money is on the line. Even so, Brewer’s mettle was put to the test at the final table of the Triton High Roller Series London $200,000 NLNH when Brewer, this year’s WSOP $250,000 Super High Roller champion, and, Jørstad, the 2022 WSOP Main Event Champion, collided in a colossal cooler while battling to take home the over $4.3 million first place prize.
Check out this must-see hand with six-figure implications when Brewer and Jørstad “locked horns” with just eight players left in the field.
Brewer was holding the 
under the gun and Jørstad flatted in position with his 
. The pair saw a flop of 
which brought Brewer the second-nut flush and a considerable lead over Jørstad’s flopped top set. Out of position, Brewer checked it over to Jørstad the chip leader who put out a small bet.
Brewer made the call and that’s when things got a lot more interesting. The 
came on the turn, giving Jørstad quad jacks and leaving Brewer drawing to just two outs to the straight flush. Brewer checked again and Jørstad applied more pressure. He fired another 480,000 into the middle. With roughly 2.2 million in chips behind, Brewer took some time but made the call not yet knowing that he needed to hit his two-way straight flush draw in order to come out ahead.
The river was a blank – the 
and when Jørstad was checked to for a third time he went for it all and moved all-in.
“Crazy f***ing hand,” Brewer said as he stood up and tossed in all of his time extensions. “I don’t know if I can fold…”
But Brewer used the time that those extensions afforded and, as commentator Maria Ho noted, he counted the combination of value hands that Jørstad could have. He pondered how he’d look if he folded a hand so strong and was wrong. But ultimately, Brewer found the tremendous fold. As his cards hit the muck, Brewer shot Jørstad a number of looks, perhaps hoping for confirmation that his laydown was correct. And although Jørstad and Brewer are friendly away from the felt, Jørstad made Brewer wait until the hand aired to see that he narrowly escaped death by quads.
Brewer ultimately finished in seventh place for $770,000, $170,000 more than he would have made had he made the call. Enough to push Brewer to more than $11 million in earnings in 2023.
Jørstad, who won his first Triton title earlier in this series, finished in third place with a $2,766,000 payout, the second-largest score of his career, after a three-way deal was made.