Welcome to HEATER/COOLER, the column where we take a look at the players and personalities in the poker world who find themselves on an upswing or down bad.
In this episode, we’re celebrating seven-figure scores and tremendous table talk as players worldwide were busy getting in the action ahead of the holiday. Let’s dive in…
Eric Persson
Love him or hate him, Eric Persson don’t care either way.
What Persson does care about is winning, winning big, and letting you know he won. The gregarious poker personality spent a couple of days at Hustler Casino Live last week making tremendous television by playing huge pots and entertaining fans with his signature speech play.
At one point Persson was down roughly $200,000 when he stumbled into one of the biggest pots of the week against the nemesis to his right — ‘MrDrBatman’. The must-see hand resulted in a pot of more than $630K and a new clip for Persson’s personal highlight reel.
Watch the hand to the end, not only does Persson “play the man” perfectly, but his already legendary trash talk arrived in full force as he dragged the monetary equivalent of a small home into his stack. Life is easy when you don’t think $200K is a lot of money.
HOLY BATMAN!!@IAmMaverick888 turned his night around with a $632K pot vs MrDrBatman
Watch the entire episode here: https://t.co/VakRcR2i3I pic.twitter.com/viT4NmwAim
— Hustler Casino Live (@HCLPokerShow) November 5, 2022
Henri ‘buttonclickr’ Puustinen
Hustler Casino Live giveth huge pots and the show also takes them away. Just ask Finnish online poker wunderkind Henri ‘buttonclickr’ Puustinen. Puustinen, the 22-year-old who gained a bit of notoriety for helping Doug Polk vanquish Daniel Negreanu in their legendary heads-up challenge last year, stepped out into poker’s spotlight himself last week. The Finnish pro jumped into the $100/200/400 + $200 bb ante game and was sitting extremely deep when he clashed with HCL regular ‘Nik Airball’ in what ended up being the single biggest pot in the show’s year-long history.
There was nearly $1 million in play, just between Puustinen and Nik. Nik pushed the preflop action with hiss 
and Puustinen came along with the
. The flop came 
giving Puustinen top set, giving ‘Airball’ the straight, and giving fans an insane hand to talk about for some time to come.
You can watch how the hand played out below, but in the end Nik scooped an $870,000 pot and Puustinen left the game with a cooler he likely will never forget.
Johan ‘YoH ViraL’ Guilbert
Speaking of live-streamed cash games…French poker content creator Johan ‘Yoh ViraL’ Guilbert was on hand last week at King’s Resort in Rozvadov as a part of the 2022 World Series of Poker Europe. As a part of the festival, the former GPA Poker Personality of the Year nominee was tapped to play host to one of Europe’s highest-stakes cash game streams in recent years. Guilbert and his cohorts, which included long-time grinder Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospellier, battled at stakes of €100/200/400 for four straight days, eight hours a day in a stream that brought a ton of action and six-figure pots.
It was everything a great game should be, from playing seven-deuce to stand-up games with fantastic banter throughout — thanks in part to Guilbert himself who got involved in one of the biggest hands of the entire week (which you can watch below).
Can’t get enough cash game action? Check out more than 30 hours of action on the King’s Resort YouTube page.
Chad Eveslage
It’s easy to add Eveslage to the heater list. Pretty much anytime you take down a seven-figure score you qualify as a guy on the upswing. And making a million is precisely what Eveslage did last month when he bested the 569-entry field of WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic Main Event at the Bellagio, taking home the $1,042,300 first-place prize and his second career WPT Main Tour title.
But what’s better than a seven-figure score? Two of them, of course…in a five-month span. Just this summer Eveslage won his first live WSOP gold bracelet after taking down the $25,000 NLHE High Roller for more than $1.4 million.
Eveslage is currently among the Top 40 money earners in 2022 with more than $2.8 million in live tournament earnings and boosted his career earnings to over $6.7 million in the process. With a free seat to both the WPT World Championship and the WPT Prime Championship as a part of his victory, Eveslage is freerolling a shot to further pad his bankroll even more before the end of the year.