There was no need to hit a bad beat jackpot to win a massive prize for one lucky poker player at The Lodge Card Club in Texas. All it took was a random drawing.
The poker club co-owned by Andrew Neeme, Brad Owen, and Doug Polk hosted one of the best promotions you’ll ever see in a local card room last month. Each day in December, the poker room held an hourly random seat drawing.
Those whose seats were called throughout the month were then entered into an end-of-year drawing. The prize for winning that drawing? A nice cool $100,000 in cold hard cash — no catch. There were also some additional consolation prizes such as an annual membership to the club. But the biggest score went to one lucky individual, and that is Thuynga “Tee” Nguyen, a local player in the Austin area.
Ten others won $500 in cash and an additional 10 drawing winners received memberships to the club for an entire year. For those who don’t know, due to strict anti-gambling laws in Texas, poker rooms in the Lone Star State operate as social clubs instead of traditional brick-and-mortar card rooms. They make money via membership and daily/hourly seat fees instead of collecting rake, which would be illegal.
The drawing was held on New Year’s Day and Nguyen was in action two days later competing on the Lodge’s live-stream. She initially bought in for $500 in the $1/$3 no-limit hold’em cash game, and was down about $670 when the cameras stopped rolling.
It wasn’t all bad for her, though. Not only did she win a massive jackpot, but she made a few nice plays on the stream. Take, for example, an all in jam with A♦J♦ on a two-diamond board, forcing a pocket pair to fold and surrender the $600 pot. But she ran into a bit of a cooler in another hand with 9♠7♠ on a board of 4♠Q♦A♠7♣ up against Q♥Q♣. To make matters worse, the river was a 9♦, giving Nguyen two pair up against Anthony’s set. She called off a $200 bet on the river only to find out the bad news.
The Lodge has become one of the top spots for tournament poker in Texas and has a cheap juicy event on the horizon. From Jan. 11-22, the Austin area poker club will host a $200 buy-in Mini Monster Tournament with a $400,000 guaranteed prize pool. First place will pay at least $100,000 and there are 24 starting flights scheduled.