Nik Airball will be free to play on Hustler Casino Live again in March, after serving a one-year ban. That was confirmed by Hustler Casino Live co-founder Ryan Feldman while he was playing at the ongoing WSOP Paradise in The Bahamas.
Airball was last seen on Hustler Casino Live in March. Then he just vanished from the show, with no explanation as to what had happened.
A source told PokerOrg that the ban was from the Hustler Casino itself and had nothing to do with the stream. It also had nothing to do with cheating of any kind. Instead, it was a casino compliance issue to do with passing chips onto another player.
Back in May, Airball admitted to being banned on a Lodge stream. "They told us if you loan chips, you have to report who you loan to, which we did; we always reported it," Airball said. "But then they got upset because we did such a high amount. Nick [Vertucci] and Ryan [Feldman] went to bat for us; we got unbanned, they said if you ever loan in the casino again, you're banned for life. It makes running the big games a little more challenging."
At that time, Airball said the ban was for three months, but that proved wide of the mark.
Airball has showed up on other big cash games since, like High Stakes Poker, but a hinted-at HCL return in November when the show moved its production to Cyprus for a week didn’t materialize.
Trouble in Paradise
Feldman discussed the Airball situation while he was playing the $500K Triton Million event – the biggest tournament buy-in of his career. Feldman would go on to bubble the event, which he admitted left him feeling “sick to his stomach.”
Before he was eliminated, Feldman discussed the Hustler Casino Live situation, saying, “Nik Airball gets reinstated in March. We can have him back in March.”
Asked how long his ban had been for, Feldman replied, “One year, yeah.”
