Garrett Adelstein is garnering a lot of praise for his professional handling of a slow-roll on last night's Hustler Casino Live stream. The hand in question saw the player known as "Dylan" pretending to lose a hand to get Adelstein to flip his cards out of turn. Then Dylan revealed that there was a monster in his hand.
Dylan is a regular on the HCL stream and this is not the first time that he and Adelstein have crossed each other's cards. On a previous HCL stream, Adelstein joked that he wanted to eat Dylan's unborn children. Missing the reference to a Mike Tyson quote, Dylan appears to have taken the comment personally.
If last night's slow-roll was how he wanted to exact his revenge, then it seems to have backfired. He got no response from Adelstein and a lot of grief from both the commentary box and the internet.
Johnnie Vibes uploaded the clip of Dylan's slowroll to Twitter with the caption: "The lack of response by @GmanPoker here is straight class. This is the model for all professionals."
The commenters are not kind to Dylan.
A nice hand
The hand in question saw Dylan bet his stack of $55k into a $71k pot on the river. He held the 4♠4♣, with the board showing 3♣T❤️3❤️4♦️K♦️.
Adelstein paused for a moment's thought before calling.
At this point, instead of turning over his hand, Dylan kept it face down and announced "nice call."
Adelstein flipped over the K♠T♦️ thinking he had won the pot. At that point Dylan announced, "just kidding" and turned over his full house, winning the pot.
Instead of tilting Adelstein or getting a reaction on camera, Dylan's move was met with silence from Adelstein as the dealer counted out his call.
Adelstein wasn't entirely unmoved by the incident. He did at least feel the need to address it in a Tweet after the video went up. But the response was the kind of even-tempered statement that you'd expect from a man who can deadpan a slow-roll on live TV.
"Regarding the pot I lost w KT vs Dylan’s 44: We have no history aside from playful banter last week," Adelstein explained. "I have no ill will towards him and he’s welcome to slow roll, needle, moon me mid-hand, etc. That said, he’s got an uphill battle if he thinks I’m affected by anything he does/says."
Come for the poker, stay for the drama
Since launching in August, the Hustler Casino Live stream has proved essential watching as much for its drama as the poker.
The stream has garnered headlines as much for its ethical chaos as the appearance of big-name poker players and high-stakes pots. The past few months have seen the court of public opinion have to rule on all sorts of misbehavior.
There was the time "Mayhem" had to physically intervene to keep Nick Vertucci and "Jerry" from getting into a fistfight. Then there was the time a player got banned over allegations of brazenly peeking at his opponent's cards hand after hand. And the time "Poker Bunny" misclicked all in with the best hand, raising questions about angle shooting.
All of this drama is a feature of the show, not a bug, and is completely unscripted — according to Ryan Feldman at least.
"Some ppl think some of the shenanigans on @HCLPokerShow are produced, cuz the things ppl say/do are so outlandish," he wrote on Twitter. "But the truth is this is just the reality of poker, especially in LA private games. We just happen to have great mics & cameras so you can experience it in high def."
And what an experience it is.
Featured image source: Twitter
