Group in Austria Claim to Break Phil Laak Endurance Record

 In a way, it didn’t take very much time at all. In another way, it took more time than most poker players could possibly imagine. Either way you look at it, a group of players in Kufstein, Austria claim to have flown well past the record recently set by Phil Laak to set a new mark in poker endurance.

Most poker players are probably now familiar with Phil “The Unabomber” Laak’s Guinness World Record, set just a couple weeks ago. At the time, Laak played what can only be described as a monster session – logging 115 consecutive hours of $10/$20 no-limit hold’em at the Bellagio.

However, there are now reports that a group of European poker players who quickly set out to break this mark have gone well past Lack’s time, clocking a session that went on for an incredible 135 hours: just over five and a half straight days of poker.

It appears that a number of players were involved in keeping the game going, but that only three stuck around for the entire session: Nuran Karasu, Stephan Reischl, and Jens Tölle. The entire game was broadcast online using a special RFID-equipped table, allowing viewers to see the hole cards of all players involved.

However, these very same conditions – in part used to verify their accomplishment – have led many observers to wonder whether or not Karasu, Reischel and Tölle have really broken Laak’s record, at least in any significant sense. The game was played in a hotel room in Kufstein, not in a casino or poker room, greatly decreasing the pressure on them and making it easier to control the environment. It’s also unclear what (if any) stakes were being played for in their game. In contrast, Laak played in a relatively high-stakes game in one of the world’s busiest poker rooms, and was limited to five-minute breaks once an hour.  

Regardless of how the public feels about the accomplishment, it will likely be some time before we know whether or not Guinness will accept the record into their books. Guinness has a rather extensive process that they use to confirm records, beginning with four to six weeks of review and requiring a large body of evidence to be submitted before final acceptance of the record is granted.