2025’s Most Brutal Poker Bustouts: Coolers, Quads and Impossible Folds

Event: WSOP Main Event
Hand: A♠ A♦ vs 7♥ 7♦
Board: A♣ 7♣ 5♣ 7♠ 4♦
Pot: 66,975
Perhaps the most shocking bustout, and sitting at almost 5 million views on Youtube, is Vanessa Selbst’s bust out to Gaëlle Baumann’s quad 7s. 

Selbst flopped top set, made aces full on the turn, and faced a player with almost no value combos. Baumann held the one realistic 77 combination in the deck. The turn brought her quads. The action slowed as she trapped.

Selbst fired 16,200 on the river. Baumann snap called. The table heard the line that became instantly memorable, and sent the comment section into an uproar: “You have quads? Oh my God… I wanted to fold.”

Below, the comments on the viral video repeatedly called this an unavoidable cooler. 

The standard view was that no pro folds aces full in a three-bet pot with one available combo beating them. Many noted that even recognising the hand as a possible fold spot showed high-level awareness, while other spectators called it out as damage control.

Phillip Hellmuth III vs Noah Schwartz at WPT® Bay 101 Shooting Star (Oct 24, 2025, Day 1A)

Event: WSOP 2025 Day 1A
Hand: A♥ A♦ vs K♠ K♥
Board: 10♠ 9♥ 8♦ 6♦ K♣

Three players limped for 1,300. 

Hellmuth III made it 7,000. Schwartz four-bet to 19,000. 

Hellmuth shoved for 115,900. Schwartz tanked and called. The river brought a king. The pot moved to Schwartz, who ended Day 1 with 262,500 and won the Gold Hand of the Day.

Typically, this hand is a standard setup, as Aces and kings always play for stacks here.

Phil Hellmuth III, poker hall of famer Phil Hellmuth's son

Lauren Hazelgreen — First Bustout of the WSOP Main Event

Event: WSOP Main Event Day 1A

Hand: A♠ J♠ vs 10♠ 10♥

Board: 10♣ J♣ 4♦ 6♠ A♥

The first elimination of the 2025 Main Event came forty-five minutes after cards hit the air. Hazelgreen flopped top pair in a squeezed four-way pot. 

Historically, Day 1 bustouts occur at an average rate of one every six minutes, but the first elimination typically happens between 55 and 95 minutes into play. Hazelgreen’s 45-minute exit was unusually early by Main Event standards.

Her continuation bet met a check-raise. She shoved. The call came fast. The turn changed nothing. The river only confirmed the bust.

Gabriel Garagnani moved to 128,000 after the hand, up from a 60,000 start. Hazelgreen, a Wawa general manager from New Jersey, became the first player out of the field.

Triple Bust on the WSOP Main Event Bubble

Event: WSOP Main Event Day 4

Prize Twist: Seat into the $25,000 WSOP Paradise Super Main Event

Eliminated: Matthew Frankland, Sachin Joshi, Marco Dickner

Three players busted on the same hand across two tables. All were technically eliminated on the bubble. Tournament rules required a flip for the $25K seat. Just for context, the chance of this happening is estimated at around 0.01%. 

Sachin Joshi was forced all-in for half a small blind with 9♣ 6♣ and lost to K♦ 6♦. Matthew Frankland flopped top pair into an overpair at another table. Dickner called with 5♥ 3♥ for less than a big blind and ran into kings.

The flip determined the final result. Frankland held Kx 4♥. Joshi had 10x 2x. Dickner had 9x 9x. The board ran 5x 6x 3x 3x 2x. Frankland made a straight and won the seat.

Adam Rude then busted in 1,463rd. He became the true bubble. He received no payout or seat.

For the record, Triple bustouts on the Main Event bubble are extremely rare. Before 2025, only two multi-player bubble eliminations had been recorded in the event’s 50-plus year history, and neither forced a three-way flip for a secondary prize.

Quads in a Six-Bet Pot: Locquet’s 1-in-400 Runout

Event: WSOP Main Event Day 1D

Hand: A♥ A♦ vs 9♣ 9♦

Pot: 535 big blinds

Board: 9♠ 4♥ 3♣ 9♥ X

This was one of the largest pots of the entire WSOP Main Event. 

Bleznick six-bet with aces. Locquet called for roughly a third of his stack with nines. The call drew immediate criticism from the community due to stack depth, implied odds, and the low EV of calling a six-bet with a medium pocket pair.

The flop brought top set for Locquet. The turn delivered quads. Bleznick was dead on the turn and labelled it the worst beat of his summer.

The reaction split. Some viewers called the preflop call the worst they had seen at this depth. Others joked that quads in a six-bet pot meant “99 is now in our five-bet ranges.”

Preflop, pocket nines realize a set by the river roughly 18-19% of the time, but making quads is only 0.82% (~1 in 122), making Locquet’s exact runout a 1-in-400 outcome.

At the preflop, Hellmuth was sitting with pocket queens, while Gottlieb had pocket aces on his side. He laid down a cool $3,500 pre flop, which was raised to $12,000 in true Hellmuth fashion, which Gottlieb snapped back with $31,500, prompting Hellmuth to go all in.

As the flop of 10♦ J♣ 10♣ appeared, Hellmuth did not appear to be thrilled. The turn revealing an 8♣ did little to improve things, and the 6♣ prompted Hellmuth to swing out of his chair, informing the table of his exit with an “I quit, that was fun”. 

The audience reacted with humour, calling it the purest version of his classic line, “He called me with pocket aces, honey.” 

Airball vs Mariano Grandoli

Show: Hustler Casino Live

Stakes: $50/$100

Hand: Q♠ Q♦ vs 9♣ 9♥

Pot: 188,850

Board: 8♠ 9♦ 5♠ J♥ 2♦

In a bustout hand uploaded to the WPT Instagram yesterday, we saw Mariano Grandoli, a well known bluffer and Youtuber, flopping a set. 

He sized 24,000 on the turn to set up a clean river shove. The river paired nothing. Mariano jammed. Airball called and went all in with queens.

Naturally, he busted out, and sent the comments sections into a frenzy.

The debate centred on whether folding queens is reasonable against a player with Mariano’s bluff frequency. Some argued the line always represents a made straight or set. 

Others saw it as a high-variance cash-game decision where queens remain too strong to fold.

Summary

These hands show how much of tournament life hinges on rare runouts. Several players lost with top set, full houses or premium pairs. 

To cap it off, in many cases, the correct play still produced elimination. The technical breakdowns show that:

• Strong ranges met stronger ones
• Quads appeared in multiple key pots
• Deep-stack six-bet environments produced spots with almost no escape routes
• Bubble formats added unique pressure

The main lesson for players is simple. Strong fundamentals reduce mistakes. They do not remove risk. 

The 2025 season so far has demonstrated a hard fact: fundamentals protect your decisions, not your fate. Skill decides how you play a hand. Variance decides whether you survive it.