If you watch poker streams, such as The Lodge Live on YouTube, you may have seen players participating in The Nit Game.
You might look over at the feature table and wonder why Brad Owen, Andrew Neeme, or Doug Polk has a red “NIT” button in front of them, while some other competitors at the table don’t have that red “NIT” button.
The Nit Game, formerly known as The Stand Up Game, is a Lodge tradition in full effect and can break out at any time.
Let’s take a look at the rules of the The Nit Game.
Nit Game Rules
Every player starts with a red NIT button in front of them – The poker game then plays out under the normal rules of the table, whether the game is No-Limit Hold’em or PLO.
You keep your NIT button until you win a hand – Tight players beware – The Nit Game doesn’t favor nitty play (as the name suggests). Once you have a NIT button, you can only get rid of it when you win a hand.
The last player with their NIT button pays the price – Before the Nit Game begins, the players at the table agree to an amount that the last player with a button will pay to all other players at the end of the game. The unlucky player that end up as the last one with a NIT button must pay this toll to all other competitors, and at that point the game resumes as normal.
Example Hand From The Lodge
You can check out an edition of The Nit Game that took place at the Lodge featured table earlier this year. Doug Polk is among the players that participate in this $200/$400 cash game.
Click here to skip to the beginning of The Nit Game (clip begins at 5:36:28).
This chapter of the Nit Game goes on for over a half-hour, and Lodge the last two players remaining are Keith Tilston and Robbi Jade-Lew. You’ll have to watch to see which of the two players is the last to have a NIT button in front of them.
Per the terms of that agreement, that last player pays a whopping $1,000 to every other player at the table. The game then resumes as normal.
