Poker player and content creator Abby Merk found herself at the center of an online storm this week after a livestreamed hand from The Lodge Card Club in Texas went viral.
Playing a $1/2 cash game, Merk raised to $50 from the hijack before the cutoff 3-bet to $150. The under-the-gun player — a woman named Susan, who had limped — made the call, and Merk 4-bet shoved for $821. The cutoff folded and Susan stopped to think.
“Do you want action?” she asked Merk, as she considered calling.
“Not really,” answered Merk, a little too honestly. She had 
, an underdog to Susan’s 
.
Susan called and the pair agreed to run it twice, with Merk saying, “I feel really weird about that call, I’m not gonna lie.”
Neither board came to her rescue and Merk lost her stack, asking “What’s the minimum I can buy in for? I don’t really want to play anymore.”
You can watch the hand below, as shared by the WPT.
Merk gets Murked
Video of the hand quickly racked up millions of views, with Merk’s reaction drawing a wave of criticism, largely that she was acting petulantly and had no reason to feel aggrieved or level criticism of her own at her opponent.
Many comments also rounded on Merk for being ‘obnoxious’, ‘clueless’ and a ‘bully’. Others, such as a post from pro player Matt Berkey, expressed sympathy for Susan due to Merk's 'ridiculous reaction to a self-inflicted wound'.
As far as the rules of the game go, in a heads-up cash game pot the two players involved are permitted to discuss their hands, including asking questions such as that posed by Susan.
There is no requirement to be honest about your holdings and, besides, whether or not you've already invested money in the pot (as Susan had at the time), there is no obligation to fold if a friendly player suggests they want you to.
Merk was asked a question about her hand in a heads-up situation, gave an answer and then obviously and immediately regretted it. Did she mistake the level of ‘friendliness’ in a friendly game, or was she just annoyed at herself for falling into a basic speech play trap?
Whatever the answer, the online pile-on that soon followed was a disproportionate response.
As many prominent women in poker will no doubt attest, social media can be a brutal place. Fellow poker player, comedian and content creator Caitlin Comeskey is someone who came close to torching her social media this week for this reason, posting on X: ‘Being one of the most prominent women in poker in 2026 is fucking torture. You win. F*ck y’all. I quit.’
Merk has responded to the avalanche of criticism in a post on Instagram.
“The Internet is once again crucifying me for a situation that realistically just needs a bit more context,” she begins. “Susan and I have played together for a long time now, and have had many friendly conversations at the table. But more than that, I thought we were friends — or, at least, closer friends than she may have thought.”
Merk goes on to say that when Susan asked her the question about her hand, she herself was in ‘friend mode’ and assumed it was a transparent question that she could answer more-or-less honestly.
“Of course, this sounds a bit ridiculous in a competitive context, but in fact this is very common between friends in a friendly game.”
This raises a couple of questions, the first of which is: is soft-playing against someone you’re friendly with acceptable? Most would probably suggest otherwise. Deliberately going easy on one opponent and not others is not strictly playing fair.
Collusion is a dirty word in poker, but it’s a crime of degrees. This was, at least by Merk’s account, a ‘friendly game’ — we’ve probably all seen friends letting each other off the hook in relaxed games from time to time. It’s not right, but it’s far from the crime of the century. And if Merk expected it, she didn't get it.
Susan addressed this in a post of her own, saying that although Merk and her have had friendly conversations, "What's more important is game integrity. If I folded as Abby asked because we are friends, that would be collusion. We are in a multi-way pot where Abby's 4-bet got the third player to fold preflop. This doesn't mean I have to call, but I owe the player, the game and myself a fair decision."
Susan also noted that Merk's recounting of the story in her post was told honestly.
The other question is: was Merk berating or bullying her opponent, or was she more annoyed at herself? Was rebuying for the minimum a dig at Susan and the quality of the game, or of their relationship, or was there another reason?
“I don’t think there was anything technically wrong with what Susan did,” Merk clarifies in her Instagram post. “In the moment, I’ll be honest, I was tilted. I’m a human being with emotions about the hand… Because I don’t want to risk a lot of money in this state of mind, I rebuy for $60.”
That’s poker
Speaking about the contents of your hand at the table is a situation wrought with difficulty. The situation brings to mind the famous clip of Phil Hellmuth vs Antanas ‘Tony G’ Guoga in The Big Game well over a decade ago.
In that hand — available below (it’s worth a watch) — Guoga claims not to have looked at his cards before raising Hellmuth’s open, and the latter calls with 
. But Guoga did look, as the cameras clearly show, and knew he had 
.
They get the chips all-in, and when the hands are revealed, Hellmuth can’t believe it. “You lied!”
“Of course I lied!” Guoga replies with a grin, “It’s poker, Phil!”
The comparison was not lost on Merk herself, who ends her post with the following.
“When the cameras were off, immediately after the stream, Susan and I talked privately and resolved this entire thing. We both made it clear that there are no hard feelings between us at all, because after all, ‘That’s poker, Phil’.”
EDIT: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Abby Merk was an ambassador for BetMGM Poker.
