Nik Airball and Ethan ‘Rampage’ Yau Join Co-Owners of Lodge Card Club

The Lodge Card Club now has two locations in Round Rock and San Antonio, Texas. Yesterday, three-time WSOP bracelet winner and YouTube sensation Doug Polk announced two new investors in the brand as Nikhil ‘Nik Airball’ Arcot and Ethan ‘Rampage’ Yau both joined the party. Each player has huge appeal to poker fans… for very different reasons.

Polk Announces Exciting Additions to Lodge Team

“These are two of the largest personalities in poker today.” ~ Doug Polk

In an entertaining announcement video, Doug Polk welcomed two new investors to The Lodge Card Club yesterday. Nikhil ‘Nik Airball’ Arcot and Ethan ‘Rampage’ Yau are two wildly different characters to anyone on the Lodge board right now, with Polk, Brad Owen and Andrew Neeme fulfilling the ‘goody’ team in Polk’s own words.

“I think these two men have a playing style that will fit in nicely with the Lodge Card Club ownership group,” Polk quipped, before leading into a video of him losing money at the felt. “However you want to chop it up, these are two of the largest personalities in poker today.”

In a hilarious video, Polk teased ClubWPT Gold, berating the time it takes for one hand to end and another to start, as well as the one table feature. In fact, Polk was in full troll mode for most of the announcement video, happy to lambast both of his new co-owners about being scammed or trashing other players at the felt.

Take a look at the announcement video in full here:

Two Locations to Three?

The Lodge Card Club are currently based in two locations, with the primary base in the Austin town of Round Rock joined by the second venue in San Antonio. Polk, Neeme, and Owen have been in charge since the start of 2022 but with Airball and Yau now on board, predicting an increase in locations is not rocket science. Polk and his new five-man team will be keen to grow to three locations as soon as possible and as he says on the video, it’s not as if players supporting their endeavours are backing a huge corporation. Rather, they are adding support to five of their fellow players.

The impact of live-streaming is all over this announcement, with Airball’s obvious appeal from playing award-winning poker content on Hustler Casino Live added to his caustic personality at the felt two reasons to welcome him on board. As Polk described, poker has plenty of goodies and needs baddies too to offset the balance. ‘Airball’ certainly provides the latter in that respect.

The other new partner of The Lodge Card Club, Ethan Yau, who goes by the online moniker ‘Rampage’ may well be an even more exciting addition, with his YouTube presence and Global Poker Award scooping personality and content videos transferrable assets to The Lodge’s own livestream. Bringing Rampage into The Lodge streams ‘takes out the middle man’ to some degree, as Yau always commands big numbers when he’s appeared on their stream in the past; now he’s directly profiting from his appeal.

Exciting Games to Come

“What he brings to poker is compelling.”

Both of Polk’s newest business partners are going to be big in making the upcoming tournaments and cash games at The Lodge even bigger than ever.

“One of the things I respect about both these guys is that they understand how the content game works,” Polk described and he’s not wrong. Win or lose, both Airball and Yau are immensely watchable, and are sure to be a smash hit with Lodge fans in the coming weeks.

“One of the things I like about [‘Airball’] is that he tries to make the game interesting, and what he brings to poker is compelling,” Polk said, adding that Yau’s appeal to Lodge followers had been clear from the early days of their livestreaming arm, when ‘Rampage’ brought in big numbers whenever he played on the stream.

With two venues in Texas already, Polk’s attempts to grow the number of locations under The Lodge’s name took a minor hit last year when, despite appealing directly to those involved in the decision-making process, he hit a brick wall in the town of Farmers Branch. All this did, however, was highlight Polk’s good intentions in the area and with more revenue likely to arrive via live-streaming and in-club rake, it seems only a matter of time before more Lodge Card Clubs arrive.

One thing is for sure – with Airball and Rampage on the team, things will only get more exciting at The Lodge, both on and off the felt.

Headline photography by Omar Sader and Hayley Hochstetler.