While most people enjoyed a long holiday weekend, GGPoker ambassador Kevin Martin was locked in front of the camera, grinding online poker in a self-imposed endurance test known as the War Room Challenge. The stakes weren’t just financial. If Martin finished the weekend in the red, he promised to shave his head on stream.
Over a punishing 60-hour stretch, Martin fired nearly $30,000 in tournament buy-ins, streaming the entire experience live. That included not only the grind itself, but also the brief stretches of sleep squeezed in between sessions.
High Stakes, Higher Pressure
The challenge may sound straightforward, but Martin didn’t take the easy route. Rather than dropping into soft, low-stakes fields, he deliberately registered for tougher tournaments with higher buy-ins, testing himself against strong opposition. With his hair on the line, the pressure went well beyond the usual swings of online poker.
The early hours were rough. Within the first 11 hours, Martin was down close to $5,000, though plenty of poker still remained. Momentum shifted on Sunday when he finished third in the $1,050 High Rollers Sunday Closer for $9,949, his biggest score of the challenge and a crucial lifeline.
As the clock ticked down with roughly four hours remaining, the numbers were uncomfortably close. Martin had spent $29,171 on buy-ins and cashed for $26,211, leaving him technically in the red and dangerously close to losing his hair.
Rakeback Changes Everything
That’s when an accounting wrinkle entered the story. Throughout the challenge, Martin and his team meticulously tracked not only buy-ins and cashes, but also rakeback earned along the way. Once the $3,065 in rakeback was added to the ledger, Martin squeaked into the black by just $11.
He went on to seal the weekend with a $613 win in a $54 Bounty Hunters event, but the reality was clear: without rakeback, the clippers almost certainly would have come out.
Which raises the inevitable question. Should rakeback count?
Fair Play or Creative Accounting?
Since this was a personal challenge with no formal rulebook, Martin ultimately set his own criteria. Still, in most poker challenges and end-of-year profit breakdowns, rakeback is usually tracked separately from winnings and losses, not folded directly into profit totals.
By that standard, Martin might have technically lost the challenge. By his own rules, though, he survived—and kept his hair.
So what’s the verdict? Did rakeback save Kevin Martin fair and square, or should the War Room Challenge have ended with a freshly shaved head?
