Poker Dealer Travis Stich Destroys Poker Chip Stacking World Record

Breaking a world record is a great feat, but smashing the previous best to smithereens is something else, and that’s what Travis Stich managed last week when he built a tower from 340 poker chips, destroying the previous best of 240...

Stich, a professional poker dealer from Twin Lakes, Minnesota, was looking to beat the record set by Max Machlin back in 2010 and decided to livestream the entire attempt on TwitchTV.

He explained that the chips had to be verified by the Guinness World Record team, each standard $1 casino chip weighing between 8.5 and 13.5 grams.

Curiously, the prelude to Travis’ big stack record attempt saw a number of local kids involved, first practicing ‘target card-throwing’ – another of Stich’s specialties – and then starting off the tower that would smash the existing world record.

“Something like this doesn’t require an incredible amount of practice,” Stich told TwinCitiesLive reporter, Kristen Haubrich, midway through his effort, though his card-throwing world record is a different story.

That saw him achieve 54 hits on target back in February of this year, answering the question as to how he could score more than a standard deck of cards with the simple:

“Achieved 54 by making all 52 from the first deck and then 2 more from a second deck before I missed a card.”

Back at the chip-stacking, and Travis powered his way past the previous best of 240, setting his sights on 300...and not stopping when he reached that target either.

You can see what happened when the new poker chip tower world record came crashing down at 1:04 in the Twitch stream below.

If Stich wants to set his sights on yet more poker world records, he could aim for the most chips stacked in one minute, which currently stands at 75, held by Italian serial record breaker, Silvio Sabba.

The 30-second record belongs to David Rush, who broke the previous best of 42 to set a new world-best target of 48, as seen below...

However, it’s back to Sabba and his fellow countryman, Rocco Mercurio, for the remarkable joint record of the most poker chips balanced on one finger – an unimaginable 200!