Man plays poker for almost 80 hours, non-stop. A new world record?

Phil Laak played the game for over 79 consecutive hours at the Bellagio Hotel-Casino, beating the official Guinness record of 72 hours, 2 minutes set in Connecticut in 2004, AFP reports.

He also surpassed Paul Zimbler's 78 hour, 45 minute unofficial effort recorded last September in London, and pledged to continue until early this morning, local time, to reach a total of 90 hours.

Laak said: "There've been a few times where I realised if I didn't stand up I wouldn't be able to keep going. I've been stretching a lot. I'm the stretchmaster. It helped me through."

Talking earlier about the decision to play to a $10/$20 no-limit game, Laak told CardPlayer: "If I start to melt down, I don't want to lose too much of my net worth.

"The trick to staying awake is to be active with your brain. So I plan on playing my regular game the whole way."

Laak was allowed a five minute break every hour and the poker star banked his time as allowed for yoga sessions and showers.


/DigitalSpy/