Most people mark their 44th birthday with dinner and a cake. Martin Hummel marked his with 76 consecutive hours of online poker, smashing the world record for the longest online poker session by more than a full day.
The Dutch streamer, known on Twitch as ppmh00, started his attempt on Friday, August 14, with a stated goal of 72 hours. The finish line was deliberately placed at 10:00 a.m. on August 17, the exact moment he turned 44. He hit the target. Then, in the most poker move imaginable, he decided the session was running good and fired another four hours before finally standing up at 76.
The Record He Came Back For
This wasn't a random stunt. It was a reclamation. Hummel set the original Guinness World Record in 2021 with a 48-hour session, a mark that Spain's Sergio García edged out by a single hour in 2023. Losing your world record by 60 minutes is the kind of thing that apparently sits with a man. Three years later, Hummel didn't just take it back. He beat García's 49-hour mark by 27 hours, roughly the equivalent of winning a photo finish by three furlongs.
Online poker has always had a strange love affair with volume records. Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier once fired 62 sit & gos in a single hour back in 2009. Randy "nanonoko" Lew put in 14,548 cash game hands over eight hours in 2012 and somehow booked a profit. But the endurance record is its own beast. Multi-tabling fast is a skill. Staying upright and coherent at a poker table for three straight days is a different kind of madness.
What 76 Hours Actually Looked Like
The full attempt streamed live on Hummel's ppmh00 Twitch channel across three broadcasts, which remain available and include the pre-marathon prep. His table diet on GGPoker: MTTs, Rush & Cash, and Mystery Battle Royale.
The tournament ledger reads like a very long, very normal session stretched across a weekend. Hummel entered 65 MTTs and cashed 16 of them, closing one out with a win after a three-way deal. Total damage: around €900 in buy-ins against roughly €1,000 in returns. A profitable 76-hour grind, if only barely, which any tournament player will tell you is a better outcome than most 76-hour stretches produce.
Guinness World Records requires continuous documentation, so witnesses rotated in four-hour shifts throughout the attempt to verify every hour of play. Guinness still has to formally review the evidence before the record becomes official, so García technically remains the listed record holder for now. Given that Hummel's 2021 attempt survived a months-long verification slog before approval, expect the paperwork to take a while.
The stream also pulled in €600 in viewer donations for an animal shelter, with the fundraising benefiting Dutch animal charity Stichting DierenLot.
The Birthday Marathon Guy
Here's the detail that elevates this from stunt to lifestyle: Hummel has done this before, and not just in poker. In 2023 he dealt roulette for 71 hours and 25 minutes straight, another Guinness-recognized record. That one was also timed to his birthday. He turned 41 somewhere near the end of the shift.
So the pattern is established. Every few years, as his birthday approaches, Martin Hummel looks at a casino-related activity and asks how long a human being can physically do it. The rest of us should probably just be grateful he plays poker instead of, say, air traffic control.
Whether anyone comes for the 76-hour mark is an open question. García needed only one extra hour to take the old record. Beating this one means committing to more than three days at the tables just to tie. That's not a record attempt. That's a hostage situation you volunteer for.
