The Lodge Cardroom Partners With Prediction Market Kalshi

Online prediction market Kalshi is making moves into the poker space by partnering with The Lodge, which operates cardrooms in Round Rock and San Antonio within the State of Texas. This will lead to Kalshi users being able to put their money down on who they think will win or lose in any given streaming game hosted by The Lodge.

About the Lodge's Live Stream

Poker games at The Lodge's Round Rock location, north of Austin, are broadcast over The Lodge's YouTube channel (@TheLodgeLive). These live streams take place every week on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Each stream is generally between four and five hours long, and past streams are archived on YouTube.

The Lodge Card Club in Round Rock, Texas

The live streamed tables are usually cash games with varying stakes that occasionally reach as high as $200/$400 but are more regularly $5/$10. Major tournament action is sometimes featured as well. Doug Polk, Andrew Neeme, and Brad Owen are co-owners of The Lodge, and they are also frequent players on The Lodge Live. Previous streams have featured such notable individuals as Nik Airball, Daniel “Jungleman” Cates, and Bill Perkins.

About Kalshi's Prediction Market

Kalshi is a web-based prediction market that allows users to purchase or sell binary contracts. These are contracts with two possible outcomes. For example, “Will US gas prices be up this week?” with “Yes” and “No” being the two possible contracts. When a stated time period has elapsed, one contract is judged the winner and pays out at $1 each while the other is the loser and pays out $0.

While the contracts are active, users can buy and sell them almost like they were stocks on an exchange. The value that a given contract is trading at gives an indication as to how likely the community of users believes that outcome to be. In our example of gas prices rising, if the “Yes” contract is trading at $0.55, this implies an estimated chance of 55% that gas prices will go up.

In theory, these contracts could be related to just about anything – gas prices, car sales, hotel occupancy rates in Las Vegas, et cetera. In practice, the overwhelming majority of contracts listed at Kalshi involve the performance of athletes and sports teams.

Example of the Kinds of Sports Contracts Offered at Kalshi

What Can We Expect From This Partnership?

The Jan. 14 announcement on X from The Lodge informing the public of the Kalshi deal was very short on details. It only announced Kalshi as the room's “new predictive market partner” and offered users a special bonus on Kalshi via a referral link. It didn't go into details about what markets or contracts would be available or when we might see them appear.

However, there's another prediction market, Polymarket, that made a similar deal with Hustler Casino, which operates similar live streams of poker games. This partnership dates from mid-November 2025, and markets related to Hustler poker streams have already appeared and been resolved. By looking at these items, we can get a feel for what contracts Kalshi might offer for Lodge poker live streams.

Some of the Hustler Casino Live Listings on Polymarket

We can see that the events listed involve picking which of two players will have the highest winnings in the game, yes/no predictions on whether or not a single player will wind up ahead, and guessing whether or not the largest pot in a specified game will take place during a particular session. Other markets involved picking the biggest winner or loser of the night, over/under on a players VPIP percentage, and forecasting whether or not a named player will lose all their chips. We will probably encounter similar listings available at Kalshi for The Lodge poker streams.

Kalshi at Center of Controversy

If you're wondering how the Kalshi prediction market differs in any significant respect from traditional sports betting, you're not alone. It was only in January 2025 that Kalshi began offering sports contracts, and in just one year, it has attracted cease-and-desist letters from Nevada, New Jersey, Illinois, Maryland, Ohio, and Montana. These states contend that Kalshi is offering gambling services and thus is breaking the law by not obtaining licensure for such from the relevant state authorities. Kalshi, for its part, contends that because it's regulated at the federal level as a designated contract market by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), it does not need the approval of state officials.

This isn't the first time the prediction market has run into legal issues either. Its election contracts provoked the ire of its regulator, the CFTC, which attempted to prohibit it from accepting action on election results. However, a U.S. district court ruled against the CFTC in September 2024 and allowed Kalshi to continue to offer these contracts. An appellate court upheld this decision.

The Lodge's Business Model Also Iffy

It's not only Kalshi that has faced legal questions about its operations. The Lodge's entire existence is based upon a reading of Texas law that's by no means undisputed. You see, playing poker for real money in a live setting is unquestionably illegal according to the statutes of Texas. There's an exception for games that obey the following three stipulations:

(1) the actor engaged in gambling in a private place;

(2) no person received any economic benefit other than personal winnings; and

(3) except for the advantage of skill or luck, the risks of losing and the chances of winning were the same for all participants.

The third condition is easily satisfied by prohibiting cheating. The Lodge contends that the first is met by the fact that it's a membership cardroom and thus by definition a private place notwithstanding that “membership” is granted to pretty much anyone who pays a stipulated fee. Because it makes money from these fees and equipment rental charges, it doesn't have to charge rake, which the Lodge argues satisfies condition 2.

Though Texas authorities have not attempted to shut The Lodge down, other cardrooms in the state haven't been so fortunate. For example, Post Oak Poker Club and Prime Social Poker Room in Dallas were raided in May 2019, and the Copa Club in Westlake was busted in February 2025.

Interpretation and enforcement of the relevant Texas anti-gambling codes is at the discretion of local police and sheriff's offices. Fortunately for The Lodge and other Austin-area cardrooms, the authorities in this part of the state appear to have other priorities on their minds than targeting these businesses, and so they've been able to operate successfully for many years.

How Will This Impact Kalshi and The Lodge

Kalshi has evidently been eying the poker industry for a while as evidenced by the company's signing Daniel Negreanu as a brand ambassador in September 2025. The agreement with the Lodge will only help increase the firm's exposure in the field of poker.

For its part, the Lodge is basically a regional player in the world of live poker. Now that their games will be featured on Kalshi's multi-state platform, the Lodge can expect to draw new fans to the live streams even from residents in faraway states who have no intention of visiting the Round Rock location in person. Actually, some people in this group might be convinced by the thrilling poker action to make the trip even if it brings them thousands of miles away from home.

However, savvy industry observers have raised concerns about game integrity. It would be very difficult to prevent a player in the covered games from buying contracts on himself or herself and having his or her friends take positions on the outcome at the same time. This player could then throw the game or play in such a way that the results they want are achieved. The Lodge is serious about running fair games as evidenced by the recent ejection of two cheaters from the premises, but policing all the misdeeds that could potentially surround Kalshi contracts involving the games appears to be a tough task.

Get in the Action With Online Poker

If you live far away from the Lodge and have no interest in trading contracts online, then you can instead play for yourself with online poker. There are any number of reputable internet poker cardrooms available to Americans. It's not illegal to partake in the services of these platforms as you will realize if you consult this guide to online poker legalities in the United States.

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Feb. 3, 2026 – by Max Golden, Editor-in-Chief