Nick Airball

His real name is Nikhil Arkot, born in Oregon to a family of Indian immigrants. He picked up the nickname "Airball" during a TV cash game after a string of failed bluffs, when a commentator joked something along the lines of "this guy is just airballing everything" — airball being basketball slang for a shot that misses everything, rim included. After graduating from New York University in 2018, Airball took a job as an investment banker at a boutique bank. At the same time, he got seriously into poker and started showing up more and more in private games.

By the time he left banking in 2020, Nick had already built a solid bankroll — by his own account, he'd won roughly $500,000 while still working. He quit the bank job to focus on poker full-time. Things went his way, and he quickly established himself at the high-stakes tables, despite a fairly loose approach to bankroll management. He's said before that a couple of times at the Hustler table, 90% of his entire net worth was sitting in front of him.

Nick made his Hustler Casino Live debut in 2022. He started at relatively modest stakes but quickly moved up to 100/200 and beyond. Along the way, Airball became one of the show's most talked-about players thanks to his loose style, provocations, and constant table talk. In his first year on the show, he won more than $1 million, making him one of the biggest winners in HCL history.

2023 turned out to be Nick's busiest — and roughest — year professionally. In April, after a public back-and-forth with Matt Berkey, the two played a heads-up match, and Nick lost $1 million. Then, in December, a marked-cards scandal broke out involving a private game against Ye Shen. Nick said publicly that he'd just learned someone he'd considered a close friend had cheated him out of $1 million in a private game, and that he was hurt and upset, with more details to follow. Ye Shen never admitted any wrongdoing and largely disappeared from public view after that.

Things started looking up for Nick from 2024 onward. He kept winning on shows like Hustler Casino Live and High Stakes Poker, and in 2025 became a co-owner of The Lodge Card Club in Texas. That same year, he signed on as a CoinPoker ambassador and picked up his best live MTT cash to date — a 14th-place finish in the $100,000 Pot-Limit Omaha High Roller at WSOP 2025 for $209,457. As of early 2026, Nick remains active at the high-stakes tables and one of the most recognizable faces on poker streams, thanks to his aggressive style and blunt personality.