Jordan Maynard dealt the hand and raised the stakes, but Daniel Balchin played the winning hand for Caversham to win its third consecutive Lovelock Relay senior men's title at the University Oval on Saturday.
Maynard, Peter Meffan, Shaun Burgess, Ben Anderson, Hayden Donnelly and Balchin were unanimous in praise for each other's performance.
They put the club's victory down to a good team effort, each member running out of their skins.
Maynard, a national 1500m finalist in March, wasted little time in splitting the field up in the first leg of the 6 x 1500m event.
It was a fast and furious pace in the first leg of the 75th running of an event honouring Jack Lovelock's victory in the 1500m final at the 1936 Olympic Games.
No time was wasted on tactics as Maynard blew the field apart, and only Andrew Davidson (Hill City-University) and James List (Ariki) were able to limit time deficits at the first change.
But Callan Moody, Nathan Baxter and Dave Catherwood turned up the heat to give their Ariki team a handy 10sec lead over defending champion Caversham heading into the penultimate leg.
Hill City-University found the pace a little too hot to handle and drifted a further 20sec back.
Donnelly reduced the deficit for Caversham in a thrilling fifth leg that saw Zach Butler dig deep into his reserves to maintain a split-second advantage over Caversham team at the final change, setting up a classic battle between middle distance champions Daniel Balchin and Dougal Thorburn.
Initially, Thorburn used a superior leg speed to gain an advantage over the first of the four laps. But Balchin's superior stride and a cool head brought him up to Thorburn's shoulder.
They matched it stride for stride until Balchin kicked with a blistering turn of speed 200m out that Thorburn could not counter.
Balchin brought his team home victorious amid a rowdy cheer in 25min 5sec, with Thorburn leading Ariki in for second place, 6sec behind, and Hill City-University third in 25min 49sec.
Balchin, the only remaining member of Caversham's winning team from two years ago, rated Saturday's victory as the most satisfying of the hat trick.
"There weren't any favourites, going into it. This was anybody's race."
He was reluctant to single out any member of his team, but gave special mention to Donnelly's run on the penultimate leg.
"Hayden's run put us right back in the game again," Balchin said.
Donnelly, Meffan and Balchin are the survivors from last year's victorious Caversham team.
Fastest time honours were as hard to separate as the racing itself.
Moody took the honours by just 0.3sec, being clocked at 4min 4.2sec.
Balchin was second-fastest on 4min 4.5sec and third-fastest time was shared by Baxter and Maynard at 4min 9sec.
The race for the senior women's 4 x 1500m trophy proved a walkover for the Hill City-University team of Christina Taylor, Bella Bloomfield, Shireen Crumpton and Shauna Pali, who finished in a time of 21min 2sec. Ariki was second in 25min 41sec.
There were some exceptional performances in the high school girls grade, where the Ariki team of Caitlin O'Brien, Sian English, Hannah English and Anna Keen finished in 20min 46sec, a time 18sec quicker than the senior grade.
