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Digital Social Hour
Inside the Rise of Poker Streams: Big Wins & Big Risks | Ryan Feldman DSH #1354
00:41:38
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- [00:00]
A
So he was an underdog, but just did it anyway for fun to gamble with Neymar. So he puts another fifty thousand, another hundred thousand, and he just keeps gambling until he's out of money. And Neymar wins every single time. Keating never won on any of those extra river cards, and Neymar ends up winning something like 300,000 off of Keating in one hand.
- [00:19]
B
A straight degeneracy.
- [00:20]
A
Yeah, it really was.
- [00:27]
B
All right, guys, we got Ryan here today. How's it going, man?
- [00:30]
A
Good, thanks for having me.
- [00:31]
B
Yeah, I've been playing a lot of poker lately.
- [00:32]
A
I have been. I been working a lot, but I've also been playing poker probably too much. I pretty much play either like live or online and with like, a friend group almost every night.
- [00:46]
B
So how's the P L this year?
- [00:49]
A
Good question. Not good, actually, to be honest with you. My last like six months have been like the worst ever for me, so.
- [00:55]
B
Damn, you're on a bad street.
- [00:56]
A
Yeah, it's actually, actually been terrible.
- [00:58]
B
What do you think's causing that?
- [01:03]
A
I mean, probably a few factors.
- [01:07]
One probably, probably bluffing too much and hero calling too much, which I think is the probably number one, like if you're a decent player, if you know the fundamentals, if you know how to play, if you're experienced, I think that's like the number one factor.
- [01:24]
That can, like, cause big losses or can cause downswings. A lot of variants is.
- [01:32]
Trying to bluff too much or, or hero call too much, like make a big call on the river. So I think those are probably the biggest things for me. And then after that, it's just like always. So, like, whenever I have a bad session or a bad run, I'll try to.
- [01:52]
I'll try to like, self evaluate, right? And say, like, what can I do better? Or what am I doing wrong? What am I doing poorly now that I've done differently in the past when I've been winning. So sometimes it could be, it could be just playing better pre flop. Also it could be like, you know.
- [02:13]
Trying to like three bet too much pre flop or cold calling pre flop. Like just playing too many hands in big pots pre flop that end up getting me into trouble later in the hand, so.
- [02:27]
B
Makes sense.
- [02:29]
A
Yeah. I think I've always been good at like, being self aware and like being able to evaluate after a session or after a run and, and, and say, like, how do I fix this? What can I do different? But you know, knowing and doing are two different things. So sometimes in the moment you get into a big spot and you know, you just can't help yourself and you just like try to run a big bluff and it doesn't work.
- [02:50]
B
You feel like you do that partially because of content too. Like you want to get a good clip out of it.
- [02:54]
A
On the show, yes. But like in private, if I'm playing like online with friends, like there's no content to be had, so then it's just stupid. But yeah, on the show, yes. You know, I, I've. It's my own show. I get to pick when I get to play and not play. Um, I don't play a whole lot, but when I do play, it's in some of the bigger games. And so because I get to pick my own lineups and play when I want, you would think that I would do like pretty well in the show, right? Like, if the game's too tough, I just don't have to play. But yet that has definitely been a thing in my head over the years when I play on my show. Whether it's like conscious or subconscious is, you know, some people say that like, are you just doing that to try to like make highlights or make clips? And I feel like that is in the back of my mind. Right. Like, you know, I'm like, man, this would be a sick bluff or this would be a sick hero call if I'm right, you know, and then I'm just wrong and I just lose $100,000. And I'm like, why did I do that? That's real money. That's why.
- [03:46]
B
When I see guys like Nick Arabal playing on the show, I'm like, does he play like that off camera too? Yeah, I mean, yeah.
- [03:51]
A
I mean, I think it happens not for everyone, but for a lot of people where, especially if you play in like bigger games elsewhere or private games elsewhere, like neck airball does, or like I've played, you know, in plenty of other games elsewhere, like you. Alan Keating is another example. Like he does it where he'll make like crazy plays on the show because he plays bigger elsewhere. And it's like if you're wrong and you lose, you know, I guess the, it just, you make a big highlight out of it and it goes viral and at least you have that even though you lost the money. There was a hand, semi famous hand that I played on my show couple years ago against Nick Airball where I played a five bet pot against him and he flopped a straight flush. Damn. And I bluffed it off my whole stack into him for like a four hundred and something thousand dollars. Pot. And it was probably to date, the dumbest hand I've ever played in my life.
- [04:46]
Especially tilting that it went to Nick Airball, because then I have to like, watch him, you know, celebrate and talk about it a million times after that. And the clip went kind of viral. But, you know, that's pretty tilting.
- [05:00]
C
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- [06:07]
A
Going for a big bluff and they literally have a straight flush. It's just like, it's embarrassing. Your friends see it, your family sees it, people talk about it forever. It's. And that was one where I was like, man, like, if he somehow folds the river here, like this would be a sick bluff. And then he puts the one chip in and says, straight flush. And I'm like, what do I.
- [06:27]
B
You didn't even show your cards.
- [06:28]
A
Did you know, I tried to like joke for a second and pretend like I had a better hand than I had, but it was just embarrassing, you know, and it's like there's thousands of people watching and you know, plenty more that are watching later. The clip ends up getting hundreds of thousands of views potentially. And, you know, people will come up to me randomly over time and say like, oh, I saw that hand you played against Nick Airball where you had a straight flush. Like that was dumb.
- [06:53]
B
Yeah. You know, I feel, was that the biggest hand you've ever played in?
- [06:56]
A
Personally, no, but it's up there. It's like one of the top 10 biggest pots I've played, I think, or at least on the show. So. Yeah, that, that one hurts.
- [07:06]
B
Geez. Are you up or down on the show?
- [07:08]
A
I'm down a lot. I'm down like, I'm down like, like close or. Yeah, like close to a million.
- [07:13]
B
Holy crap.
- [07:13]
A
Yeah.
- [07:14]
B
That's crazy.
- [07:15]
A
Yeah, it's terrible. It's my own show. I should be winning.
- [07:17]
B
I wonder if Doug. Doug Polk's his name, right? If he's up on his show too.
- [07:21]
A
He's got to be up. He had, I remember he had one really big win on his show. I mean, and Doug's also like a world class player. He doesn't play as much now as he did during his prime. And he definitely does some things, I'm sure on his show for entertainment value. Tries to like, play extra hands because he understands how to be good for the game. But he's a great player and he knows how to win. And, and yeah, he has a lot of money, but I, I'm pretty sure he's winning on his show.
- [07:50]
B
Yeah. Who's the best player you've ever personally played against? You couldn't figure them out?
- [07:54]
A
Oh, man. Good question. The best player I've ever played against, I couldn't figure out.
- [08:03]
I don't know. But you know, the, the, the person who I've actually had the toughest time with, I think is Alan Keating.
- [08:09]
B
Really.
- [08:09]
A
And, and Alan Keating's probably nowhere near the best player, like overall, all things considered, or at least fundamentally right. That I've played against. But his style doesn't match up well with my style. You know, I'm trying to be aggressive, trying to play a lot of hands. I'm three betting four betting a lot. I'm calling three bets and four bets a lot. I'm trying to play big pots. He does the same thing, but he does it way better. He, he's more experienced at it. He has way more money. And so I just constantly level myself. And even if I'm not losing a big pot to him, which I have plenty of times when he's in the game, it just like throws me off my game and I end up just playing poorly because I don't know how to navigate.
- [08:54]
When someone like him is in the game. And he, like, I played a. We, we played on Poker Go a few months ago. It just aired recently and it was high stakes poker and it was a big game, but it got even bigger because of the lineup. Alan Keating was in the game and every single hand he's straddling, he's making a 10k, 20k, 30k, 40k to go every hand. And I'm on his left, which generally is good, but I end up having to like either just fold a ton, which is painful and can cost some money if you're just not playing any hands, um, or I have to like put in 20k, 30k, 40k every other hand if I want to play. Like if I have a, a marginal hand, let's say I have nine, 10 suited or I have pocket sevens and I want to play, I have to put that much money in the pot. If I don't, then it's like how many better spots am I going to find than those hands that I'm getting if I just keep folding? So I end up just wanting to play those hands pre flop to gamble, to try to get even and ends up costing me more. And, and I, it's like I'm scared.
- [10:00]
C
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- [11:01]
A
If he makes it 30k and he's doing it a ton. But still, like if I have, let's say pocket sevens, like I'm afraid to put in $100,000, like that's a ton of money with such a marginal hand. So I end up getting handcuffs and not knowing what to do and then I end up playing bad and that's what happened on that show. So I realized afterwards, like, man, I don't think I've ever won. When Alan Ken said a game, I.
- [11:20]
B
Will say he is so fun to watch.
- [11:22]
A
He is. He's probably the number one most entertaining player we've ever had on our show or at all in poker. Definitely top two or three.
- [11:34]
He's just great. Like the fans love watching him. He's mysterious, good looking guy.
- [11:41]
B
I love seeing the conspiracies on how he made his money. Yeah, you see that with Nick Arabell too.
- [11:45]
A
Yeah, exactly.
- [11:46]
B
There's like whole Reddit threads about how they made money. It's hilarious.
- [11:49]
A
That's one of the most interesting parts about poker is that there's tons of people out there in the world, especially in la, that have a lot of money, right. And.
- [12:01]
They'Re successful business people. They could be venture capitalists, they could be, they can own some big business. Maybe they made money, you know, playing private poker, whatever it is. There's these people that have tons of money that are out there. LA has a lot of money, right. And a lot of these guys play a lot of poker. They've played in private games over the years. Well, now we have our stream that has gotten super popular over the last few years that has put a spotlight on these LA and Vegas private poker players that come and play our show. And now people see them on camera and they're like, well, how do they get their money? Well, these people have existed forever. They just weren't playing. Like, Alan Keating has been playing high stakes poker for probably, you know, 15 years.
- [12:47]
B
Wow.
- [12:47]
A
Right. And he's been very wealthy for a long time and he's played in private games, organized games, been part of big games. But you know, Dan Bilzerian back in the day, same thing, you know, but it's like until they're on camera and you get big on social media, you know, people don't know about them. Right. No one really in the real world knew Alan Keating was before he played on our show and, and then played on poker. Go a lot as well now, you know, everyone wants to know where he got his money from. Same thing with Nick Airball. You know, he's been playing a lot of poker off camera, you know, more than on camera the last few years. But, you know, because he's this interesting character, people want to know, like, you know, people can't accept the fact that like maybe, you know, he's a character on the show, but he's actually like doing really well in these private Games or he's made money investing or who knows what a lot of these guys are doing. But there's plenty of ways to make money both in poker and out of poker. And, you know, everybody because of the Internet, wants to get in their business and know, like, where does this money come from?
- [13:44]
B
Yeah, you guys really did put a spotlight on those underground games. So, you know. Yeah, you guys get crazy views. Yeah.
- [13:49]
A
Yeah. Thank you.
- [13:50]
B
I feel like you kind of pioneered a new. I don't know if you were the first to do this, but you guys kind of have a new lane in poker, right?
- [13:56]
A
Yeah, we weren't the first, but it's become, you know, the. I guess, the most popular show in terms of just daily viewership. We're on five days a week. We stream the most of anyone. We've done like eight or nine hundred episodes since 2021.
- [14:14]
I used to produce live at the Bike. I was an owner there. That was really the first live stream show that. It started in 2005, but it never really blew up until I got there in 2002, 2016, and then over the next three years, it became a big deal. Doug Poke was one of the first big names we got on. Yeah, we had some really cool shows and then, you know, poker go during that time, started doing some live streaming. There really wasn't any other big live streams until after Covid and then we started ours in 2021. And, you know, we've had a lot of shows, consistent views, big names, all that stuff. Big. A lot of big games, Million dollar game, all that. And now we have, you know, the lodge that Doug owns that's doing pretty well. That's a.
- [15:00]
C
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- [15:47]
A
That's great.
- [15:52]
Assistant stream. That's probably, you know, right up there with us for the most popular. And there's other ones that pop up in different places as well. And so it's become like a. A cool thing for poker. Different opportunities to showcase, you know, players in different cities and. And big games and whatnot. So it's. It's pretty cool. I think poker's grown a lot, in large part because of streams over the last few years.
- [16:14]
B
Yeah. A lot of people try live streaming and fail. Why do you think yours took off? Do you think your connections in the industry played a big role in that?
- [16:21]
A
Yeah, certainly networking is a big part of it. I think there's a few reasons, if I had to say so. For one, you know, before. Before we launched Hustle Casino Live, I had a huge network of players that I was close with. And it's not just people that, like, it's not just people that I just organize games for. These are people that I had relationships with, a lot of them. We're friends. We'd hang out. Whether we play poker together or talk on the phone or they call me to tell me about their life or we go to dinner, whatever it is. Right. Like, there was a big network of players that I was very close with.
- [17:00]
Since back in the bike days. So, you know, I've been organizing games for, like, almost nine years now.
- [17:09]
Having that network and being close with those players makes it easy to find those players to put these games together. So that's number one. Just have. You have to have the players. If you don't have the players and the recreational players, like the pros, you'll always find pros. Pros will come about. You can stick them in there when there's a spot open, when it makes sense. But if you don't have a huge base of business people, recreational players to build lineups around, then it's really hard to be successful in live streaming cash games, in my opinion. So that's number one. Number two is. So I had a background in TV production, so I worked at ESPN before I did poker.
- [17:46]
B
Yeah.
- [17:47]
A
And I use kind of that knowledge and what I learned there to envision what I thought a successful poker stream would look like. And there was no way for me to know for sure if that would be.
- [18:02]
Successful, like if this would be number. The number one show, if this would be the way to go. But I just believed in my mind that, you know, the vision that I had for how something looked like, I always tried to envision how do I make a poker show look like ESPN or look like an NBA broadcast. Right. And that's kind of the mentality I always had. And it worked. It just happened to become popular when quickly after we launched. And then, yeah, the networking over time to get people like Mr. Beast, to get people like Phil Ivey and Tom Dwan, to get people like Neymar on the show to come up with these, like, unique ideas that people haven't done before, like the Million Dollar Game. So all those things together, I think, is. Is what has helped us.
- [18:43]
But, yeah, it's been kind of a cool journey so far, but I think we're just getting started. There's still so many ideas that we haven't been able to do yet that. That we want to do. And I think that, you know, this is only the beginning.
- [18:57]
B
It's an exciting time for poker, man. World Series of Poker is breaking numbers every year. Like, they had, what, 10, 000 people in the main last year?
- [19:03]
A
Yeah, I think the last two years, it's been somewhere around 10, 000 nuts, dude.
- [19:06]
B
Have you played the main before?
- [19:07]
A
Yeah, I've played maybe eight or nine times so far.
- [19:10]
B
Yeah.
- [19:11]
A
Never cashed.
- [19:11]
B
So that's crazy you say that because Hellmuth just announced he's never playing the main again.
- [19:15]
A
I saw that. I. I call on that one. I don't.
- [19:18]
B
Oh, you don't agree with that?
- [19:18]
A
I would. I would bet that he plays it this year.
- [19:21]
B
Okay. Well, he's told me, like, it's an endurance contest.
- [19:25]
A
Well, it is, it's. But it's always been that way. So Even, you know, 10, 20 years ago, or I should say 10, let's say 10 years ago, it still was an endurance contest. It still was seven, eight, nine days long. And so it still was hard for the older generation to win the main event. But there has been a few that have made the final table.
- [19:46]
B
Right.
- [19:48]
A
But certainly that's just part of the sport. Part of the game is this is a unique tournament. It's the World Series of Poker main event. I don't think that when something's breaking records lately, when it's had 10,000 people the last two years, the biggest numbers ever, that it's a time that you really want to change anything because it's doing well. Right. It has the biggest prize pools, the most players.
- [20:12]
If anything, I think they could add one off day. This is something I saw Phil suggest, add one off day somewhere in the middle somewhere. So you could do already. There's an off day after day one and after day two, depending on when you play. But maybe after day four or five, you could add an off day before the rest of the tournament and then you have that off day before the final table. So just adding one off day doesn't affect it too much. But I don't think you can change the structure or anything too significantly because it's working. The main event is so popular now, and I think, yeah, I think it's, it's. Poker just as a whole has been huge the last few years, so it's exciting to see how that grows. And it's doing that without online poker even becoming legal federally in the US and so if we get to a point sometime in the next 10 years where it comes back. Right. It's been almost 15 years now that we haven't had.
- [21:09]
Online poker throughout the U.S. so if we get to a point where that comes back, then I think it'll blow up even more.
- [21:15]
B
Yeah. Would you ever do tournaments on your show or no?
- [21:18]
A
We could. We, we've thought about it. But just from my experience, I think that cash games generally do way better for viewership than, than tournaments do or sit and goes do.
- [21:31]
If we did, if we could ever organize a high roller tournament with big names where we have a feature table and then we stream the final table kind of like Triton does.
- [21:40]
B
Yeah.
- [21:40]
A
Then I think that would do well.
- [21:43]
I think that's possible. It's something I've thought about doing sometime in the next year or two. But in general, cash games just do so much better. People love the idea that, like every hand is worth a real amount of money.
- [21:57]
B
Faster paced.
- [21:58]
A
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And just anything can happen. People play looser in cash games.
- [22:05]
It's just for whatever reason, no Limit hold'. Em. Always the most popular cash games. Always the most popular.
- [22:10]
B
Yeah. How was it playing with Neymar? Was he filthy?
- [22:13]
A
I didn't play with him, but he was on our show. But having him on the show was. Was awesome. Neymar's super cool. Got to meet him when he came in, interact with him a lot. Super nice guy. Everybody that asked for an autograph or a picture, he did it.
- [22:30]
B
Wow.
- [22:31]
A
He's a huge deal. So it's, it's really an honor to get Neymar on our show. Like, this is a show that we just created based on our vision and it's at Hustler Casino in Gardena, California. Like, just thinking about that compared to some of the big poker shows out there and back in the day, like ice poker and the poker go stuff, you know, the fact that we've gotten someone big like Neymar on our show is really cool. But yeah, it was awesome. And he won a few hundred thousand dollars. Yeah, he won like three because Alan Keating played a crazy hand against Neymar at the end of the show where they did this unique thing. And the clips out there in the Internet, if you haven't seen it, that really has never been done before on a show where they get it all in. Neymar wins. Then Keating says, wait, wait, wait, let's run it again for another 50. Just the last card. Let's run the river card for another 50,000. Neymar wins that. He says, wait, let's do it again. And every time Keating was 25 or 30%, so he was an underdog, but just did it anyway for fun to gamble with Neymar. So he puts another fifty thousand, another hundred thousand and he just keeps gambling until he's out of money. And Neymar wins every single time. Keating never won on any of those extra river cards. And Neymar ends up winning something like 300,000 off of Keating in one hand.
- [23:48]
B
A straight degeneracy.
- [23:49]
A
Yeah, it really was. It's one of the coolest hands we've ever had on our show.
- [23:52]
B
That's cool.
- [23:53]
A
So hopefully Neymar will come back this summer and we'll have another big celebrity show.
- [23:57]
B
Sure. I know it's three years away, but the Olympics is going to be really cool for you. Since it's in la, I'm sure you could get some.
- [24:03]
A
I haven't even thought about that, but that's, that's a good point.
- [24:05]
B
2028.
- [24:06]
A
Yeah.
- [24:06]
B
Could probably get all the athletes.
- [24:08]
A
That would be cool. I have a vision for one day having a, a show of like all a list celebrities, whether it's athletes, musicians, just people. Because people. Poker is so big everywhere, right. Like, it's like the one, I think like unifying game that brings people together, right. You have people like Michael Jordan and Tiger woods and Michael Phelps that play. You have musicians like, you know, Justin Bieber or.
- [24:43]
Who else? Just big, big musicians that play out. Plays Drake, right. He's a gambler, right. You have, you know, streamers that probably play like Aiden Ross. You have.
- [24:54]
Billionaires that play. We've had like Chamath on our show.
- [24:58]
B
They have their own games, I heard.
- [25:00]
A
Yeah, Chamath has a big game in San Francisco with Phil Hellmuth. So you have all these people all over the place. There's so many of these big private games in la. Like Steiny's playing like Alex Botez.
- [25:13]
You know, Ryan Garcia plays a ton of Right. Manny Pacquiao used to play back in the day. Le. Leonardo DiCaprio, Toby Maguire, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, like all these guys love poker. And.
- [25:27]
It'S. Poker is that game where you can put people from all walks of life, put them at one table together and it's competitive, it's for real money and it's social. At the same time, you could tell stories from business, from Hollywood. You could tell, you know, bad beat stories as well. Right? You could talk strategy, you could do business at the table while you're playing. And at the same time, you could be competing for a hundred thousand dollars. So my vision, my ultimate goal for our show, for one show, one day, is to get a bunch of a listers like that at one table together and just break records, right? And.
- [26:08]
Just imagine having.
- [26:11]
You know, let's say you have Drake, you have Dave Portnoy, you have Kevin Hart, you have Neymar. Right? All these guys at the same table together I think would just do huge numbers and just be the coolest thing we could ever do. So that's my goal one day and I'm gonna keep trying to work towards that before, you know, who knows how long I'll be doing this. You know, I still have a lot of passion for it. I want to do it for a long time, but before I'm done. That's a goal that I'm never going to give up on.
- [26:38]
B
You'll get there, man. I could see it. You're only a few years in and you're already crushing it.
- [26:41]
A
Nice.
- [26:42]
B
It's impressive. Have you ever played in Molly's Game?
- [26:45]
A
I haven't. I. I wasn't. Well, I wasn't in LA back then and I wasn't playing high stakes back then. But I know a lot of people that did play in Molly's Game and so I've heard stories, obviously I've seen the movie a million times.
- [26:57]
B
How accurate do you think that movie was based off your conversations with people?
- [27:00]
A
I think it's pretty accurate. I think there's definitely some things that they altered and changed to make it more exciting for the movie, but I think most of it is roughly accurate. For example, there's a scene in there where a guy.
- [27:20]
Gets it all in with pocket queens. I think it was on Queen 7 7. And the guy who. Brad, like bad Brad in the, in the movie, in the book, from that game, he's a real person, gets it all in with ace king on Queen 77 against Pocket Queen. So he's basically drawing dead and it goes either king, king or ace, ace. And he wins the hand. The guy who had queens. I know that guy. I played a lot of poker with him. I can't say who it is, but, you know, so that. That part is real. For example, the. The part where the guy.
- [27:56]
In the movie just goes off one night for like a million dollars and then tells Molly afterwards that he can't pay. Right. And they play, like, all night long. That's real guy. That guy is Houston Curtis. He's people. People know him. He's still around.
- [28:12]
B
And did he ever pay?
- [28:13]
A
That I haven't. I think they're in the movie. I assume this Zachary. I don't know. I think Toby Maguire character, who's a Michael Sarah character.
- [28:24]
Ended up, like, making a deal with him to stake him to pay the money back. But I've heard the story about, like, who was in the game that night and, like, what happened and how the game went, like, overnight till the next day, and people started waking up and coming to play because they heard Houston Curtis was on tilt. So these are real stories, real things that happened. It's like. It seems hard to believe. Like, it's. I mean, it's a great movie, but poker was huge in the private game scene back in that era in Hollywood in, like, 2006 to 2009, whenever that was. I would have loved to be around it, but unfortunately, I wasn't in the scene like that back then. But, you know, it's. It's pretty cool to. To hear the stories about all these celebrities that were playing so big back then.
- [29:12]
B
I heard those. Yeah, I heard about New York was big too, back, right?
- [29:15]
A
Yeah, exactly.
- [29:16]
B
I don't know if it's still big in New York, but has that ever happened to you where someone didn't pay you, like, they just played all night and kind of stiffed you more times than I. Oh, really?
- [29:25]
A
Than I'd like to.
- [29:27]
B
So you're fronting players?
- [29:29]
A
Well, no, no, not. Not in the show. I'm just saying I've been involved in, like, other games and situations where someone's owed me money, you know, and. And then just ends up being broke and not being able to pay. And I've had to deal with that. No, on the show. Luckily, I have no financial ties or anything to any. Like, we deal with a casino, so people, they deal with all the compliance of financial stuff, so I don't have to deal with any of that. All I do is organize the lineup in the production. They worry about wiring the casino or bring in Cash. They bring it to the cage, they deal with it. The casino tells them if they're good or not. They tell me, hey, there's an issue with this player. They can't play or, yes, they can play. All that's on the casino, between the casino and them. So that's why it's. It's a big advantage for us to stream in a casino. But no, I. I've been involved in, like, other stuff outside of the casino and poker situations where I heard that's common.
- [30:22]
B
In your space.
- [30:23]
A
Yeah. It's horrible, man. It's horrible. Like, people are just degenerates. They gamble above their means. They're not honest about their situation.
- [30:32]
B
And I have a rule. I don't lend any money anymore. I've lost too many friends.
- [30:36]
A
Yeah. But, I mean, I. I've had that rule. I had that rule forever. But back when I was just playing poker for fun, like when I was younger. But now that I've gotten more involved in poker, it's hard. Like when you're a game runner, and.
- [30:50]
B
It'S just hard, especially if you're running.
- [30:51]
A
Yeah. Sometimes you just avoid spots. I mean, it's sometimes. Sorry. Sometimes some spots are unavoidable.
- [30:58]
And maybe there's a lot of spots. I regret that I could have done better over time. And there's a lot of people that I've trusted that, looking back, I shouldn't have trusted. Yeah.
- [31:06]
B
Did you get money to Ryu Sooke or whatever his name is?
- [31:09]
A
K. No, I didn't. Rusque. Yeah, that was a crazy one. Yeah. But I. I know people that he owes money to. Nick Arabell being one of them. But, yeah, Rus, K, you. That's a situation that's so interesting. And you see that a lot. He was the nicest guy ever. He was so friendly.
- [31:27]
People did not suspect that he was going to be a scammer. And then all of a sudden, one day, he just skips town and owes people money.
- [31:34]
B
Like a million.
- [31:34]
C
Right.
- [31:35]
A
I don't know how much ended up being, but it was a lot. And I've seen situations like that so many times, and. And it's like, you know, I learn as time goes on, like, you have to be more careful. And I'll warn people, too. Like, hey, you know, be careful. Don't do that, don't do that. Like, I'll use my experiences to kind of tell other people.
- [31:51]
B
Yeah.
- [31:51]
A
But it's just tough when you're involved in games, you're playing in games, you're organizing games, you're doing you know, it's just like you're going to come up with situations once in a while where, you know, someone owes you for whatever the reason is. And.
- [32:06]
You know, most of the time it's, it's no big deal, but sometimes it's just people aren't honest about their situation. Like I've had situations where, you know, we're playing in a, you know, we have like an online game we'll play sometimes a rake free game. Just bunch of friends, we're all really close, we hang out. Like we all trust each other, right? Totally. Like just legit, cleanest, most fun game that you can imagine, right?
- [32:33]
Once in a blue moon will have somebody who's super wealthy. They're maybe not a billionaire, but like, you know, nine figure net worth and all of a sudden they just go off for like an absurd amount and then afterwards tell you, shit, I messed up. I'm going to need a lot of time to pay that. Like, I'm just not liquid right now. Why didn't you tell us that before you decided to gamble that big? Like be honest about your situation before you screw someone over. So, you know, that just comes up sometimes and people put you in a bad spot because they're just such degenerates. This happens in private games all the time, right? Like people get, people that run these, these private underground LA games get screwed all the time because you know, somebody that's good for the game, somebody that's, you know, they think is worth a lot and is good for it ends up going off for a ton of money. And then after the fact, they tell them like, hey, like, I can't pay you that right away. And now they're in a bad spot. So it's just, it's the dark part about poker, probably the worst part about poker, but it's something that I've definitely learned how to deal with over time.
- [33:41]
B
Yeah, yeah, that's why I'm scared of the high stakes. Because then you run into cheating too, right? Is that common?
- [33:46]
A
Yeah, I mean, that's a scary part for sure. You have to be careful not to put yourself in a questionable spot. You know, during COVID before our show launched, you know, 2020, I was playing, I had nothing else to do, right. Everything was shut down. What do I do? I knew I was going to start a show a year and a half from then, so I went and just played in all these private games. That was my social time. Played poker, trying to make some money, but trying to also network and meet players and whatnot and.
- [34:17]
You know, looking back at it, there was definitely some games where I feel like I probably got cheated. But I was so naive about it back then that I just didn't think about it too much. So after the fact. But since then, I was more careful. If I ever went to a game like that where I want to make sure I know every player I'm playing with, who are they, I'm paying attention to what the dealer's doing and, you know, if there's any like, suspicious things like them switching out the decks randomly. But yeah, I've been to actually a few games where looking back, I was probably cheated. Actually, I'll tell you a crazy story. So there was a game I played at in Vegas in 2020. At the time, it was the biggest game I had ever played and ended up being the, at the time, the most I ever lost.
- [35:03]
B
Okay?
- [35:04]
A
And a week later, I found out from some people that had played in that same game on different days that they suspected that this one guy in the game.
- [35:14]
Cheated. Okay? I paid my balance right away the next day, like I always do if I'm in a game like that. But other people in those games didn't pay right away because they found out that they think this guy might have been cheated. So they investigated it to the best they could over the next few weeks. There was no way to like hard prove it that it that the guy for sure cheated. But there was like some circumstantial stuff. So a bunch of these people, like, didn't pay their balance to that game. The game got shut down, never ran again, you know, again, people assume this one guy cheated, but there was like no way to really prove it to force the game runner to give the money back. Okay, fast forward to a few years later.
- [35:54]
There's a game in LA with some guys from our show that played and it was like mostly an Asian game. Airball played in this game. Wesley played in this game a couple years ago.
- [36:05]
They ended up catching some, some guys in the game cheating. Okay? Somehow, right? They exposed them. Wesley posted all on social media, became like this big story in poker. These guys cheating. They posted pictures of who they were. I saw the picture of the one guy and I was like, holy crap, that's the guy that allegedly cheated When I was in the game in Vegas a few years ago, like, you for sure got cheated because this guy's reputation is a cheater. And I played with him, right? So we're like, oh my God, I can't believe it's the same guy. If they ever, like, sent me a picture when they were playing and said, you know, this guy, I would have been like, get out of that game. Like, yeah, this is bad news. Okay, now, so that happened. Okay. That got exposed. Now fast forward like two years later. Okay. This past year.
- [36:50]
You know about the NBA sports betting scandal with John Tay Porter, the player that, you know, got in trouble for scamming prop bets where. You don't know about this story? It's a huge story. Look it up. His name is John Tay Porter. His brother Michael Porter is on the Nuggets.
- [37:05]
B
Oh, I heard about it.
- [37:06]
A
Yeah. And there's all these prop bets that you can bet on now and like DraftKings and FanDuel, where people in a couple of the games were firing the unders on his prop bets and he's just a random bench player. And they ended up investigating it and found out that there were. That he was, you know, faking the injury or kind of like telling people beforehand, like, hey, I'm gonna hit the under, I'm not gonna play or I'm gonna miss these shots. Like, bet on me. Right. The guys that were behind it were all poker related. And the one guy that was part of it was the same guy that cheated me in the poker game, that cheated in that game. And now he's involved in the sports betting scandals. And another guy that was involved in the Wesley airball game also was involved in this scandal as well. So it's like, it's just crazy how something as mainstream as that in sports betting, like, tied to poker nuts.
- [37:55]
B
I wonder how he did the poker scam. Was he in on it with the dealer, you think?
- [37:59]
A
I'm not positive, to be honest. There's some speculation, but. That it could be something like that. Yeah.
- [38:04]
B
Because the dealers are. They're so good these days, it's hard to exactly tell if they're exactly a certain way.
- [38:08]
A
I try to, like, look sometimes and I have no idea. Like, I would never be able to. To catch, like, the sleight of eye.
- [38:15]
B
Of hand, slight of hands so good these days. They can even do it in front of you.
- [38:18]
A
Yeah, I would have no idea. Yeah. And so that's why these days, like, I really don't play in private games. I just play with my own group of friends or at the casino on my own show. Like, I know I can trust my own show. Right. Like, that's. I always tell people the only games that I know I can like, fully trust are my own games. I can't trust someone else's game 100%. I can only trust myself. I can only trust my own games. So, you know, I always advise people to just be careful when you're going to private games and really know who you're playing with. Trust the host, trust the players.
- [38:50]
B
I wonder if people will switch to like AI dealers like instead of human, you know what I mean?
- [38:55]
A
I don't even know how to avoid.
- [38:57]
B
Like cheating, like automatically shuffle it and deal them out if that's possible.
- [39:00]
A
That'd probably be a good idea.
- [39:01]
B
Yeah. Future. Yeah, yeah, there's VR poker. I've seen clips of that. Yeah, yeah, those are hilarious. Well, what's next for you, man? What's the next big stream coming up?
- [39:11]
A
Well, we got the million dollar game coming back.
- [39:15]
When's that coming up? Soon. It's going to be either April or May this year. So we've done it two years so far. This will be the third year million dollar buy in. Minimum we've done four days each of the last two years. This year we'll probably do three days just to keep it easier just because, you know, sometimes we lose players last minute and the games are end up not being as good. So we're going to do three days and just make the games really good.
- [39:40]
Expecting some, some big names for that, so that'll be fun. Last year we had a bunch of like 2 million plus dollar pots. The year before we had a $3 million pot with Tom Dwan.
- [39:48]
B
Jeez, that, that was the record right at the time. I think I saw that one.
- [39:52]
A
Yeah. So Tom Dwan still has the record. Not just the biggest pot on our show, but the biggest pot on any poker broadcast ever. So almost $3.2 million.
- [40:00]
B
That was a crazy hand too.
- [40:02]
A
Yeah. So hoping for some more, you know, big pots like that this year and then this summer we're going to try to put together another celebrity game with Neymar and figure that out. So last year we had Neymar Ninja, Ryan Garcia, Dan Bian, Mr.
- [40:17]
B
Beast. Right.
- [40:18]
A
That was, that was a couple years before that we had a Mr. Beast one as well. So that was Our first celebrity one. Big celebrity one was Mr. Beast, Ninja Ludwig, Tom Dwan, Phil Hellmuth, Alex Botez. The recent one we had Neymar, Ryan Garcia, Dan Bian, Jimmy Butler.
- [40:36]
So that one was pretty big. And yeah, hopefully we get Jimmy Butler again with, with or with Neymar this summer and then we'll try to fill it with some other like really big celebrities, so. Oh yeah, yeah. And then we got some big moves. We're going to be making as well that will be announcing soon, probably by the time this airs. Just we're going to try to really expand the show and scale it to be more. More than just a show at Hustler Casino. We want it to be more of a platform for poker content. We want to have streams in different locations. We want to have different kinds of poker content around the clock. And so we're hoping that over the next year we build up our channel so that we are the go to place for poker content.
- [41:19]
B
I love it. Ryan, we'll link your stuff below. Anything else you want to close off with, man.
- [41:23]
A
No, that's it. Thank you for doing what you do.
- [41:26]
B
Absolutely.
- [41:26]
A
I appreciate it.
- [41:27]
B
I'll be at the next game. Game, hopefully. All right, cool.
- [41:29]
A
Let's do it.
- [41:30]
B
All right, guys, check them out. See you next time.