THIS WEEK: With Ryan Feldman
Growing the Game – One Show at a Time
Hustler Casino Live is kicking off the month of May in a big way. With The Million Dollar Game right around the corner (just under four-weeks, to be exact) Ryan Feldman and his team have nearly twenty full shows to produce in the meantime. That’s almost 100-hours of live-streamed action in anticipation of the biggest game of the year on HCL. While on his way to start Wednesday’s show, HCL News caught up with Ryan to talk about what we can expect during this week and what’s happening next on the show.
What are some of your favorite moments so far this week?
Monday was fun. Raver had a good win – good for Kyle. He made a really sick call – very quickly – against Sneak with pocket nines on a board where he only had one pair.
Another great moment for Monday was just seeing the Be A Star contest winner, Bruce, survive for a few hours – go back and forth, get short and double up. He was really giving it his best shot. He tried to bluff with deuce-seven early. He had a sick, lucky double-up where he got in one pair versus a set and went runner-runner full house to beat Cowboy John.
Then, Tuesday, the Ante Game is always fun when we have Luda Chris and JBoogs and those guys in the mix. JBoogs was tilted; he was down a lot. That’s not good for him, but it’s good entertainment for the show. Patrick was the big winner. He had aces versus kings twice. That was pretty cool – Patrick’s one of the nicest guys we have and it’s good to see him runnin’ good. We’re gonna have some really cool shows the rest of the week with some tough lineups and some star players.
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Shortly after Ryan spoke with HCL News on Wednesday, we watched some of the biggest action we’ve seen in a long time during the High Stacks Game featuring Action Dan, Mariano, Henry, Mike X, Dylan Flashner, Francisco, Adam, Dr. P, and Mayhem. Henry went on an absolute tear practically the entire show. The action was hot, and Nick Vertucci was on fire behind the mic. The ChatPros tried their best to get that ever-coveted shout-out or even a free channel membership from The ModFather and others.
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Tell us more about what we can expect the rest of this week.
We have some really good but tough players, fun players, lined up these next couple of days.
Thursday, we have The Bounty Game – it’s the second time we’re doing it. We’re doing a bigger version this time. This time we’re doing $25/$50. So it’s gonna play bigger – the bounties are bigger. Each player puts in $6k at the beginning. Then there’s a bunch of prizes, you know… win three hands in a row, win four hands in a row, win with deuce-seven, win with six-nine. You can win the whole bounty pool if you win five hands in a row. That lineup is just absolutely sick. We’ve got Mariano, Rampage, Jungleman, Action Dan and Lex-O with Dylan Flashner, Francisco, and Patrick. It’s gonna be a really fun game.
Friday we have our high stakes game. We have, again, a really cool lineup. We have Mariano, Action Dan, Jungleman, Lex-O and a few others. It’s a great week. A few of the last weeks shows we’ve lacked those big pots and the big action that everyone misses. We go in lulls sometimes. That’s just how poker is. But, I’m excited that we have a lot of those guys in the mix this week. There’s gonna be a lot of big pots and aggressive play.
Tell us what goes into putting together these lineups – be it just the regulars to the next Bounty Game with Jungleman.
It’s just a lot of texting, a lot of thinking, and brainstorming and thinking outside of the box – different ideas and talking to people; trying to figure out the right formula for games to make them exciting. We don’t want them to be boring – we want them to be fun to watch. It’s no perfect formula, but there’s definitely a lot that goes into it – a lot of work to get these lineups together. Sometimes there’s a lot of people available that are great for the show and then sometimes there’s just not – for different reasons.
Whatever it is, we’ve been doing it for almost three years now, five days a week – nobody does that. It is tough to continue to keep the consistency, to keep the entertainment, but we’re doing our best. We have The Million Dollar Game coming up and we believe that is going to be as good as ever. We have some other big ideas coming up, as well. From a week-to-week basis – some weeks are amazing, some are mediocre, that’s just how it goes when you stream as much as we do.
Tell us about the Princess Love and Friends Game last week – that seemed like a really fun time.
That kind of show doesn’t get the same viewership as other shows do because it’s just not what most poker fans are looking for. But I think it’s awesome to do that every once in a while – to dive into different aspects, different genres, and find people that play people that aren’t your traditional poker players. I think it’s really cool that poker does that and it gets people like Ray J, Miguel Nunez, and Darren Cunningham.
To me, it’s really cool to know that we can put shows together – in this game of poker – that we have all these people that are so great in their different industries, and they all have this common interest where they love poker. I love that! Even though it’s not as exciting to most poker fans as seeing Rampage and Jungleman battle at high stakes, I still like doing it once in a while just because I think it’s good for poker and it grows the game.
What’s happening in the next few weeks?
We’re gonna have some pretty decent couple of weeks. We have some cool people lined up. Hoodie Allan is playing next Monday. It’s always good to have people who are successful in music to come on the show. Sashimi’s back in two weeks. We have Britiney coming back starting on Monday – she’ll be here all of May. We have the Million Dollar Game at the end of May. And then we’ll go into the summer. I’m lookin’ forward to what we’re able to do over the summer – we’re coming up with some new ideas. I think it’s gonna be a fun few months.
Hustler Casino Live, owned and operated by High Stakes Poker Productions, broadcasts their free live stream on YouTube from Los Angeles, California, Monday through Friday starting at 5 p.m. PST.
