When the recent announcement was made that the parent company of GGPoker had bought out Nick Vertucci’s co-ownership of Hustler Casino Live (HCL)’s parent company High Stakes Poker Productions (HSPP), the poker industry celebrated. A potentially protracted divorce was avoided, investment in HCL would grow the streamed game’s lure, and most importantly, HCL would be bigger than ever when the really high-stakes games returned. But what will the future of Hustler Casino Live really look like?
To find out, we spoke to HCL’s original co-owner and the man tasked with driving the brand forward, Ryan Feldman, as well as GGPoker Global Poker Ambassador Daniel Negreanu as ‘Kid Poker’ eyes a return to the live poker felt in a streamed cash game.
Ryan Feldman – “This is a New Era with a Major Force Behind Us“
Speaking with Feldman, we’re talking to the original co-owner of HCL, who, along with Vertucci, grew the show into the award-winning broadcast it has become. Since Vertucci’s exit recently, partnering with GGPoker has been exciting for the pioneering poker producer.
“It was a long process to finalize the sale between GGPoker and Nick [Vertucci] to buy the shares,” says Feldman. “I’m pleased to have them as my new partner, it’s going to bring a lot of positive benefits to our company going forward in the future. We accomplished a lot with Nick as my partner over the past few years, he helped build this into a great company and the show that it is. This is a new era with a major force behind us, which will give us the capabilities of anything, so I’m excited about the possibilities over the next few years of what we can accomplish together.”
With more staff joining him, Feldman can focus more on the business aspect of his role, working on the “bigger picture”, bringing in more people to delegate different aspects of the business to.
“Having a partner like this makes it easier to put big ideas together,” says Feldman. “Nick and I worked really well together creating this amazing show, now its about what we can do going forward with GGPoker as our new partner, how does it help us accomplish bigger ideas now? Together we’ll figure it out and I’m really excited about that.”
HCL has become known for creating spit-out-your-drink moments that send poker fans scurrying to social media to vest their feelings. As Ryan describes, however, that’s never been by design.
“We never really tried to make something viral or to create a moment – things just happen,” Feldman tells us. “We’re just building a poker game, putting together people we think will fit. In the end, it’s a reality show and we’re looking for people that have great personalities that we think will be good, positive contributors to our reality show, people who are good on camera that are funny, social, interesting, successful and popular – we’re looking for all those things. But we’re also putting together a private game of eight or nine people at a poker table that will create really good action on any given day and make an entertaining, fun poker game.”
As Feldman describes, the HCL team doesn’t think too much about creating something that goes viral or gets a lot of views.
“It’s really about how do we create the piker show that gets watched the most and is attractive to the players, viewers, everyone and whatever happens, happens. Sometimes these moments happen because of the craziness of the players.”
Kid Poker – “It’s Win-Win for Hustler Casino Live and GGPoker“
A veteran of shows such as High Stakes Poker, Poker After Dark, and The Big Game, Daniel Negreanu may be known as a tournament player now, but he used to crush cash games on TV too. He’s clearly excited to come back to cash in a live-streamed arena that has caught the imagination of the poker-watching public.
“It has a very raw, fly on the wall type feel and I think that’s a big reason so many fans love the show,” Negreanu says. He believes that HCL players who are regulars on the scene will be his biggest threat rather than players from the aforementioned TV shows he’s been a part of. “I’m a tourney guy so my focus will be on trying to figure out how the regs on HCL play.”
Negreanu has taken on legends of the game at the cash felt in the past such as Phil Ivey, Erik Seidel, and Phil Hellmuth. Despite the lure of HCL for him, Negreanu thinks the future of the game’s potential big-name players is wide open. He also believes the format will stay largely as it has been, to maintain its popularity. He doesn’t foresee any issues with the recent buy-out.
“I definitely think it’s a win-win for HCL and GG, but as to how much will change, I don’t foresee any major changes other than maybe getting me to actually fly to Los Angeles to play.”
In recent years, Negreanu locked up his seventh WSOP bracelet in the $50,000 Poker Players Championship and has won a PGT Mixed Games festival title and a six-figure score in last week’s Super High Roller Bowl in the mixed game format. So would Negreanu rather play mixed cash games or straight No Limit Hold’em?
“This one isn’t close for me,” the Poker Hall of Famer says. “If I’m being perfectly honest, playing any one game over and over becomes monotonous and I will always choose mixed over any one game format.”
Streamed poker shows have changed the face of the game since stacks of greenbacks on High Stakes Poker back in the day. But are streamed games the future of the game or is there still room for both streamed games and more ‘cast’ shows such as High Stakes Poker in the schedule?
“I think you need to have both,” says Negreanu. “I was having dinner last night with a Hollywood writer and he made good points about what attracts the casual fan, and while livestreams feed the diehards, if you want to expand beyond that, packaged shows where you allow viewers to get to the know the players is something we have gotten away from and I think that’s a big mistake.”
A New Game for a New Era
Over the last few years, HCL has run into what Ryan Feldman admits have been “a bunch of roadblocks”. They’ve had to figure out a way to conquer each issue.
“Our show is successful enough that we are always going to overcome [issues]. People will always watch the show, and our business is going to continue to be number one in this industry. Issues can be tough to deal with at the beginning, but we have no worries at this point, and we’re excited to continue to put together the best live-streamed cash game there is.”
When it comes to bringing in the big names, Feldman is confident that his team will find a place for a number of superstars in poker, Negreanu included.
“As far as Daniel, we haven’t talked yet, but we’re confident he’ll play on our show at some point,” Feldman says. “Even without this business partnership he would have come at some point but this makes it even more likely that he’ll come. He’s busy and doesn’t love traveling for cash games but I think we’ll be able to put together an exciting show. He’s the one really popular player who we haven’t had on the show yet.”
The partnership with GGPoker should help. Feldman foresees the new era of HCL as one where they can really push the envelope and bring the biggest names out there to L.A.
“We hope there are some players that we haven’t had that we’ll be able to get through this partnership,” Feldman admits. “We’re hoping to expand and make the show even more special than it has been. We know that the players will come to us, I’m going to continue to get those players to play so that we can put together the best shows imaginable.”
Hustler Casino Live is sure to be unmissable when it returns, and with Daniel Negreanu in the mix, it seems a lock that other Hall of Famers and rising stars will flock to share the felt with him in the City of Angels.
