Matt Berkey Opens Up on Only Friends and His Poker Dreams

Images courtesy of World Poker Tour

To many in poker, Matt Berkey is an enigma. The successful founder of Solve For Why and  Only Friends, the cash game professional has turned podcast co-host and poker coach,  all the while amassing $4.7 million in tournament winnings over the course of his career.

Yet amid all his many triumphs, Matt has an inner fight that comes from trauma. We caught up with Matt to dig deep into his influences and inspirations as he continues to grow as a player and person in poker.

The Birth and Death of Only Friends

Recently, Matt and his buddies completed the 719th and final episode of the hugely successful podcast Only Friends. By its final episode, it had become a behemoth in the podcast streets.

Matt is incredibly proud of the show, calling the pride he feels as being mixed with a ‘bittersweet ache.’ It’s only now dawning on him that it’s over.

We poured our hearts into that show – 719 episodes, three years of grinding it out, five days a week, talking poker, life, and everything in between. It was like building a house from scratch, brick by brick, with no blueprint, just a bunch of us.

Me, the Solve For Why crew, and our rotating cast of misfits riffing in a Vegas studio, trying to make sense of the chaos.

Matt is ‘damn proud’ of what Only Friends became; a raw, unfiltered space where Matt and co. didn’t just talk poker hands but dug into what he calls the ‘messy human stuff,’ things like ego, risk, failure, and those fleeting wins that keep a poker player hooked on the game we all love.

Only Friends wasn’t just a podcast; it was a poker community and a daily ritual for many in the game.

That’s not something you can fake or force. The shift in tone was inevitable, but not in a bad way. We started as this scrappy, behind-the-scenes hangout buddies shooting the sh*t, laughing about bad beats and crazy nights.

But as the audience grew, the world started creeping in. We became more reactive because the poker world is a pressure cooker, and the stories were too loud to ignore.

Over the past few years, poker’s many scandals and fiery interchanges broke through the initial friendly, hangout vibe. From bitter feuds to enduring scandals and hot takes on the at-felt side of poker and behind-the-scenes dramas, Only Friends had it all.

“We didn’t chase that shift; it chased us,” says Matt about the dynamic of the show.

We had to evolve to keep up with the energy of the community and the noise of the media landscape. Was it escapable? Maybe if we’d stayed small and stuck to inside jokes, but that’s not who we are.

We wanted to lean into the mess, to wrestle with it, and I think that’s why people kept tuning in. It felt real, even when it got loud.

The World Series and Hustler’s Return

The WSOP is always huge for tournament players, but as we’ve already said, Matt is a well-known cash game professional. He told us that he now looks forward to the annual World Series of Poker less and less with each passing year.

The foot traffic is so heavy this time of year it becomes more challenging than any other time of year to get good seats [in cash games], Matt reveals.

May through July are my highest volume months with my lowest hourly by a wide margin. I truly miss the feeling of chasing bracelets and all of the hype surrounding such an astonishing festival, but that was during a time when I was still trying to establish myself.

Today, there’s just very little incentive for me to play events day in and day out when I estimate my expectation to be relatively low.”

Talking of high stakes, the recent purchase and relaunch of Hustler Casino Live is a good sign that legitimate poker sites want a big piece of the pie created by independent cash game venues. But is that good or bad for cash games – and their players – in one of their most experienced member’s opinion?

The Hustler Casino Live purchase and relaunch, with GGPoker stepping in, feels like a double-edged sword for high-stakes cash games.

On one hand, it’s a nod to how big the independent scene has gotten. HCL’s million-dollar buy-in games and star-studded line-ups have turned poker into a spectacle, pulling in viewers and players who thrive on the raw, unfiltered chaos.

That’s good for bringing in the casuals – it keeps the action fast, the stakes high, and the energy electric, making for a very watchable product.

As Matt describes, his problem with the show’s return isn’t with any current incumbent but rather the most recent co-owner who got away.

I have mixed feelings about [Nick] Vertucci just getting to ‘fade to black’ with minimal consequence and speculations that he was paid many multiples on his original investment,” Matt tells us.

Somehow, a high seven-figure payday goes to the man who, by all accounts, single-handedly soiled the brand name due to his misconduct. That doesn’t exactly sit right with me.

It will be interesting to see how it all plays out as GGPoker is making some major moves in the poker space, seemingly attempting to corner most markets.

Overcoming the Loss of His Mother

It’s nearly a decade since Matt lost his mother and wrote the hard-hitting Huff Post piece Forgiving the Forgotten: Memories of an Addict.

In it, he describes the pain her passing caused him and how dealing with an addict in your life can put you through the worst trauma imaginable. Coming back from such an ordeal was hard for the then-much-younger Matt.

Back then, I was angry; at her, at addiction, at myself for not being some superhero who could’ve saved her. The years since have softened the edges, but not in a clean, ‘healed’ way.

It’s more like I’ve learned to carry the weight differently. I’ve leaned into my career, into self-development, into spaces where I can wrestle with uncertainty and still find meaning.

Her passing taught me that life’s not about fixing everything; it’s about showing up even when the deck’s stacked against you. I forgive her more now, not because it’s noble, but because I get it. Addiction is a thief, and she was its mark, not its master.

The opportunity to speak to our parents after they have gone is the impossible wish of so many around the globe. But if given the chance to pick up the phone one more time to his mother, Matt would choose kindness.

If ‘Today’s Matt’ could pick up the phone and hear her voice? I’d tell her I love her, no strings attached. I’d say I see her, the real her, not the shadow addiction cast. I wouldn’t ask why or try to fix the past; I’d just let her know she did her best, and that’s enough.

The Cheat Code of Poker

We’ve all recently seen Daniel Cates, a.k.a. ‘Jungleman,’ and his policing of the scamming streets on X. So how prevalent is cheating in the poker world, and what can we do about it not just as an industry but as players specifically?

While Matt doesn’t believe cheating is ‘rampant enough to kill the game,’ he agrees that it’s a topic that needs engagement.

Cheating is not everywhere, but it’s there, and maybe more than we’d like to admit. It’s prevalent enough to keep you paranoid. Let’s be real – cheating has always been etched into poker’s culture, and so long as there’s easy money to be made, there will be a subset of grifters who attempt to take shortcuts.

I think, for the most part, live poker is relatively safe. There are instances of marked cards, collusion, and even the more recent pinhole camera stuff, but collectively, both the community and operators do a pretty good job of safeguarding against that stuff.”

While the live space is safer than some may think, Matt believes that the online poker situation is a lot worse.

The availability and scale at which cheats can operate online is a tough problem to solve,” he says. “That said, I agree with Jungle in that the perception of ‘loads of cheating’ is overblown. It’s a bias built from big scandals sticking in our heads.

But that’s just where we are in today’s landscape. I’ve personally been extremely vocal regarding game security and even burned a bridge with Hustler Casino Live over it. But I would do it all again in a heartbeat.

The fact is the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and at the end of the day, HCL’s security has improved ten-fold, much more in line with industry standards set by NVGC and adhered to by PokerGO, among others.

As Matt describes, the same can be said for the actions of others. Among them is Patrick Leonard, the player who Matt says ‘held online operator’s feet to the fire over unacceptable lapses in security.’

So long as we are vigilante as a community, the game will continue to police itself.

Is Nik Airball Good or Bad for Poker?

We all saw the ‘Berkey vs. Airball’ stand-off that has now become a bizarre benchmark for grading cash game beefs in this age of meme.

There are many high-profile players who have a lot of money but perhaps not the skillset of Matt and others who have been around the industry far longer. Surprisingly, Matt thinks there is a place in the industry for people like Nik Airball.

“It’s not only good but imperative that we give wealthy individuals with a personality and deep pockets the space and opportunity to flex to their heart’s content,” he says.

The Airball spat got out of hand because one thing and one thing alone went unchecked, and that was calling a man’s integrity into question. The ‘scammer’ is a heavy-handed word in a space where trust and handshake deals are the lifeblood of most every professional.

Matt believes that if Doug Polk had simply checked Airball on the whole scammer situation, then the situation may have been ‘a little less WWE and a lot more focus on the poker.’

He also recognizes that the period before the WSOP is one of huge anticipation for players and fans, and he and Airball walked into that storm.

It filled the void that the ‘jack-four’ [Robbi Jade Lew] scandal had created, and for a brief period, we had daily content coming from all angles of the poker space.

The game’s growth depends on that sort of buzz, and it’s something that the WSOP alone used to be able to generate year over year. Our industry has matured, but the process has gotten stale. Rivalries are great; we need more of them!

The Past or The Future?

The World Series of Poker, Triton, EPT, WPT, and other major events are important for the poker calendar, and Matt acknowledges that. He also says that his generation needs to help the next come along and become as aspirational as the legends of poker folklore.

“We need more dreams to sell and carrots to dangle on a string to the everyman and, to that end, we need more heroes,” says Matt.

Somewhere along the way, the old guard forgot to pass the torch, and what’s left is a couple hundred world-class players that the casual viewer knows absolutely nothing about.

Poker is so completely different from how it was when Matt began playing the game over 22 years ago. Two decades ago, was poker more fun, or have more doors opened now to create a thriving game far beyond what could be experienced around the poker boom?

What an impossible question to answer; it almost feels like comparing athletes of different eras!” Matt laughs.

When I was first coming on to the scene was different. It was primal. You were operating simply off your wits and ability to deduce in real time what the poor b*stard across the table was thinking.

Some of us got incredibly good at that particular skill – the ability to read a man and anticipate his every move like you’ve seen it a thousand times before.

Matt accepts that his vision of the past sounds romantic, the version of poker that Hollywood loves to portray. In reality, today’s game is a world away from those primal poker instincts alone.

Now it’s all about problem-solving, deductive reasoning, and, for lack of a better word, hard f*cking work. The strategies are available for all to see, but like a fine work of art, they are left to interpretation.

At its core, the game is still the game, and I’m more in love with it than ever. For me, it’s not about what we know but rather what we’ve yet to discover.

I hope as I continue to grow as a player and contributor to this space, I’m able to hang my hat on a few discoveries that I can claim as my own. Otherwise, what’s the point of it all?

Over two decades into his poker career, despite all of his achievements and success in the world of poker, it’s refreshing to hear that Matt Berkey is still working it all out. He doesn’t have a solve for the game he loves just yet, which means he has to keep playing.