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Image courtesy of the World Series of Poker (Tyler Abrams)
This week, for my IPO, initial poker offering, I discuss Jeff Platt’s interview with Aaron Massey. It won’t make me a trillionaire like Elon, unless, of course, you like, share, and subscribe.
Jeff Platt interviews Aaron Massey
The interview ran initially on the World Series of Poker Live Stream, available on YouTube, powered by Solana and irrigated by Mountain Dew, taking place right after Massey was eliminated in fourth place from the WSOP $1,500 Monster Stack this past Thursday.
Platt, who had apparently forgotten to change his clothes after attending the Players’ Ball, a pimp convention held annually in Chicago, asked Massey, “Your immediate thoughts?”
Massey, who is on the hunt for his first gold bracelet and, judging by his plunging neckline, a gold chain, replied, “I live for this sh*#.”
I pressed the pause button.
I live for this sh*# isn’t exactly a thought, but it produced one in me: Why does the first sentence out of this kid’s mouth in a televised interview about poker have to have a curse word?
I guess I thought it was kind of dumb, but since Massey was still wearing his signature extra dark shades like Brett “The Hitman” Hart at Wrestlemania III, it was hard for me to get a read on my opponent. Maybe I was being judgmental, and he’s just passionate about the game.
I pressed play.
“It was the best time,” Massey continued, “I had so much fun out there. Being deep in this thing, it’s just like (an) amazing experience. Better than sex.”
Okay, I guess he is passionate about the game.
Because his statement sounded like hyperbole, Massey, who once had the Twitter handle @bigcockpoker, then clarified that it was not hyperbole by saying, “You can have sex whenever you want.”
“Okay, playa,” said Jeff Platt’s expression.
“But you can’t do this whenever you want,” Massey continued, indicating the spectacle around him. “You never know when you’re going to be able to get your next ride.”
Ironically, as a married man, that’s how I feel about sex.
Platt looked off camera to his producer with an anxious smile, wondering if this was going to become the greatest interview in poker history or a Not Safe For Work video.
In the end, it was neither. For the rest of the Platt-a-tete, Massey handed Platt platitudes, like that he was “happy but sad” about the outcome, that he felt the love from his fans, and that he thought about these moments in the gym.
Platt then set up Massey for a final cliché by saying, “That’s why you play the game, though… for these kinds of runs.”
“Nah” Massey corrected him, “I play the game for money.”
Mic drop. Or mic slop, you decide.
Platt, the consummate professional, saw a clean out and said, “We’ll end on that,” but I wish he had said, “Aaron Massey, out in fourth for over $500,000. He can have sex whenever he wants, but when it comes to gold bracelets, he’s still a virgin. Back to Stapes and Randy Lew.”
Steaming About Streaming
Regarding coverage of tournaments on the WSOP Live stream, there have been complaints on two fronts. First, there’s the delayed coverage. Because the digital footage is shipped to South Korea for editing, like episodes of Bob’s Burgers, viewers are seeing it play on a 2-and-half-hour delay, and H. Jon Benjamin is occasionally heard in the comms.
If you are a friend or follower of a player, you may already know how that player has fared by then and therefore don’t watch. Real fans and pros are turned off, and that’s not good.
Fortunately, Jeff Platt has gotten out ahead of this complaint, acknowledging the issue and that they are working out the kinks as they go, promising that patience will be answered by improvement.
Kudos to Jeff and the WSOP for quickly addressing this complaint. Hopefully, it can be remedied soon. On the other hand, maybe the delay is a good thing….
How so? When the delay was just thirty minutes on the streams in previous years, players at final tables routinely got intel from their rail or virtual rail, who were able to tell them what their opponents’ cards had been in key hands. This always seemed a little bit against the spirit of poker, a game, after all, of incomplete information.
A player’s information became a little more complete with this help from their team. Yes, it introduced another element of strategy, but it honestly always struck me as a little unfair, particularly when it was a pro with a team behind him vs. an amateur, as it was in the 2024 Main Event Final Table.
Accomplished pro Jonathan Tamayo had 2015 Main Event Champion Joe McKeehen and poker coach Dominic Nitsche on his rail when he got to heads up vs. amateur Jordan Griff that year. As you may recall, the railbirds consulted what was presumed to be a solver on Nitshce’s laptop to advise their buddy.
In this instance, they were giving him data about whether or not he had played a completed hand optimally, regardless of an opponent’s hole cards. But it seems safe to assume that Tamayo was also receiving the by-then standard info about what Griff’s hole cards had been 30 minutes earlier.
For a deeper dive into this, check out an excellent recounting by Haley Hintze on Poker.org.
None of that help is fair in my opinion. The solver situation was addressed with new rules almost immediately, and now, the production protocol has accidentally degraded the ability to communicate what the other guy had. I can’t be mad about that because if I’m ever at a final table, I don’t need better bettors also having better intel.
The second common complaint about the live stream coverage has to do with what’s being covered and has been best expressed by Matt Salsberg in his post on the spit sink formerly known as Twitter: “As much as I love watching the same High Rollers trade discs 39 times a year, I’d much prefer the @wsop shows monster stack 2 tables left where it means things for humans. Come on, guys.”
Having just given casual attention to the just-completed $100,000 NLH High Roller, I quite agree. Yuri Dzivielevski ended up with all the chips and all the consonants, for a first prize totaling over 2 million dollars. He is an expectant father, but I don’t think that 2 million was standing between his future child and college. Dzivielevski already has 12 million in lifetime cashes.
I watched the final table of the $1,500 Monster Stack, won by Richard Alsup. It was really good, but it would certainly have been better if the coverage had begun earlier in the tournament, allowing me to get invested. I was led to believe that this year’s coverage was supposed to be a return to building stories about players’ journeys, as was done in the old ESPN days.
I knew that was going to be a tall task because the old broadcast had weeks of post-production, while the stream is live with what we now know is 2 hour turn around. Maybe GGPoker will figure it out as they go along, as Platt has said, or maybe improved coverage is still coming when they switch over to ESPN for the Main Event. We shall see.
Have a great week, and hopefully I’ll bump into you at The WSOP.