On many levels, Brain Rast could easily be described as poker's GOAT. Six bracelets and $27M in career earnings don’t tell half the story. He’s won the prestigious Poker Players Championship an incredible three times, a record he holds with Michael Mizrachi. He’s played at the very highest level in both tournaments and MTTs. He’s a member of the Poker Hall of Fame.
But, there’s one thing that’s eluded him and that’s a super-deep run in the Main Event. He’s only cashed in it twice and his best finish was 134th in 2022. He’s smashed through that ceiling this year and is coming back to Day 7 with a stack of 12,675,000, good for an overnight finish of 22 out of the remaining 59 players. Ahead of Day 7 starting we caught up with Rast to find out what it means to him.
How are you feeling after Day 6 of the Main Event?
Brian Rast: I feel f*****g great. Like, I'm super grateful. I mean, every year I'm sitting on the other side of the casino playing a poker tournament or cash game checking the updates going, ‘Man, who are those lucky motherf*****s who are still in this thing? 59 people left. What the hell? How awesome would that be?’ It's like I'm living that life this year. So I'm just grateful. Really. This is exactly where I want to be, still in the Main Event, grinding my ass off.
You're such an accomplished poker player and you're already in the Poker Hall of Fame. What would a Main Event win mean to you and add to your poker legacy?
I don't know, man. You guys will figure that out. I mean, I think it would be sweet but for me it’s like ‘Where am I now?’ I just can't even allow myself to think about that stuff because it's really ultimately just a distraction. Like the way to put it is like Buddhism, they teach that attachment leads to suffering. And so, if I'm attaching myself to what happened in past hands or future outcomes, it's just going to f**k with me. I'm going to perform sub-optimally. So, yeah, I don't know. You tell me. Right now I'm just going into Day 7 and I'm going to try to make it through Day 7 playing one hand of poker at a time.
You’re a high-stakes cash player, a high-stakes MTT player, we’re sure you go over hands with people on a daily basis and give them advice. If somebody was in your spot with 59 left in the Main going to Day 7, what advice would you be giving them?
I don't think they're going to rework their poker game. So it's more just about maximizing performance and doing that by getting to sleep tonight. You know, you show up, be present, watch every hand and try to get reads. Don't spend a lot of time super analyzing every hand. You should spend more time thinking strategically about how you're going to adapt and exploit the people at the poker table, especially in the Main because there are all kinds of different poker players here who have all kinds of different skill levels.
There’s just room for way more exploits than you'd normally see. Normally, when you're playing for this kind of money it’s a high roller with a bunch of guys that you know, and while it’s not like you can't exploit them at all, they’re playing a much more fundamentally solid style based on GTO and they've studied a bunch more. There’s much less room for exploits there than what's happening at these tables. Like dude, I've been playing some really wild poker hands.
I don't really want to say publicly what it is and I don't want to say, ‘Oh that's why I'm here,’ but it's definitely helped. I've been playing great. I wish I could go back and tell the old me, you know, 10-15 years ago, when I didn't have the patience for it.
I just cared about making money. Playing in the Main Event for like two weeks, when the heart of the cash games are going on. I came in and gambled a bunch and didn't take it seriously, and the truth is, to maximize your edge in this you have to take it super seriously. It plays a different style and it just wasn't what I was doing when I was younger. But here we are. 59 left. It feels fucking good.
Day 7 of the Main Event starts on Saturday at midday, and you can catch all the action on PokerOrg Instant.
