Love him or loathe him, you have to respect Matt Berkey for tackling the good, bad, and downright ugly of the poker world head-on in his award-winning daily podcast, Only Friends.
Berkey’s announcement in March that it was coming to an end surprised the industry and shocked many fans addicted to the snappy banter, the degen crew, and the daily chaos the podcast whipped up five days a week.
“I would say that it's probably more likely that we ended prematurely than I was surprised we got to 719 episodes,” shares Berkey. “I figured at a thousand episodes I would reevaluate, but our hand was kind of forced with our studio space being sold off.”
In an exclusive interview with PokerOrg, which will debut next week, Berkey talks about the Only Friends journey and how he tackled some of poker's biggest scandals. The full interview includes Berkey’s takes on his $1,000,000 heads-up battle and near fisticuffs with Nik Airball, his thoughts on the infamous J-4 cheating scandal at Hustler Casino Live, the Tice/Becker battle at the 2024 WSOP, and what the future holds for Berkey and the rest of the crew.
In the meantime, here's a sneak preview.
'Were we the right group of people to do it?'
When we set out to do the daily podcast, I knew it was filling a void that I thought was evident in our space.
My first question: would there be enough content to make the show interesting? Number two, were we the right group of people to do it?
But as the show was winding down, I went back and watched the first few episodes. I realized how much we had morphed away from just being a group of friends within the poker space, talking about our daily events, into more of a news source. I don’t really want to say ‘news source’ because I don't want to belittle actual news sources.
But we did lean a lot heavier into the daily news aspect of the poker community. We became more media than I expected us to be. That was a little bit surprising, but I guess you run out of personal details to share at a certain point.
'Those shows were pioneers and way ahead of their time'
I saw what Pat McAfee was doing in the NFL space. I thought to myself that I don't mind wasting 90 minutes a day listening to an expert in his craft talk about his space in a very lighthearted, comedic way. So, maybe we can do the same in the poker industry.
I was a fan of the Poker Road radio show years ago, founded by Barry Greenstein and Joe Sebok. Barry had a really important vision for the growth of poker.
Predating Poker Road was The Circuit with Scott Huff, Joe Sebok, and Gavin Smith. And then, even before that, I think there was another show that was just Joe Stapleton and Scott Huff wrapped around the Live at the Bike days. It’s a shame that it came to an end when it did.
Those shows were pioneers and way ahead of their time. They were ahead of 4K video and YouTube as a distribution platform. They were just roughing it with decent audio, which made doing the show much easier.
If Only Friends were to head out on the road and try to run a five-day-a-week podcast from an event, we would need a lot of cooperation from the space.
Whereas if you're just doing audio, all you really need is a place to set up a bench and a few microphones. Poker Road could have evolved into something massive; they had the right idea.
They had guys with enough name power in Gavin and Joe who were actually playing all the events and were easily recognizable, so they garnered a lot of fanfare.
I was coming up in the game during that time and was a loyal supporter of the show. I would have fanboyed over it if I had seen them recording at some space.
They also had the key player in Phil Ivey, where he was this mysterious figure, and Greenstein had just enough access to get little tidbits into his life.
I feel like when we decided that this was a necessary niche to fill, we checked a lot of those boxes. Everything from Landon Tice being the up-and-comer to my friend Brian, who was a career grinder who's now moving off into other aspects of life, and myself, kind of removed from it, all playing high-stakes behind glass doors.
I felt like our crew could attack it from all four corners and give something interesting to the viewers to tune into five days a week, because poker itself isn't going to be that enthralling.
'The major scandals were a boost to the show'
I was thinking back on some of the highlights over the last few years. Obviously, the major scandals were a big boost to the show.
As we were winding down, I went back and watched a lot of the early episodes, and we took off like a bottle rocket.
Right out of the gate, we did an episode covering the story about Brandi Hawbaker’s story and death. It was a sad story. We did that the second week we were on air and dedicated a whole show to it.
That really got the juices going for being a bit more of a storytelling podcast, recounting things that had happened in the past, and speaking on behalf of the internet.
Shortly after that, the whole GG scandal broke with Bryn Kenney and Ali Imsirovic, which then cascaded into Jake Schindler, and that all carried through the World Series that year.
And to top it off, shortly thereafter came the Hustler Casino and J-4 coverage regarding the hand between Garrett Adelstein and Robbi Jade Lew. That was pretty insane, and its timing was pretty crazy too.
The amount of velocity that we had as far as having content to discuss, as far as being a go-to source for the daily water cooler chat in year one, was out of this world and impossible to replicate.
The Interview with Matt Berkey drops soon on YouTube, Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Watch previous The Interview guests Chris Moneymaker, Liv Boeree, and Bryn Kenney with PokerOrg’s Craig Tapscott.
