Following our interview with Veronica Brill on Wednesday, it was announced that Nick Vertucci would no longer be involved with High Stakes Poker Productions, the company behind the Hustler Casino Live (HCL) stream.
The story is still developing and we’ll bring you the very latest news as it happens.
Yesterday’s 50-minute interview with Brill, Vertucci’s erstwhile podcast co-host, is available to view in its entirety (or you can listen to the audio-only version on Spotify). However, we know that time is a precious commodity, and to help provide context on this important story we’ve taken a closer look at some of the key points and moments of the interview, below.
Brill was with Vertucci when the story broke
A series of social media posts over the weekend first brought the story to light, with former HCL player Julia McBride sharing screenshots of a conversation with Vertucci, followed by suggestions a Hustler Casino dealer named Lauren had lost her job after accusing HCL co-owner Vertucci of sexual harassment.
Before I came down [to LA] he was like “Oh man, I'm having issues with an employee, [Lauren’s] just crazy, she's probably just wants money”, you know, really grazing over it.
I don't know what's going on at Hustler, I'm not involved in employees. So I knew there was something going on but I didn't know what it was. Nick was grazing over the story saying that she was an angry employee, basically, trying to extort money out of him or something.
Nick's always doing something, up to something, fighting with someone online. I've gotten to the point where I just don't try to dive into all the sh*t that he does because, to me, I thought a lot of his fights were stupid. He's fighting with everyone so often that I was just, like, ‘Okay, par for the course’.
So anyway, Julia's tweets came out and I was at Nick's place and I remember him being pretty stressed out all weekend, and I remember in the back of my mind thinking ‘Why is this guy so stressed out? Why is he acting like such a nervous wreck? If it's just like some sort of disgruntled employee I'm sure the casino will help him deal with it.’
In hindsight, anytime I would question him he just tells me what I want to hear, but Julia's tweets come out and I was, like, ‘Oh, these texts are pretty bad’, but again I don't know the context of it.
I said “Are there more texts?” and he's, like, “No, no, no, no, I don't think so.” And I was, like, “Are you guys flirtatious? Is this your relationship?” and he's, like, “Well, over the phone, yeah.” I'm, like, “Well then just just tell people that like you guys have this relationship,” because I assumed that he had this flirtatious relationship with her. That was a really bad assumption on my part.
He had just a weird reaction to it, and he was very emotional, visibly upset. At one point he said to me “I need your support, I'm going to find out who my friends are,” and what went through my head was, like, ‘Okay, you need my support, you want me to be your friend, I need the truth. I need you to tell me the truth, I need you to tell me - is there more? Are there more texts? Is there anything else I need to know?’
I was thinking, the worst case scenario is that he talks to a lot of women like this. I tell him he needs to apologize, he needs to go get help, he's a sex addict or whatever. But what has transpired has been 10 times worse.
I ended up switching my flight on Sunday. I left early because he was a wreck.
Allegations build, including Ellie, Ash and Kitty
Further allegations started to surface later on that weekend, including on a Twitter Space featuring Ellie - a trans woman who has played at HCL - poker content creator Ash Kardash and pro player Kitty Kuo.
When I got home I heard the Space where Ellie talked about how he was asking to see her breasts.
One of Nick’s many run-ins with people was around him not respecting pronouns. I think he was having an argument on Twitter with a trans woman, I believe - if I misunderstand what the disagreement was, I apologize; I try not to get involved in all his sh*t because it's, like, brain-scrambling, it's too much. So he had misgendered, used incorrect pronouns, disrespected pronouns, and then Ellie and someone else in the trans community reached out to him, and it sounded like they broke bread, and he asked for forgiveness, and they forgave him.
And then Ellie came on the show and said that he was asking to see if she had a dick, asking for tit pics or breast pics or whatever, and just being creepy.
Then Ash [Kardash] came up and started talking, and that was when I was, like, ‘You've got to be f*cking kidding me.’
I knew that there was something with Ash, because he told me that she wanted him, and she was hitting on him, and she wanted an ‘arrangement’. He told me she would sit on his lap and flirt with him. I'm, like, ‘This young, beautiful woman? Why does she want him?’ And then he says ‘arrangement’. I know young women who want some sort of arrangement, like a sugar daddy or something, and it's not my place to judge. Women can do what they want.
That's all I knew about Ash, and then when I heard her side of the story I'm, like, ‘F*cking hell, this guy just tells me everything that I want to hear from his perspective to make him look like the good guy or the victim.’ And it's ironic, because he wanted to do a podcast about how he hates victim mentality, but yet in every single story he's the victim.
So when I heard about the Ash thing, and then I saw Kitty say how he showed her a picture of his d*ck at the poker table, and all these other women, I immediately texted Nick and I was, like, ‘You make it sound like you're the victim here, like Lauren is trying to take money from you, and Julia's just, like, posting this bullsh*t but there's nothing else, but now all of a sudden a lot of these stories are starting to sound similar, a lot of these women are sounding similar, and you're no longer the victim. Maybe one you could potentially be the victim and she's trying to extort money from you, but all of them? What are there, now, 15 of them?’
I told Nick, ‘You wanted me to be your friend, you f*cking lied to me, you made every story sound like you're the victim, like every woman wants you,’ and now it makes sense and I'm so f*cking embarrassed that I even believed him.
The power dynamic
One of the allegations against Vertucci is that sexual harassment claims against him from an employee were ignored, with the employee eventually losing her job. Brill believes Vertucci is ignorant of the implications involved in the power dynamic between a senior figure such as Vertucci and those working under him.
I eventually spoke to [Lauren] because I’d heard one side of the story and I needed to hear the other side; I needed to know that it wasn't some crazy woman who was trying to extort money.
It sounded like a woman who no one listened to, and was put in really terrible situations by a predatory man. There was a power dynamic there, and that's another thing I think Nick doesn't understand.
If you were working under me and I was your manager, I can't tell you ‘You look handsome.’ I don't even hug anyone at work, you just don't do that. I don't think he understands that power dynamic.
It does boil down to Nick living in a different world… I don't think he has the capacity to understand what he's doing. When I worked with him I often times would have to just accept the things he said, because he was not often capable of critical thinking.
What next?
Brill is no stranger to online criticism, and understands she will likely draw fire for working so closely with Vertucci. With him now apparently frozen out of the HCL production team, what does she see in the future for HCL, co-producer Ryan Feldman, and herself?
Ryan's probably completely overwhelmed right now and trying to figure out what to do.
After speaking to Lauren - and, again, that's Lauren's story to tell - if Ryan knew, it's probably not going to be good for him either, and it's really unfortunate because I think Ryan is probably the most talented person within this form of poker entertainment.
We all knew Nick, but if Ryan knew and then just prioritized the game over everything, and didn't nip it in the bud… I hope it doesn't destroy the business. I don't know how I feel about that, because we all love Hustler Casino Live as a brand, but I don't know what it's going to look like for him if he prioritized the business over doing something about it, if he knew about it.
I think like it would be cool if [Vertucci] at some point in his life realized that he was a piece of sh*t and accountable for it, and a f*cking liar and a manipulator and lied to me about everything, but I don't think that's going to happen.
I hope that Lauren comes out and tells her story. I hope if Ryan knew - and I know, like, Ryan is not that guy, and unfortunately if Nick f*cks this all up for Ryan, it's unfortunate - but if Ryan knew, Ryan has to have some accountability. I don't know if that means losing the business… I just don't know if there's going to be, like, a super good outcome in any of this.
I'm terribly embarrassed for staying on the podcast when I did.
[Matt] Berkey brought this up… Berkey is a very ethical person and I've always followed what he was saying… I remember him being, like, ‘You can't be associated with this guy,’ and I was just selfishly wanting to do a podcast, wanting to stay relevant, interested in hosting still, you know, and I selfishly stayed. But I knew Nick was this old school, like, ‘Oh, I'm a man's man,’ and he had stopped talking to me like that, and we had actually formed a friendship, and so I selfishly continued to do the work.
I think that a lot of people are going to hate my guts now, and that's fine, but it is what it is; I'm fine not doing any more poker work. I mean, I'm already too old anyway, but like I knew that after the jack-four stuff, when I came back and did the podcast, I knew that I was burning the bridge to the rest of the poker community. I knew that [Vertucci] did not have good standing with anybody, and it was because he was a f*cking idiot when he came to dealing with their sh*t, but I didn't think it was this bad.
