|
Originally Posted by Hippy80
Joe,
I'll do my best to not to repeat my usual EPT Live trolling, but some may slip in.
As a much smaller fish in the shark pool of poker media, I'd love to hear how you go started in the business, and what you'd recommend to people who might be interested in it as a career.
Have you ever been tweeted something while live streaming that has made you go into uncontrollable laughter? Could you/did you read it out on air?
How much material do you pre-prepare for each EPT? Do you come up with much of the material on the spot?
With the poker analysis, I know you've had coaching on providing this, how did this come about, and is it still going on?
With the 100th EPT on the near horizon, do you think we'll see the first double EPT winner before the 100th EPT? How unhappy will Neil Johnson be if we do?
If you're interested in this as a career, do everything. Write everything. Go to everything. Participate in everything. Listen to everything. DO EVERYTHING. Rob - it seems like you're doing a good job at this. I'm sure it's harder now than when I did it, but all I did was try to entertain myself. At first I just got lucky and Huff hooked me up with a Cardplayer internship in 2005 at the WSOP. That was my foot in the door.
From there, I just tried to make myself present. I did a lot of stuff for free (or nearly free), just so people could get to know me and learn who I was. Eventually someone was dumb enough to start paying me for it. I have to give so much thanks and respect to Joe Sebok and Barry Greenstein for noticing this early on and hiring me on the do Poker Road. The site ultimately failed, but launched more than a few poker journalism careers.
I've never been tweeted anything that made me go into uncontrollable laughter, no. It's pretty hard to get me that hard in 140 characters, especially in poker. However, I have read things that filled me with uncontrollable rage/sadness, and those are tough to get over.
I don't prepare much for the live streams. I just kinda let the comedy (if there is any) come out organically. It's a much different beast than the TV shows (which I write/prepare down to the frame). You can do longer conversations, bits and find the fun stuff. On TV the fun stuff has to be planned.
I started getting coaching because when I was auditioning for the Big Game, Daniel Negreanu and Barry Greenstein were two of my biggest advocates with Poker Stars, but they agreed my analysis was terrible. Honestly, I didn't even know what analysis WAS. So they made the simple solution of hiring Jimmy Fricke (Gobboboy) to go over all the hands with me and make sure I didn't say anything stupid. He's been working with me every since. At first we used to watch the shows together, over Skype, but now I know enough that I just read some notes from him via email.
I will say I've come a million miles from where I first started. I can get by without Jimmy at this point, fumbling my way through the analysis, but I prefer not to, because he makes it SO MUCH BETTER. He also adds to the comedy quite a bit from the little jokes he writes to me in his notes. It wouldn't be nearly as good without him.
It's like the difference between just a **** job or a **** job with a little hand action at the same time. Both are good. One is a lot better.
I don't think we'll see a two-time winner before the 100th EPT, no. I hope there's never a two-time winner. I think Neil would take it just fine though. I don't think I've ever seen the guy angry. Which means he's probably got like 39483049 bodies in his basement.
|