Ryan Feldman on WSOP's Million Dollar Game: 'It could be our biggest ever'

We spoke with HCL Producer and Co-Owner Ryan Feldman about the stream moving to the World Series of Poker, what we can expect from today’s epic game, and the challenges of putting a production like this together in a temporary home.

First of all, it's a huge stream today and an amazing list of players, how excited are you for this one?

Ryan Feldman: I'm very excited. I think this will be one of our biggest and most important shows that we've ever had for a lot of different reasons. One, it's the Million Dollar Game. Two, it could be the Million Dollar Game in which people have the most money in play, because it's at the World Series – and people just have more money when they're here. 

Also, just the dynamics of the lineup. You have a bunch of action players who are going to play big pots – Texas Mike, Martin Kabrhel, Alan Keating, Santhosh, Peter – so I think this game has the potential to deliver the biggest pot we've ever seen. All of that and being in a new setting here in Vegas and collaborating with the World Series of Poker, I think it makes it really exciting.

$50K High Roller champ Santhosh Suvarna will be among the players in today's Million Dollar Game.

How hard has it been for you to come out of your home at Hustler and do some streams here? 

Yeah, at first it's a little difficult because we’ve had to learn a new system. We have a control room setup that is not super comfortable to us. We do have a great tech team here to support us and help us, so it's not too bad, and everybody here is very helpful behind the scenes, and they want us to succeed. But it's really cool just to have a table setup right in the middle of all these big tournaments and feature tables going on.

How has the first week of streams been so far? 

Last week went pretty well. We had some good lineups. It definitely could have gone better, but they were pretty good. We had some tech issues, but we got them ironed out, and I think we’ll be good for today. I think it was good to have those games last week to prepare for the big one today. 

Martin Kabrhel will be busy at the $100K final table before he joins the stream.

You've always said that the Million Dollar Game is the hardest lineup to put together. Has that been the case for this one?

I've been preparing this lineup for a while now, so I've had an idea of what the core is for the most part. It’s actually gone pretty smooth compared to past Million Dollar Games. But, there are always little issues, leading up to the day – just trying to keep everything together, and make sure everyone's still in, confirmed, gets there on time, and gets their money in. 

When you're this close to stream time, do you still have concerns until there are cards in the air?

Well, there are tournaments every day, so that's a challenge. We've got Martin Kabrhel at the final table of the $100K on the day of the Million Dollar Game, so we don't know what's going to happen. The moment he busts, I'm sure he'll jump right into the stream, but what if he gets heads-up? He could be ten hours in playing that, so that kind of sucks. I get it – they want to win bracelets, and they want to win player of the year but it creates challenges for us.

Feldman will be working hard right until the stream wraps up.

Do you have a plan B? Do you have players lined up to jump in?

No, I mean, that's just not how it works for a Million Dollar Game. You don't have people waiting in the wings with a million or two million dollars. First of all, putting together a lineup like this, there's a lot that goes into it behind the scenes, because you can't just throw anyone in there, right? It has to be players that everybody wants to play with or is okay playing with. They're not just playing for fun. This is real money, no matter how wealthy you are, no matter how big you play. Having millions on the table, you have to take it seriously, and it's a big deal. We can't just have some random player from the tournament field come and just jump in if they have a million dollars in their account. It's not that simple.

Phil Hellmuth was rumored to be playing it – any chance of that happening?

No, there's no chance. I think if Phil Hellmuth were going to play in the game today, it would have been planned a long time ago, and he would want it to be marketed and make it a big deal, right? He's not the type to just show up late to such a massive event. He's probably on the short list of people that I would say yes to if they showed up with a million dollars last minute, but no, he's obviously focused on the tournament grind. He wants to win more bracelets.

Phil Hellmuth will be chasing bracelets instead of million-dollar pots on Friday.

How long can viewers expect the stream to go today? 

It's hard to say, but the goal is to get at least ten hours, possibly as much as 12. It really just gets dictated by the players. If we get to later in the night, and the game gets short-handed, we're just going to end it at some point soon after that, right? But, if we get to midnight and we're having massive pots, the game’s amazing, and it's seven-handed, we don't want to end it. We want it to keep going. So as long as the players want to keep going at that time, we want it to keep going.

Finally, how proud are you to just have this going on at the WSOP? It feels like a significant achievement for Hustler Casino Live to be here.

Yeah, it's pretty cool. It’s something that I envisioned a few years back, and we started talking about it. It's cool for fans to be able to see the stage and see the cash game players playing on our stage while these tournaments are going on. It's cool to have that relationship with WSOP, and we're hoping that this is only the start of a relationship that expands to other WSOP stops around the world.

The Million Dollar Game IV starts at 3pm PT and you can watch it all below and on the Hustler Casino Live YouTube channel.