It's an exciting week in the poker community as the first episodes of No Limit – a potentially revolutionary new documentary series centered on the 2024 World Series of Poker Paradise festival – will hit the airwaves on the World Series of Poker YouTube channel. On Tuesday, November 4, the first episode of the series airs, followed soon after by the second on Thursday, November 6.
PokerOrg spoke with the show's creator Dustin Iannotti as the first whispers of the project were heard. With the release of the show's trailer last week, it was high time we heard from Iannotti again.
Iannotti also generously provided a deleted scene from No Limit featuring Daniel and Amanda Negreanu to share with audiences – check it out above.
'We've been on the grind'
The last time we spoke was back in April – have you been in the editing bay ever since?
Yes, we've been on the grind. There hasn't been a day, other than a weekend, where we haven't spent a considerable amount of time on it.
That's serious dedication and it seems to have paid off because the trailer looks phenomenal.
I really appreciate you saying that, but I'd be remiss if I didn't say that obviously it couldn't have been done without someone with the financial backing to take a chance on it. So I do have to truly thank the World Series of Poker for trusting us and allowing us to do this. And I believe that's the right direction to go in – taking a chance on projects like this that can hopefully yield better storytelling in the poker world.
Kristen Foxen is just one of several notable players whose stories are told in No Limit. What can you tell us about the conversation surrounding the distribution process?
In late summer the decision was made to release the show on YouTube right before this year's WSOP Paradise. It's a nice segue into telling stories around that event. As far as the distribution goes, within the poker world there's a lot of guerrilla marketing because we don't always have the benefits of mainstream press at our disposal. We've been reaching out to the cast, friends, and supporters to ask them to share and get the word out to make the launch feel bigger than a standard release.
In a way, the marketing feels more authentic when it comes directly from the people involved in the project.
The other thing to note is that this was always meant to be a proof of concept. It's kind of a crawl before you walk type situation. If this goes well and continues to receive positive feedback, I imagine there will be talks about continuing to do content like this in the future.
Do you have any plans in place to return to WSOP Paradise this year?
We have had chats about it, but nothing is confirmed as of yet. There are currently no plans, but if there were to be plans for continuing the series I very strongly believe it would be in the summer in Las Vegas, covering the Main Event.
'A little bit of magic'
Is there a particular storyline or aspect of the show that you're most excited for people to see?
Oh, man, you're going to make me pick just one?
Your top three then.
I would say Kristen [Foxen's] story for sure. The first time I saw the rough version of Kristen's story I actually got emotional during the scene where she talks about her 2024 Main Event run. I feel like her story is the most reminiscent of an athlete's hero's journey. I think that her being in the spotlight in that moment, with so many people rooting for her, it also invited those people to then feel like she let them down in some way. That's a hard thing to deal with and recover from. Her being so open and honest with us was really special and I think people are going to resonate with it.
Alan Keating provides what Dustin Iannotti calls "peak entertainment" in Episode 5 of No Limit. The second one I'm going to pick based on what I call peak entertainment. It's Episode 5, titled Heroes and Villains, and Alan Keating's arc in that episode is incredible. It's Alan at his best, being a compelling character that's impossible to take your eyes off of.
And Liv Boeree. Without revealing too much, Liv was not a cast member at all and it just happened as complete dumb luck. I had worked with Liv over a decade ago for a short period of time so we did know each other, but not extremely well. Maria Ho busted the Super Main and we were really hoping to have multiple storylines centered on women. Then I'm like, 'Hey I wonder if Liv would be willing to do it.' And we ended up following Liv very early, earlier than many people would suspect. That story is incredible and because it helps so much with our ending it has to be in my top three.
That's an incredibly lucky swing for the production.
It takes a lot of luck. Obviously, you can plan for everything, but it also takes a lot of luck.
That's part of the whole documentary process, right? You never know what you're going to get.
I remember when we were in the airport waiting for the flight home I looked around at the crew and I said, 'I feel like I'm about to sound super philosophical, but I believe we just captured a little bit of magic here.'
