It's a great day for fans of poker podcasts.
Phenom Poker Ambassadors Brian Rast and Phil Laak have thrown their metaphorical hats into the ring with the launch of Late Reg – a weekly podcast that centers on poker strategy and stories from the felt.
"We are the last podcast on Earth. Everyone else has one and we like to arrive late so here we are. We're the last podcast ever," Laak tells listeners at the top of the debut episode.
While they may indeed be late to the podcasting party, it's unlikely anyone will complain about their presence now that they've arrived. With about half a century's worth of experience at the tables between the two of them, Rast and Laak bring no shortage of knowledge, insight, and intrigue to the poker podcasting arena.
And with extensive connections within the poker world, audiences can expect the best of the best when it comes to guest appearances.
In Episode 1, Rast and Laak invited Eric Wasserson to be the show's first guest.
Throughout the two-hour long conversation the trio covered a range of topics, including Wasserson's recent wins on High Stakes Poker playing with mega-superstar Kevin Hart, wild stories generated by proposition bets, discussions of artificial intelligence, tales of disaster at the blackjack tables – and much more.
Essentially, it's everything you want from a podcast hosted by two legends of the game.
'It's a hard life'
While the entirety of the episode warrants your attention, there's one moment from the conversation that's worth highlighting here.
It's a ten-minute sliver of the conversation, right around the hour mark – but it ties in perfectly with a statement Jeremy Ausmus made on social media about the viability of chasing the high stakes poker dream in 2026. Ausmus' post drew a variety of responses from notable names, not all of whom agreed with his optimistic outlook.
Rast, Laak, and Wasserson offer their own thoughts on poker as a career path – scroll down for a taste of how that conversation went.
Eric Wasserson featured as the first guest on Brian Rast and Phil Laak's new podcast, Late Reg. Rast: "I think the advice for people that are thinking about poker is that in order to really have a true, coherent, meaningful love of poker – yes, you have to love playing games – but there has to be a specific thing about it... You need to love the game-theory type aspect of: how am I going to play these hands better? I don't think it can be like you're just in it purely for the gamble."
Wasserson: "You can just be a degen and happen to be good at it, though."
Laak: "If you succeed in gambling, I believe at some point – whether you know it or not – you have morphed into being a non-practicing or practicing urban Buddhist. Because there's something about making peace with letting go."
Wasserson: "I don't know, some people need the pain. That's what drives them. Some people need to feel the wins and feel the losses – it's all yin and yang I think."
Rast: "The problem is most of the people who love the degen part of it too much... it's the stories where like wow this guy has a ton of talent and then they're broke and then they have big debts."
Wasserson: "That's why the people that can be a little degen--"
Laak: "A little degen? I remember when I had x dollars and taking 20% of it to flip with this guy at The Commerce who would flip me for the pink ones, $5Ks, and he would go until everything in my hand was gone. And I went, 'Well you can't be that sick because there's always somebody sicker than you that was willing to just felt you out.'"
Wasserson: "With all that being said, if we're talking about being great at poker or gambling, there aren't that many people that have done well, or like really well, in that world. And that's the reason – because some people degen, some people aren't degen enough. You need to find the mix of being a bit degen, loving the gambling, also loving improving and thinking about ways to be better. And it's hard to find someone that has all of those things at once. It's a hard life."
