Lee Davy sits down with PokerStars Team Pro, Jason Somerville, to talk about his love of streaming, his relationship with Twitch, Ultimate Poker, PokerStars and more.
Jason Somerville is many things.
He is a World Series of Poker bracelet winner, he a member of Team PokerStars, he is the creator of the groundbreaking Run It Up Twitch channel, and he is the only openly gay male high stakes poker player.
He’s not done.
Not by a long shot.
PokerStars have breathed new life into the Run It Up series, he still has plenty of card action left in those fingertips, and many people are touting him as the new leader of poker’s new wave of new wave.
But for now, he has to put all that on hold for a chat with yours truly, and for that I am truly honored.
You have quite an ambitious filming schedule for Run It Up…tell me about it…and how as it been going?
“My plan for Run It Up Season 3 is to do a 70-day stretch of shows. This was always my plan before my deal with PokerStars. If you look at the most successful streamers on Twitch it’s all about consistency and giving people a show that they know they can tune in, and watch, on a daily basis – or as close to it as you can get.
“My plan is to stream for four hours per day. You have caught me just prior to my 10th show. I’ve streamed for 57-hours so far. I have averaged 7-7.5hrs per day. My longest being 8hrs, and my shortest just under 7.
“It’s been an awesome time. The consumers seem to be very happy, and I am certainly happy with the way things have started out. The best is still yet to come. I was sick for five days, last week, and I still got in the seat and streamed. I am over that now. I feel much better.”
What were you like the first couple of times you ever streamed?
“I started making poker videos nine years ago. I was terrible back then. Then I worked with Daniel {Negreanu} on Poker VT. I worked in front of real cameras; I had teleprompter’s; I had a production crew – but I will still terrible. Then I started making YouTube videos. I was still terrible.
“It takes time to develop your voice; your confidence, and broadcasting ability. I didn’t go to broadcasting school. Nobody taught me anything directly. I learned by studying people I respected and through experience. It takes a heavy investment of time before you can cast comfortably in front of thousands of people.
“I am glad my life worked out the way it did. I spent a year and a half making daily YouTube videos. That consistency forced me to be creative. I got used to the grind. Last fall, I put out 50 30-minute consecutive episodes. This season I have tripled that content in 10-days, because the shows are longer.”
“It’s been a fun challenge. I wasn’t sure how people would react. If you want to hang out with me on Monday then do it. If you want to hang out with me on the weekend – do it. That’s what’s great about Twitch.
“The guys that I look up to the most, on Twitch, are streaming every day – 10hrs per day. That’s what I am trying to create for my community and the Run It Up fan base.”
I have recently read a biography of the Minecraft creator Markus Persson. I learned about these kids who became multi-millionaires by recording themselves commentating on their own video games. Is that where you got your inspiration?
“There are three people in the video gaming world who really inspired me. I have a friend called HuskyMUDKIPZ. When he first messaged me he was a fan of the videos that I had been doing. He had 50,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel where he made Minecraft videos for a more younger audience. He now has 1.8 million subscribers. He makes content every single day. He was the first person who inspired me to create every single day.
“I look to guys like Day9 who was a pioneer with StarCraft, making daily StarCraft videos where he would sit there with a webcam taking about interesting theories about the game. His content made me think, ‘you know what, I can do the same with poker.’
“Another person who inspired me was another StarCraft player. He is a great friend of mine called Andre ‘gretorp’ Hengchua. He turned StarCraft into a sports broadcasting career within eSports. He influenced me to continue broadcasting and gave me guidance and pointers. He’s such an inspiration.
“There are so many people on Twitch who have managed to stream 8hrs per day of interesting content. If you have a good recipe for it, you can hang out with them all day on Twitch. It’s a unique proposition that doesn’t exist in poker, in this format.”
You are creating something special. Online poker training sites will now have to evolve quickly. Do you concur?
“The best thing about Twitch is we are live and interactive. I play a hand and people are asking me questions instantly. I am receiving Boom! hands by the minute. My aim is not to compete with online training sites. There is a place for those companies. My target audience was never hardcore poker players. Instead, I am after recreational players. I want to make poker more palatable and entertaining. Twitch is the perfect platform.”
I guess with all the fun you are having the last thing you need is for someone serious to come on the show and start questioning the way you are playing?
“That’s one of the reasons I like to control the show pretty tightly. It’s so important that the person controlling the show controls what the public sees. There is no chat box on the screen – either Twitch or poker. If I put the Twitch chat on the screen you are offering your platform to someone else to hijack. The best streamers don’t let that happen. I am ultimately responsible for the show. When we have over 10,000 people in the chat it’s a mess.”
How important was the Ultimate Poker platform, for the Run It Up series, and the relationship you now have with PokerStars?
“Ultimate Poker changed my life in many ways. They asked me to move to Vegas to make the deal happen. I did. I was a few minutes walk from the office. I spent a lot of time in those offices. I learned a lot about the industry, about the regulations, and I got to learn a lot about what the site was looking for and how I could help them.
“I saw that some poker sites were spending thousands of dollars on a billboard. What ROI does a billboard have for an online poker company? I started to think about this. We are an online poker company. Doesn’t it make sense to advertise where these people hang out – online?
“PokerStars have a lot of great content. There is the EPT content, the BIG Game, Shark Cage – but this is live poker content. Online poker content is lacking. I am not 100% sure about the numbers, but in the first week, I think we have had 14 million minutes watched of me playing poker on PokerStars. There were a quarter of a million unique viewers checked out the channel. That’s exposure on the actual PokerStars client. The average person stuck around for 56-minutes. It’s so hard getting anyone to stick around for 5-minutes.
“This was the first seven days. We are just getting started. We are seeing growth from week to week. Sunday’s shows was crazy. We peaked at 20,000 concurrent views on Sunday. By comparison, in the Oct, Nov, Dec block of last year, my viewers had watched 36 million minutes of streaming. So in the first week alone I have done about a third of that.
“You don’t have to pay me a dime. You can just sit there and watch. It’s a great platform for consumers, players and the promoter’s and sites. People get to watch me enjoy PokerStars for 7-hrs per day, 7-days per week. What better advertisement could you get? What makes poker so amazing, is you can drive people to play with you directly. It’s so interactive. They play in my home game, they send my hands to review, it’s fantastic.
“The home game we created is growing. We just broke 10,000 members. We had our first 1,000 real money tournament last week. We had a couple of $2-3k prize pools. I am really excited about what can grow from this. Poker and Twitch make a great partnership.”
Bloggers who want book deals grow their audience before they tap on the book publisher’s door. Was this your methodology?
“I never set out intentionally to do what it takes to get a PokerStars deal. When my Ultimate Poker deal ended, I was already in contact with Twitch about becoming the flagship poker streamer. The guy who runs poker for Twitch happens to be a fan of Run It Up. He came to me and asked if I wanted to start streaming regularly. When the UP deal fell through Twitch were my only partner.
“I started on Twitch, and the phones started ringing. It wasn’t just PokerStars. I had a lot of potential partners. I was pretty adamant that I wanted to do what I wanted to do, and work in co-operation with a site. Eventually, I started talking with PokerStars. It was a long negotiation. It was three and half months from the first call before I finally signed the deal.
“People were like, “JCarver why are you doing 70 days in a row, Uncle Baazov making you do it?” At this point in my life I am who I am. PokerStars wouldn’t have allied with me if they weren’t happy with that. I am not going to change what got me here. I am aligned with what Stars are trying to accomplish, but I need to be myself. They know that.”
The show produces authenticity. I think this is missing with sponsored pros. You cannot hide on Twitch. PokerStars will learn that people want authenticity. You have made that happen.
“There is some element of performance that goes on, but if you hang out with someone 7-hours, 7-days per week, you are going to get a good feel of who they are as a human being. I think that’s a good thing. Poker sponsorship has been a backwards business for the past few years and we have seen the economy correct it.
“If you invest $100k in a player – is he returning that investment? Who can do that these days? There aren’t many, and some are getting paid more than that. If you aren’t driving value to your partner then you have a problem.
“We used to think that being good at poker was good enough. It’s not about that. You have to be ‘x’ high to ride a roller coaster. In poker, you have to be ‘x’ good to be a sponsored poker player. But once you are at that level it’s much better to be mediocre at poker, and work really hard, than be a sicko at poker who turns up at a few $100k’s and does a few interviews.
“It’s fine if that’s what you want to do. I have a few friends like Scott Seiver and Dan Smith who are sickos in the game, but they don’t want to spend hours upon hours promoting an online poker site. They would want a crazy amount of money to do it, and it wouldn’t make financial sense.
“When I got this deal, I wasn’t cracking open the PokerStars piñata and running around eating all the candy. I knew it was the start of the hardest grind of work of my life. When I joined UP I remember feeling ‘I have done it, I am a sponsored pro now.” Then fast-forward a week, when I was sitting in the most boring meetings of my life, and had all this responsibility, I got it. When this deal got together I didn’t get excited because I knew I needed to work hard to prove my worth. I take this attitude into the stream and spend my time trying to make it as great as it can be.
“I feel responsible to the people who are on Twitch much more than a responsibility that I have to PokerStars. If I didn’t have this following I would be of no value to PokerStars. You don’t get 20,000 unique viewers unless you are pleasing them.”
You are the only openly gay male high stakes poker player. It’s been three years now. How does that make you feel?
“I’m not happy or sad about that. It’s up to individual people to make their own choices. My coming out was so universally accepted, that other poker pros must of thought what’s the point of coming out, everyone is fine with it. I have had a lot of people come up to me, that are in poker, who are happy not to make a big deal out of it.
“It was important for me to grow and move on with my life. It’s not a big deal anymore. I have never encountered any problems with it. The universe was cool. If you are feeling anxiety and want to come out then great. If you are happy with the way things are then keep them that way. It’s a personal journey.”
When did you first realize that you were different?
“From 3-years on I knew I wasn’t straight. It was something I kept to myself until I was 23. I didn’t let it affect my poker play. I wanted to play as much poker as I could, make as much money as I could, and be the best poker player that I can be. I am very capable of getting into that mindset. So I ignored it for a long time. But I couldn’t be streaming the way that I am if I was still closeted and feeling anxious and not being myself. At this point it seems pretty irrelevant as to how it affects my day to day life.”
What fears do you have today?
“I am sure I have plenty. But I am plugged in to a very certain routine. I have specific things I am trying to accomplish with my Twitch channel and Run It Up. I don’t think I have any crazy fears that I am not going to do well. That stuff is meaningless. I talk on the show about trying to be efficient with your energy when playing poker. I am not there yet, but I am pretty close.”
What fears do you have today?
“I have 60-more days to go. I am going to stream until the end of SCOOP. It’s going to be crazy. I will stream live through every day. This Sunday is the $9m Guarantee, I made a deep run in last weeks Sunday Million, streamed for 7hrs, and people loved it. I hope that I can do the same in the $9m.
“If the stream is going awesome I may skip the first few weeks of the WSOP. Then I am going to take off at the end of July and August. Then come back for a season on WCOOP streams, off to play EPT’s and then back to the PCA where all of this started.”
