In this episode of Chats with Tats, CalvinAyre.com’s Tatjana Pasalic talks music with poker pro Bryan Piccioli.
Whether it’s Eye of the Tiger or Killing in the Name, there’s nothing like good music to get a poker player’s blood pumping.
For Bryan Piccioli, the choice is a special mix of EDM music that he listens to while playing in some tournaments.
“I don’t really make mixes like for when I’m playing, but I follow like hundreds of artists on Soundcloud, so a lot of time I’ll just go on my Soundcloud, find a couple of new, like one to two-hour long mixes for the day, download them, put them on my iPod and then I have new music to listen to for the day,” Piccioli told CalvinAyre.com.
The pro player said music is important to get him in the zone.
“If the table’s pretty chatty, like, I’m a pretty chatty guy, so if everyone’s talking, I’ll kind of chime in on the conversations and stuff, but if it’s a quiet table or if I’m just like trying to get in my zone, I’ll have my headphones on,” Piccioli said.
Piccioli said he first came across EDM in Vegas four years ago, but he chalked up his expertise to the time he spent in Mexico.
“I just fell in love with it and just started, like, listening to all different sorts of music and then I moved to Playa del Carmen, Mexico, after Black Friday to play online and there’s a huge music festival called the BPM Festival. It’s like the biggest electronic music festival in the world. It’s like 10 days long, so that kind of got me more in tune with my specific interests, I guess,” he said.
Now, Piccioli gets requests from his fellow players who want to play his mixes during parties.
“I don’t have any of my own originally produced music yet, but hopefully that’s in the works soon. I’m just kind of focusing on DJ-ing and mixing for the time being,” he said.
