We chat to one half of the award winning podcast The Chip Race to discuss the show's success, poker pros creating content and the rise of Unibet.

David Lappin

Congrats on winning the GPI Podcast of the Year Award, which had to be the most controversial award of a very controversial awards. Players like Doug Polk were lamenting the fact you were even nominated and after you won Daniel Negreanu famously commented on his podcast it was a mistake by the jury.

David Lappin: I thought it was funny when Doug made that comment, I didn’t see it as being disrespectful. Dara and I can take a joke. To be honest though, we were surprised to get nominated. I did think we had an outside chance but Dara thought we had no chance. If you followed me on Twitter around then, I don’t mind saying that I wasn’t shy when it came to the nomination. With what we assumed was no shot at winning, Dara and I agreed that it was smart to milk the opportunity for all it was worth, maybe find a few hundred extra listeners. Then boom, our name was read out by Ali Nejad and along came all that drama with Daniel Negreanu who was upset that we won. ‘Eeewwww!!!’

Some friends of mine in the room told me that he made a holy show of himself. Honestly I didn’t care about that. It’s obviously bad sportsmanship but whatever. We’re ‘bad dudes’ in his eyes because we articulate our beliefs well and they don’t agree with his. What I did care about was the crap he spouted on his podcast a few days later when he cast a shadow over our win. I certainly wasn’t going to take that lying down. The truth is a substantial amount of public opinion has galvanized around the opinions expressed by Dara and I. That wasn’t our intention when we wrote our blogs back in January but that’s sort of what has happened. I think Daniel’s behaviour has been beyond the Pale of late and I think he may well reap what he has sowed.

♠️ ♥️ ♣️ ♦️ S9 ~ E4 ♦️ ♣️ ♥️ ♠️



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🔁 RT = draw for €50 @unibetopen seat pic.twitter.com/JobEMcC99O — 🎙 THE CHIP RACE 🎙 (@thechiprace) May 20, 2019

"A-List guests are keen to come on the show"

You and your cohost Dara O'Kearney are both professional poker players and I think that right now whether it’s Twitch, YouTube or Podcasts, the poker players are making the best content, perhaps because they dive deep into the analytics side of things and study what works in a methodical fashion.

David Lappin: I tend to agree and I’d like to offer an additional take. I think if you are a poker player you can ill afford to give up the time to become a Twitch streamer, which will cost you the ability to play as many tables or lessen the attention you can give to each table, or producing a podcast which can sometimes cost you half your week. A poker player understands the cost to them and so will be quick to drop it if it’s not working, whereas if your job is in the media, then if you do a podcast it might just be one of ten things you do. For those guys it’s just another string to their bow, but if a poker player siphons of 20% of their week on something it better be worth it.

What has it been like doing the podcast since the win?

David Lappin: We have a nice problem. A lot of A-list guests are keen to come on the show, probably too many for the number of episodes we have coming up. I think one of the nicest aspects of our show is that we always have a second guest, someone less famous, someone from the industry, someone with a story to tell, someone who delivers a different angle. We don’t want to replace that person to make room for big double-headers now even though we could. I think to do that would spoil the balance of the show. I would hate for us to suddenly become the ‘star wankers’ that have two or three headline guests a week. I think it would destroy what makes the show cool.

"Dara has a great strategy mind"

David Lappin and Dara O'Kearney

I think one of the reasons for the success of the podcast is the strategy segment where you break down a hand with a guest, which again is perhaps so good because you are both poker pros. Have you learned a lot from your guests?

David Lappin: I struggle to think of a better strategy mind than my co-host Dara. His ability to break down a hand is so good. In the past few years he has really become attuned to what software is the right software to use to analyse different spots. You can have a hand and cover it anecdotally but if you really want to do it justice you have to bring in the software, at least to give you a baseline before you explore exploitative options. Daiva Byrne who does about a third of the strategy segments with us has a similar approach to Dara. She is very quick to identify the pressure points in the hand.

In terms of people we’ve had on, somebody like Sameer Singh is very much like Dara and Daiva. He is very happy to go down the PioSolver game tree. Jack Sinclair seemed to be very mindful of exploitation and his emphasis was on spotting population tendencies to under-bluff or under-call, that sort of thing. Keeping our audience demographics in mind though I like to also do strategy pieces that aren’t so ‘nerdy’ for want of a better word. When we had Sam Razavi and Maria Konnikova on, their hands were a lot more about understanding the spot.

Does it help or hinder your own game spending so much time producing this content?

David Lappin: It massively hurts my game but that’s a sacrifice I do willingly because getting into content creation is more up my alley in terms of how I see my future life. Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of pride in being a good poker player. I have a good poker brain and I used to be a very good poker player. There was a time between 2008-2012 where I reckon I was one of the best online players in Ireland. I certainly couldn’t claim to be in the top 20 today. That’s OK, I take a tremendous amount of pride from the Chip Race, my blogs, my commentary and other content I create. I also enjoy touring the live circuit. That really only means I have two weeks each month to play online poker. I also still try to study a few hours. That’s not nearly enough study but again, sacrifices have to be made.

There is a conscious double act to what Dara and I do. Dara is the expert and I try to play the other role, be the Jesse May of the two. I know I am dumbing myself down a little bit (I wish I was dumbing myself down a lot) but I know my role is asking the questions that the audience wants to be asked. If all of my Chip Race work was the hand-reviews with Dara I’m sure that I’d be a much better player, but sadly for my game, I spend a lot of time researching and editing each episode. I think its worth it in the end though.

You are also sponsored by Unibet, who are showing tremendous growth at the moment. What has it been like being sponsored by them when a massive war seems to be taking place between PokerStars and partypoker?

David Lappin: It’s not quite like we are Cersei in Game of Thrones waiting to see how the other battle goes before we make a move. (That didn’t work out well for her anyway) I do think there is a sustainability issue in the industry. What partypoker have decided to do is very brave, potentially foolish and definitely very costly. If they give PokerStars a run for their money and come out the other side of it with a greater market share and some money left they’ll have done very well. It’s cool from a players’ perspective, you have to go and get that value, but for the industry it is like they’ve lobbed a grenade into the mix.

From Unibet Poker’s point of view, we just have to concentrate on what is in front of us. The company took the very brave step of moving to a standalone poker client five years ago and that has been unquestionably a success. Sure, poker is still the smallest part of a huge company but the team know that poker is a fantastic Trojan Horse and phenomenal for customer acquisition. They also know that they have built the poker brand from the ground up and that grass roots approach has led to a healthy poker eco-system. Since the beginning we’ve had an ethos that benefited and protected the recreational player. We’ve been and continue to be at the forefront of the no-HUD or third party software movement. Also, Relax have done brilliant work over the years and I think we now have the second best poker software after PokerStars. We have a very gamified loyalty system which is fun and if you put in sick volume the effective rakeback in the form of bonuses and Unibet Open packages can be huge.

"The Unibet Open is the best live experience"

The one area where I think we are better than anybody is our live experience is second to none. As a Unibet Ambassador you are so proud to wear the patch at our events because everybody is being looked after so well and having such a good time. The qualifiers get 4 or 5-star hotels in brilliant locations, breakfast and dinner, 2-3 player parties, tournaments that rake 10% or less. It really is red-carpet treatment!

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