Brian Rast: No Longer Flying Under The Radar

The last time Brian Rast was featured on the cover of Card Player Magazine, it was for winning the 2011 $50,000 Poker Players Championship at the World Series of Poker. At the time, the Poway, California native was primarily focused on high-stakes cash games, and rarely gave tournaments a second look.

Since then, however, the 34-year-old pro has transformed into one of the most consistent threats on the live tournament circuit, having cashed for a total of $15.8 million. Almost all of that has come in the last five years, joining Erick Lindgren as the only player to ever record five straight years of seven-figures in cashes. (In December, Daniel Negreanu added his name to the list with a big cash of his own to cross the $1 million mark for 2015.)

But what’s been most impressive about Rast is that he’s done it all while maintaining his status as one of the most feared cash game threats around, playing nosebleed mixed games with stakes as high as $1,000-$2,000.

Rast, who attended Stanford University before dropping out to pursue poker, worked hard to build his bankroll so that he could move from small-stakes home games to more stable mid-stakes games in Las Vegas. From there he grinded his way up to $25-$50 no-limit and beyond. It was only after establishing himself at the cash game tables that he began to crush the high-stakes tournament scene. Now, he finds himself in 11th place on the all-time tournament earnings list.

Card Player caught up with Rast to discuss the growth of his tournament game, where he sees himself in the poker world, and discusses an interesting off the felt bet in the works.

Julio Rodriguez: In 2011, you said that you still considered yourself a cash game player, and not a tournament player. Is that still the case?

Brian Rast: I think in terms of what I’m playing right now, I’m probably spending more hours playing tournaments than cash games. In terms of what I consider myself over the course of my career, I still think of myself as more of a cash game player, but the line is definitely starting to blur.

What it boils down to is access to the nosebleed cash games. Living in the United States, looking for live cash games, it’s just spotty. You can’t rely on a game going all of the time. The tournaments are scheduled, so you know they are going to happen, and obviously that’s a lot easier for me to plan for.

Another factor that’s been big in the last year or so is that Cary Katz started these high roller events that run pretty regularly at the Aria. So there’s a guaranteed $25,000 buy-in event or higher every month. If you look at my results over the last two years, they’ve been from the World Series of Poker or the high roller events. If you take those events out of it, then I haven’t really been playing that many tournaments. It’s not like I’m on every stop on the circuit, grinding it out. When I can, I try and play cash.

JR: You are about to fight Sorel Mizzi in a boxing match for $100,000. What made you want to do something like that?

BR: I never wanted to be a fighter, because I do use my brain for a living and the last thing I need is any head trauma. That being said, I was attracted to the idea of really testing myself. I wanted a reason to motivate myself to get into top shape, but to also learn something new and push myself beyond what I thought was capable. I have no interest in doing this on a regular basis, but I think as a whole it will be a big net positive in my life. I want to be in a position to want it more, go head to head, get hit and find a way to fight through the pain.

JR: Is this the biggest prop bet you’ve been a part of?

BR: It’s probably the most money I’ve had on the line in a prop bet. I once did a no-drinking bet with Antonio Esfandiari for $30,000. I also did a bet for $14,000 where I had to ride a scooter to a wedding in Los Angeles from Las Vegas, in a tux. It was a disaster. I wiped out after hitting some gravel going too fast and was all beat up with a tattered suit by the time I got there. This was in May. I left when it was dark, hoping I would get there before the sun came up, but because of the accident, I didn’t get there until fourr in the afternoon. I went to Urgent Care and needed some crutches for after the adrenaline wore off.

JR: This year, you and Daniel Negreanu tied a record set by Erick Lindgren back in 2008, cashing for seven figures in five consecutive years. That’s some pretty elite company to be in for a guy who doesn’t really grind the circuit.

BR: I got lucky in the first couple years of the streak. My volume wasn’t high enough that I should have reasonably expected to cash for that much money. But I won two bracelets the first year, including the $50,000 Players Championship, then I made the final table of the Big One for One Drop the next year. The year after that, I started playing more high rollers. This year was actually the first time I really traveled. For the first time I went to the Aussie Millions and WSOP Europe. Next year, I might add Manila in there as well. With all of those chances, I think I’m a favorite to break the record and get to six years in a row.

JR: Do you think your cash game background has given you an edge in these high roller events?

BR: It’s true that a longer structure tends to favor cash game players, but that’s not the case with most of these high rollers. In fact, these events that run at the Aria play pretty fast and are usually over in one day. I got my online account up and running this year, just so I could play hypers. I was never a sit-n-go player in the past, but the last two trips I took, I wound up playing more sit-n-gos than I ever had in my life. I really feel like you get into a bunch of crazy ICM spots in these high rollers, and the hypers have been a great training tool for me to familiarize myself with those numbers. I think they’ve really helped me, especially around the money bubble, to make the right decision.

My ICM awareness three years ago just wasn’t very good. I had a background in cash games, so I was very good post-flop, but my ICM game wasn’t really there. I put in a bunch of work, and now I feel really good about it. If I find a close spot online, I’ll go back and check the numbers. I want that in the back of my head when there’s a lot of money up for grabs late in a tournament.

JR: You studied mathematics at Stanford, so is it safe to assume you’ve always been a numbers guy?

BR: I have a very good, natural intuition for the math behind poker. Back when I learned pot-limit Omaha, I spent some time short stacking the nosebleed Full Tilt games. I’d have Pro Poker Tools open and I’d be inputting the all-in equities, equities on the flop, just to get a feel for the numbers. Once you start seeing them over and over, you get really good at approximating those things. Every poker player has their strong suits, but the math is definitely one of mine.

JR: With nearly $16 million in earnings, how do you take a money bubble seriously in a smaller buy-in tournament?

BR: It really depends on the tournament, how I will make my decision. If there’s a $20,000 money bubble, I’m much more likely to ignore ICM if I get a chance to get some chips and make a run at the final table. But if it’s a high roller, and we’re probably already at the final table, then those ICM decisions become crucial. It’s always nice to cash in a tournament, no matter how big it is, but these days I’m really playing to get deep and win. That gives me a little bit of an advantage because it makes me tougher to play against, but I’m also sacrificing some real dollar in EV.

JR: In the early days of poker, the top players were all cash game specialists and really only went to tournaments for the side action. Given the high stakes you routinely play for, why play in $10,000 buy-in events at all when your hourly rate is higher in the cash games?

BR: When I was younger, I used to care a lot more about making the best decision for my bankroll. Now that I don’t have to worry about my bankroll, there are other considerations. For instance, this year, I went down to the Brazil Series of Poker. The tournaments didn’t have very big buy-ins. The main event was only $800. The high roller tournament was basically $1,500. After travel expenses and the withholding for taxes, it wasn’t a profitable trip. The people were very nice and even asked me what I was doing there. I just wanted to support the poker scene down there and have some fun.

If I’m going to play games that are small for me, then I want to enjoy myself. It’s also nice to have something on my schedule, just because I know the cash games aren’t always going, and even if they are running, I might not like the lineup. The bottom line is that I like playing poker, so I’m going to play. At the World Poker Tour event at Bellagio, you can put up a $10,000 buy-in and potentially win over a million dollars. If I sat down in a cash game with a $10,000 buy-in, I’d be bored within a couple hours and want to quit.

JR: What about the glory of taking down a tournament and adding another win to your tournament resume?

BR: These days, winning an event does mean more to me than it did in the past. Back then, it was all about growing my bankroll, but now I enjoy adding to my list of accomplishments in poker. Things like the all-time tournament earnings list, I do keep track of that. Tournaments are a great way for people to know what you’ve done, just because cash game results don’t usually get reported.

That being said, I care a lot more about what my peers think of my game than I do about what the general public thinks. I think I’m 11th on the all-time earnings list right now. I would bet that all ten of the people ahead of me have more Twitter followers by at least double. I’ve always considered myself to be an under-the-radar type of guy, a pro’s pro. Now I’ve been on television a bunch in the last few years and that anonymity has kind of gone away, but I still think I’m relatively unknown given what I’ve accomplished.

JR: A lot of those guys in the top ten have or have had major online poker site deals. Do you feel like you’ve been snubbed when it comes to getting an endorsement deal?

BR: No. I definitely came into the game a little late. If my run had been four years earlier, then maybe I’d have a big online poker site deal. I’d like to think that if online poker came back into the U.S. in a big way, I’d have a good chance at getting signed, but I understand how the business works. I don’t feel snubbed. But I’ll tell you what I would feel snubbed for, and that’s the Poker Hall of Fame.

JR: The Poker Hall of Fame requires members to be 40, so you have about six years before that happens. But the criteria also lists that the player must have “played poker against acknowledged top competition” and “for high stakes,” while playing “consistently well” and “gaining the respect of peers.” The player must have lasted in the poker world too, as another standard is that they “stood the test of time.” 

BR: I read that criteria, and I feel that it was basically describing me. Nowhere on there does it mention that your popularity is a factor. If that were the case, I’d probably lose out to hundreds of poker players. But as far as playing high stakes and getting tournament success, I would think my resume gets me in once I become eligible. If I keep doing even half of what I’ve been doing over the next six years, and I don’t get in, then that’s where I’d feel really snubbed. I’m very happy, pleased, and blessed to be where I am and I’d like to think I can continue to play at a high level for the foreseeable future. I have the motivation and all of the tools to keep going, and that’s what I’m planning to do. ♠

Five Straight Years Of Seven-Figure Scores

In 2008, Erick Lindgren became the first poker player to record five straight years of $1 million or more in tournament cashes. Brian Rast became the second player to accomplish the streak in the summer of 2015 when he won the Super High Roller Bowl at the Aria for more than $7.5 million. Then in December, Daniel Negreanu joined him with a last-minute cash in the Bellagio Alpha8 Super High Roller.