Game Theory, the poker web series

Game Theory was an independent web drama about a poker "rounder" who loses access to his online bankroll after the 2011 US crackdown on online poker and has to grind live cash games instead. It was written and directed by Aidin Nakhai.^1,2

Timeline

• 2008 – Nakhai conceives a dramatic series following the life of a poker player.²
• Aug 2012 – PokerNews runs the trailer: main character Omar has his entire online bankroll frozen and grinds live cash games to make ends meet.¹
• Feb 2013 – Three episodes are out. PokerNews publishes a long interview with Nakhai.²

Who made it

Names as given in the PokerNews interview and on Indiegogo.^2,4

A deliberately wrong first hand

The pilot's opening hand drew the most comments. Nakhai told PokerNews it was planned as a negative-EV play: the hero is meant to make mistakes and look back on them many episodes later.² PokerStrategy's Polish site asked coach "robmaf" to review it; he said he would always fold there, walked through the opponent's likely 3-bet range and concluded the hand was chosen to impress viewers, while still saying he liked the episode.³ More on that kind of analysis is on the theory page.

Funding

The show was made with almost no budget: Nakhai described "a few hundred bucks" and favors from friends.² Further episodes were to be funded mainly by viewers.³ The Indiegogo campaign shows $1,235 from 14 backers; its pitch cites 20,000 YouTube views in three days.⁴

Context: what Black Friday was and how films have shown poker.