We’d like to introduce you to Derek Kwan and Ty Dobbertin
Hi Derek and Ty, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Ty:
I started playing poker tournaments around LA about 3 years ago, as I got more and more involved with the tournament scene here, I realized I was spending a lot of time every week researching what events were coming up and following what little local coverage there was on the events around time. I am very talkative at the table when playing, so I ended up spending a lot of my time at the tables sharing the information I had learned with the other players. I started thinking that there could be some real interest in a podcast like this and that it could really help to boost up the local community. The one problem was that I couldn’t think of any other reg who would be interested in doing a regular show like this, because I knew people would get sick of just listening to me talk nonstop every week! Then I saw Derek had started doing Poker Vlogs of LA tournaments so I approached him with the idea for the show.
Derek:
I knew Ty from our local LA tournaments, and immediately thought his idea of a podcast covering local LA poker news was a great idea and a big gap in our community. I’ve been playing poker for 15 years, switching to focus on tournaments over the past five years or so. Definitely a lot of trial and error, lot of studying, lot of grinding, but happy with my level of play even if I still have more to go. As Ty mentioned, I also got into content creation in poker, which has been another fun way to engage with the community.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Derek:
Like every startup, we definitely did not have a smooth road. We were both experienced in media streaming, but still had a ton of hiccups getting the production right. Also poker being a niche vertical, and since we are hyper focused on local news, our growth has been slower than we like. But being able to represent Los Angeles, building a better sense of community, and getting the opportunity to showcase a lot of players who typically don’t get as much coverage, it’s really been a lot of fun and I’m glad we’re doing it.
Ty:
Yeah, in the beginning, it took several episodes of trial and error just figuring out how to get the streaming software, audio inputs, and web conference software all set up so that we could do the show somewhat smoothly at all! Getting the word out in the beginning was a bit harder than I would have liked and a lot of our early subscribers were literally from us handing out business cards at the tables while we were playing every weekend. Basically I still answer a lot of questions at the table about what events are happening soon or who won the week before, but now I end the conversation with a quick pitch for the show. But that makes it a really easy sell and I think that’s why it’s so important to stay focused on the local. There are tons of other people reporting on and talking about the biggest poker stars in the world, but there are thousands of poker players right here in LA and we’re a lively community who, for the most part, is pretty familiar with each other so it’s really cool to hear about the people and places you know and play at being talked about.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Ty:
For my day job, I’m software engineer turned software manager. I’ve worked for several companies on the east coast but have spent most of my career in the defense industry. As far as the LA Poker Roundup goes, as I mentioned before, our specialty is in building and covering the local LA tournament community. I sort of think of us like local sports news covering everything LA, and the big guys like poker news are more like an ESPN (ESPN has mostly stopped covering poker).
Derek:
I am also a tech professional, been doing it for 20 years, across companies like Microsoft, Yahoo, and AT&T. But I’ve been able to balance my career and family life with a semi-professional career in poker. It hasn’t been easy, but I’m most proud of building on my accomplishments in poker to become an influencer in the space, and also having this platform with Ty to represent the best of our LA poker community.
Ty:
Yeah what we’re really proud of is helping the LA tournament community to gel and hopefully are helping to make it more of a welcoming place. When there’s a large event in a place like Vegas you can really see the LA community spirit with the players there. Our friend, Frank Lin, is running our instagram and he’s been doing a fantastic job getting pictures of all the players at every event and covering events in real time, we call him our number 1 field reporter, even if he wasn’t our only one he’d still be the shoe in!
Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
Derek:
As a coincidence, poker is all about risk taking! But specifically calculated risks, based on math, pattern recognition, risk / reward, and much more, This has actually made me much better at decisions in my full time career, as well as just my life decisions in general. All decisions will lead to a few outcomes, some more probable than others. In order to get the best outcomes, risk is needed. And if you made the right calculated risks and it didn’t work out, as long as you made the right decisions, you just have to dust yourself off and move on.
Ty:
Yeah poker is one of the best games out there that deals with risk and managing it without a doubt. When it comes to the podcast, luckily, there isn’t a ton of risk other than our time spent. A lot of the risks we can take to help the show have relatively low downside and that has allowed us to reach in some places for instance in trying to get some guests who would be considered bigger stars in the poker world and we’ve been really lucky to be able to get guests like Maria Ho, Xuan Liu, Brian Hastings, Barry Greenstein, and Matt Savage to come on the show over the past year. I guess one risk we take is that we’ll say something that might upset the local casinos, which I think we have done, but I believe that there’s no point in doing a show like this if you aren’t going to give your honest opinions when talking about what’s going on.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.lapokerroundup.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lapokerroundup
- Twitter: https://x.com/lapokerroundup
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@lapokerroundup
