http://robustothemovie.com/?page_id=46
here's the post that I found on 2+2. The video (above) is interesting. These are young kids/nerds raking in millions playing poker online. I know some of you will find this interesting as well. I am on the 2nd video. There is a quick introduction and 2 videos you can watch for free. I have no idea what comes afterwards.
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/6...busto-robusto-doc-series-online-poker-751089/
This thread is meant to provide background info on the FROM BUSTO TO ROBUSTO project from the director's perspective. For those who don't know FBTR is a documentary film series about online poker. Here's a link to our website where you can learn more about the project and watch our first two episodes in their entirety for free: www.robustothemovie.com
My goal is to keep this both personal and informative. I know the first post is TLDR. Feel free to skip ahead to the FBTR Background or just straight to the questions.
Personal Background: I began making films with friends when I was seventeen. After a few film classes at Junior College and brief stint at the Academy of Art College in San Francisco, a private art school with a then-young film department, I dropped out to make my own feature film at twenty years old. Much like Clerks for Kevin Smith, this film acted as my film school -- only Miramax didn't buy mine for $250K. After that I was a working professional, freelancing throughout the Bay Area mostly as an editor. I always loved games and began to play poker somewhat seriously around 2002, when I turned twenty-one and began frequenting the many local cardrooms. 6-12 Limit provided a nice side income at various points in my life but I knew nothing about proper bankroll management and would invariably bust of spend my roll every 4-6 months or so. I first discovered Two plus Two around 2005. I was mainly a live player and had no idea so many young kids were having such incredible success playing online. The incomes they were reporting in BBV were astonishing. I became fascinated with the subculture, frequently spending many hours reading the forums and familiarizing myself with the legends and lore of Two plus Two. In the back of my mind, I kept thinking what great material all of this would be for a documentary film.
In mid 2006, I decided I wanted to try and make more of a serious run at building an online roll. I began to research coaching and discovered 3-bet.net. I read the profiles for all the coaches and noticed some guy called Jay Rosenkrantz was not only a successful high-stakes pro but an aspiring screenwriter. I wrote him an e-mail telling him about my aspirations as both a poker player and filmmaker. I sent him a link to one of my short films. He was supportive and enthusiastic. Unfortunately, late 2006 proved to be about the worst time to get serious about poker. The UIGEA came into effect and suddenly I couldn't even deposit on PokerRoom, the only mac-based poker site I knew of at the time. My dreams of online poker glory slowly faded, as fishy no-limit games were slowly introduced (or re-introduced) to cardrooms around the Bay Area.
FBTR Background: Fast forward to early 2007...Jay and Dean (UKPartyGirl) made a post in the El Diablo forum asking if anyone would be interested in seeing a documentary on online poker. The response was very positive. The thread went on for something like fifty pages. Clearly there was an audience for this, but Jay and Dean had never made a film before and didn't know how to make the next step. I contacted Jay via email saying something like "Remember me? I'm the filmmaker who asked you about coaching like six months ago. I can make this film!" Jay wrote back something like "That's cool. How would you do it?" I started working on a treatment for a feature length documentary about online poker. A few weeks later, I emailed it to him. I think he was impressed by my initiative and attracted to the idea of someone with a bit of experience taking over the heavy lifting. Over the next few months we communicated back and forth, mostly through email but sometimes on the phone, and made adjustments to the treatment. At times it seemed like we were one small step from going into production, and then I wouldn't hear from Jay for weeks. All of my filmmaking friends told me: Forget about it. He's not serious. He's never going to invest in this project. But I remained persistent.
In summer of 2007 my sister was driving home from college at the University of Arizona. I arranged to meet her in Las Vegas to drive with her the rest of the way to Northern California where we live. Coincidentally, this just happened to coincide with the WSOP. I knew Jay was renting a mansion out there for the series, so I told him we should meet up face to face to discuss the project. He agreed, I booked my ticket and gathered up all my materials for what I considered to be the most important meetings of my young filmmaking career. A week or so before I left for Vegas, I found a thread in NVG about an epic 100/200NL heads-up battle going on between pr1nnyraid (Jay) and some unknown account called "Ellipses". I immediately opened FTP and began railing the match, knowing the production of my online poker documentary may be directly dependent on the results. I was thrilled to see Jay win pot after pot. It was a bloodbath. In the end Ellipses finally quit after losing a staggering $473K at 100/200NL. Although I'm sure it didn't compare to the what Jay was feeling at that point in time, I was elated. I closed FTP feeling very positive about my upcoming trip to Vegas.
I met Jay at Sushi Roku in Caesar's Palace. I was very nervous, as Jay was something of a celebrity to a poker fanboy like me. I didn't eat much and pretty much talking non-stop. Jay mostly just listened, nodding his head with a half-smile and distant stare, which I would come to recognize as the look he gets when he's giving something serious thought. Of course, we talked about his epic win over Ellipses. He was still glowing with excitement. Supposedly, the account belonged to Tom Dwan -- he never used it again. We also talked about a pilot Jay was currently filming for a poker reality show tentatively titled House of Cards (what would ultimately become 2M2MM). The premise sounded compelling and the production team was accomplished with an impressive resume. The show sounded exciting, but I had mixed feelings about its success, as I saw it as potential competition for what would ultimately become FROM BUSTO ROBUSTO. I thought if House of Cards was successful, there was a good chance Jay would lose interest in our project. But I tried to remain positive and wished him the best of luck with the pilot.
After we ate, we went down to the poker room to play some 1-3NL. This story has nothing to do with FBTR, but it's kind of funny and poker-related: We take the last two seats at a full table. I buy in for $300 and Jay buys in for $500. He's UTG and before he has his chips or cards, before he's even sat down, he announces a raise to $100. The dealer and all the other players (mostly older guys) are confused. What does he mean "raise to $100"? He hasn't even seen his cards! Finally, the dealer sorts out the confusion. He announces the action as $100 to call to UTG+1 who quickly folds. Two more folds and it's on a salty looking old man with a Las Vegas baseball cap. He gives Jay the evil. "One hundred smackers, huh," he mutters. He looks at his cards, then back to Jay. "Re-raise," he says finally and makes it $200. It folds back to Jay, who still hasn't looked at his cards, and he instantly says "All-in". Just then, his chips arrive. He immediately takes them out of the rack and shoves them into the center. The salty old man calls with the little hesitation and they run the board which, in the end, looks something like: J9T73. Jay looks at one card and flips it over. It's an 8. "Straight" he says. The old man looks at the board, looks at his cards, looks at Jay and shakes his head. "Nice hand," he finally mutters, then stands and immediately exits the poker room. After that, no one wanted to play with the crazy kid in seat four. Within ten minutes, I was playing three-handed with one stubborn middle-aged man (who would have probably given up his first born son to stack Jay) and the infamous pr1nnyraid -- whose reputation had just been elevated to legendary status in my mind. Solid Brag: I played for another 30 minutes or so and left a $30 winner.
When I left Jay at the poker table, I gave him an updated treatment and he told me "We're going to do this. I like your idea."
After that, I thought we were mere days away from securing a budget. I was wrong. Jay got busy with House of Cards and my emails began going unanswered. All of my filmmaker friends were like: See? I told you. Not serious. Months passed, but I kept dropping the occasional email, reminding him I was still interested, but holding on to little optimism at that point. Then, out of the blue, in November of 2007, Jay contacted me and said he might have found two more interested investors: Dan Morris (DJ Sensei) and Dean Strachan (UKPartyGirl). After a few weeks, of emailing and AIM'ing (and selling myself) we officially formed Robusto LLC and they gathered the budget for the first segment of FROM BUSTO TO ROBUSTO, which at that point was set to be focused on DJ Sensei in San Francisco.
On December 27th, 2007 I traveled to Las Vegas with my film crew (cameraman, sound guy) to the MSNL house and production on FROM BUSTO TO ROBUSTO officially began. It's evolved a great deal since then, but our original vision -- a feature length documentary film about online poker -- remains in tact.
Ask me any questions about the project or filmmaking in general!
<!-- / message -->
here's the post that I found on 2+2. The video (above) is interesting. These are young kids/nerds raking in millions playing poker online. I know some of you will find this interesting as well. I am on the 2nd video. There is a quick introduction and 2 videos you can watch for free. I have no idea what comes afterwards.
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/6...busto-robusto-doc-series-online-poker-751089/
This thread is meant to provide background info on the FROM BUSTO TO ROBUSTO project from the director's perspective. For those who don't know FBTR is a documentary film series about online poker. Here's a link to our website where you can learn more about the project and watch our first two episodes in their entirety for free: www.robustothemovie.com
My goal is to keep this both personal and informative. I know the first post is TLDR. Feel free to skip ahead to the FBTR Background or just straight to the questions.
Personal Background: I began making films with friends when I was seventeen. After a few film classes at Junior College and brief stint at the Academy of Art College in San Francisco, a private art school with a then-young film department, I dropped out to make my own feature film at twenty years old. Much like Clerks for Kevin Smith, this film acted as my film school -- only Miramax didn't buy mine for $250K. After that I was a working professional, freelancing throughout the Bay Area mostly as an editor. I always loved games and began to play poker somewhat seriously around 2002, when I turned twenty-one and began frequenting the many local cardrooms. 6-12 Limit provided a nice side income at various points in my life but I knew nothing about proper bankroll management and would invariably bust of spend my roll every 4-6 months or so. I first discovered Two plus Two around 2005. I was mainly a live player and had no idea so many young kids were having such incredible success playing online. The incomes they were reporting in BBV were astonishing. I became fascinated with the subculture, frequently spending many hours reading the forums and familiarizing myself with the legends and lore of Two plus Two. In the back of my mind, I kept thinking what great material all of this would be for a documentary film.
In mid 2006, I decided I wanted to try and make more of a serious run at building an online roll. I began to research coaching and discovered 3-bet.net. I read the profiles for all the coaches and noticed some guy called Jay Rosenkrantz was not only a successful high-stakes pro but an aspiring screenwriter. I wrote him an e-mail telling him about my aspirations as both a poker player and filmmaker. I sent him a link to one of my short films. He was supportive and enthusiastic. Unfortunately, late 2006 proved to be about the worst time to get serious about poker. The UIGEA came into effect and suddenly I couldn't even deposit on PokerRoom, the only mac-based poker site I knew of at the time. My dreams of online poker glory slowly faded, as fishy no-limit games were slowly introduced (or re-introduced) to cardrooms around the Bay Area.
FBTR Background: Fast forward to early 2007...Jay and Dean (UKPartyGirl) made a post in the El Diablo forum asking if anyone would be interested in seeing a documentary on online poker. The response was very positive. The thread went on for something like fifty pages. Clearly there was an audience for this, but Jay and Dean had never made a film before and didn't know how to make the next step. I contacted Jay via email saying something like "Remember me? I'm the filmmaker who asked you about coaching like six months ago. I can make this film!" Jay wrote back something like "That's cool. How would you do it?" I started working on a treatment for a feature length documentary about online poker. A few weeks later, I emailed it to him. I think he was impressed by my initiative and attracted to the idea of someone with a bit of experience taking over the heavy lifting. Over the next few months we communicated back and forth, mostly through email but sometimes on the phone, and made adjustments to the treatment. At times it seemed like we were one small step from going into production, and then I wouldn't hear from Jay for weeks. All of my filmmaking friends told me: Forget about it. He's not serious. He's never going to invest in this project. But I remained persistent.
In summer of 2007 my sister was driving home from college at the University of Arizona. I arranged to meet her in Las Vegas to drive with her the rest of the way to Northern California where we live. Coincidentally, this just happened to coincide with the WSOP. I knew Jay was renting a mansion out there for the series, so I told him we should meet up face to face to discuss the project. He agreed, I booked my ticket and gathered up all my materials for what I considered to be the most important meetings of my young filmmaking career. A week or so before I left for Vegas, I found a thread in NVG about an epic 100/200NL heads-up battle going on between pr1nnyraid (Jay) and some unknown account called "Ellipses". I immediately opened FTP and began railing the match, knowing the production of my online poker documentary may be directly dependent on the results. I was thrilled to see Jay win pot after pot. It was a bloodbath. In the end Ellipses finally quit after losing a staggering $473K at 100/200NL. Although I'm sure it didn't compare to the what Jay was feeling at that point in time, I was elated. I closed FTP feeling very positive about my upcoming trip to Vegas.
I met Jay at Sushi Roku in Caesar's Palace. I was very nervous, as Jay was something of a celebrity to a poker fanboy like me. I didn't eat much and pretty much talking non-stop. Jay mostly just listened, nodding his head with a half-smile and distant stare, which I would come to recognize as the look he gets when he's giving something serious thought. Of course, we talked about his epic win over Ellipses. He was still glowing with excitement. Supposedly, the account belonged to Tom Dwan -- he never used it again. We also talked about a pilot Jay was currently filming for a poker reality show tentatively titled House of Cards (what would ultimately become 2M2MM). The premise sounded compelling and the production team was accomplished with an impressive resume. The show sounded exciting, but I had mixed feelings about its success, as I saw it as potential competition for what would ultimately become FROM BUSTO ROBUSTO. I thought if House of Cards was successful, there was a good chance Jay would lose interest in our project. But I tried to remain positive and wished him the best of luck with the pilot.
After we ate, we went down to the poker room to play some 1-3NL. This story has nothing to do with FBTR, but it's kind of funny and poker-related: We take the last two seats at a full table. I buy in for $300 and Jay buys in for $500. He's UTG and before he has his chips or cards, before he's even sat down, he announces a raise to $100. The dealer and all the other players (mostly older guys) are confused. What does he mean "raise to $100"? He hasn't even seen his cards! Finally, the dealer sorts out the confusion. He announces the action as $100 to call to UTG+1 who quickly folds. Two more folds and it's on a salty looking old man with a Las Vegas baseball cap. He gives Jay the evil. "One hundred smackers, huh," he mutters. He looks at his cards, then back to Jay. "Re-raise," he says finally and makes it $200. It folds back to Jay, who still hasn't looked at his cards, and he instantly says "All-in". Just then, his chips arrive. He immediately takes them out of the rack and shoves them into the center. The salty old man calls with the little hesitation and they run the board which, in the end, looks something like: J9T73. Jay looks at one card and flips it over. It's an 8. "Straight" he says. The old man looks at the board, looks at his cards, looks at Jay and shakes his head. "Nice hand," he finally mutters, then stands and immediately exits the poker room. After that, no one wanted to play with the crazy kid in seat four. Within ten minutes, I was playing three-handed with one stubborn middle-aged man (who would have probably given up his first born son to stack Jay) and the infamous pr1nnyraid -- whose reputation had just been elevated to legendary status in my mind. Solid Brag: I played for another 30 minutes or so and left a $30 winner.
When I left Jay at the poker table, I gave him an updated treatment and he told me "We're going to do this. I like your idea."
After that, I thought we were mere days away from securing a budget. I was wrong. Jay got busy with House of Cards and my emails began going unanswered. All of my filmmaker friends were like: See? I told you. Not serious. Months passed, but I kept dropping the occasional email, reminding him I was still interested, but holding on to little optimism at that point. Then, out of the blue, in November of 2007, Jay contacted me and said he might have found two more interested investors: Dan Morris (DJ Sensei) and Dean Strachan (UKPartyGirl). After a few weeks, of emailing and AIM'ing (and selling myself) we officially formed Robusto LLC and they gathered the budget for the first segment of FROM BUSTO TO ROBUSTO, which at that point was set to be focused on DJ Sensei in San Francisco.
On December 27th, 2007 I traveled to Las Vegas with my film crew (cameraman, sound guy) to the MSNL house and production on FROM BUSTO TO ROBUSTO officially began. It's evolved a great deal since then, but our original vision -- a feature length documentary film about online poker -- remains in tact.
Ask me any questions about the project or filmmaking in general!
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