He Got BANNED from Bellagio…So He Built A Better Poker Game at The Venetian?! Brian Okin Tells ALL

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Mafia Poker Rooms, Molly’s Game Checks, and Building a Vegas Stream Game | Table 1 Podcast

Some poker stories start with a “buddy taught me Hold’em in college.”

Brian Okin’s starts with a craps addiction in Vienna, a nickname that luckily didn't stick (Dice), and an underground Manhattan room where you had to buzz in like Rounders… and somehow turns into: running a dot-com era e-commerce business, losing $100k+ in a three-day session (plus the cursed cashmere hoodie), playing Molly’s Game (and cashing what might’ve been her last check), and eventually building a high-stakes streamed cash game at the Venetian.

In this episode, Art and Justin sit down with Brian Okin for one of those conversations that zig-zags between poker, business, and the kind of New York stories you’re not supposed to say out loud.

What we talk about:

• The most confusing legal name in poker: A. Peter Brian Okin
• Growing up Long Island → Manhattan for 18 years
• Board games, Uno scoring, and why Monopoly is “the true model of business”
• First real gambling: Vegas as a kid → self-deal poker → then… an “underground casino” run out of a synagogue 😭
• Studying abroad in Vienna + London and falling into craps (aka: “six months of addiction”)
• The Rounders/Moneymaker-era lightbulb moment: first bluff ever in a 1/2 underground game
• The “destiny” hand: river gets redealt… and the same river comes again
• The bachelor party that turned into a Bellagio nightly cash + 5th-place finish
• Brian Okin’s infamous marathon sessions (and why coffee is basically a performance-enhancing drug)
• The $100k+ loss + the cashmere hoodie he had to throw away
• Playing Molly’s Game 10–15 times… and the story of the $13k check
• Leaving the family plumbing business → starting a dot-com home goods business → the website disaster that nearly killed it
• New York home game scene: PLO, no-limit Stud 8, “trading action,” and why Vegas players were sharper
• Moving to Vegas in 2015… by smuggling cats on a train (yes, really)
• Pre-COVID Vegas vs private-game era: politics, access, and the fork in the road
• Launching Okin’s Game at the Venetian + going live on stream
• Heads-up PLO battles and why he thinks it’s the purest form of gambling

Brian’s links
https://okinsgame.com
https://x.com/brianokin
https://instagram.com/brianokin
https://youtube.com/brianokin

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Phenom Poker — now running daily MTTs
First-time depositors can get up to a 200% bonus on $2,000 when you use our link:https://play.phenompoker.com/register?r=Table1