A Conversation With Legendary Commentator Jesse May Part 1

The following interview was conducted with one of poker’s legendary voices, a voice that was broadcast into the homes of many poker fans around the world.

I imagine it is still heard frequently today, through reruns and YouTube highlights of the famed TV show Late Night Poker, where he provided his insights into poker from the show’s commentary booth. He also made an appearance at the table in the first series, under the pseudonym Mickey Dane, which was the name of the main character in his novel, titled Shut Up and Deal.

Nowadays, his voice is mainly bouncing off the walls of the world-class Bombay Club, and sibling venue, the old-school Chesterfield Poker Club, where he serves as Head of Poker Strategy for the Bombay Group.

A man of many talents, especially for the gab, Jesse May.

May was kind enough to take time out of his busy schedule and commit some time to me, in what became a longer interview than we both anticipated. Without further ado, here is the first part of the conversation that I had with the one and only Jesse May.

The Nordic Hotel Forum, Tallinn, 6:06 p.m.

Tell me about your background, how did you get into poker?

And then, that was kind of part of the Boom, not the boom that everyone knows of the Moneymaker boom. Still, there was a boom that started in the 90s, where poker went from being only legal in Las Vegas and some places in California, you know, within four or five years, you had, like, 20-something States, the Indian reservations, you had Atlantic City, you had Foxwoods, New Orleans. At some point in the 90s, it became obvious to me that I was not that good. Even though I had a good run I wrote a book at some point, in the 90s, and then ended up in Europe, I met my wife, who’s Danish and started, doing some stuff there with a guy named Nic Szeremeta who ran this magazine called Poker Europa.

May went on to add: That’s my background in poker. I then got out of poker not long after Black Friday, when all the TV kind of crashed. And ended up getting into sports betting, and I’ve been doing that for 10 years then I ran into Tim Heath (Owner of The Bombay Group) a few months ago, he told me about his vision for poker and in Bombay and Chesterfield invited and me over to Tallinn.

What is your official job title?

My official job title is Head of Poker Strategy for the Bombay group. And that title is probably not an indication of what I do as much as what I don’t do, I’m not involved in the operational side of the business, which is important because I’m operationally challenged.

The high-stakes stream May referred to was the €500k-€1m buy-in heads-up cash game stream, which featured Finnish phenom Ossi Ketola taking on a trio of opponents. He faced fellow countryman Elias Talvitie, who served Ketola his only loss of the evening, before Ketola took €1,000,000 from both Dan “Jungleman” Cates and high-stakes tournament regular Kayhan Mokri. Click the video below to check out the action from The Bombay Club. May himself rolled back the years to take to the booth to commentate on the heads-up high-stakes spectacle; it is worth checking out. Expect big hands, big bluffs, and big action from start to finish.

What do you hope to achieve with each venue? Are the goals going to be different because of the difference in stakes played at each venue?

It’s a second home for some people, and it’s a place where people want to travel to because of certain things. One of the things is that it should be open 24 hours. Okay, one of the other things is that it should have a constant flow of cash games, going with people coming in from all over to community feed those cash games.

Even if you’re a 1/3 player, a free-buy player, or a higher player for the bigger tournaments, all that happens at the Chesterfield. The vision, and a big part of the Chesterfield, is this permanent streaming table, where we’re going to be creating organic content, making like an event space, and people are watching, and we’re going to be making them at the Chesterfield.

We’re not Triton. They do a great job, and we’re not the EPT High Roller, who also do a great job because we don’t have that kind of space, you know, and we’re not looking to have that kind of space where you run tournaments with a guarantee up and run these, 20, 30 table events, and that sort of thing. What we are as a place is where we’re going to start from the top down. Invite our most valuable guests who want to play poker and like to play poker and then create the value that way and then fill it in with some of the biggest names in poker and some of the top tier Pros who want to come now, um, because they see the value we’ve created both in the cash, games, and the tournaments.

You recently held The Festival Sviten Special Weekend at The Chesterfield. How much do you enjoy hosting these events?

And since I’ve gotten here, what we’ve started doing, you know, obviously, Hold’em, Omaha. They’re the big games, but we started doing is really having these mixed games. Every week, we have what we call a Mixed Game of the Week.  It’s €100 buy-in on a Thursday night with a different kind of mixed game. And on Wednesday, we have a free buy tournament or a low rebuy tournament to qualify people in there.

Sviten’s got a lot of legs, we also did an OFC Festival. I don’t know if you know that, Open Face Chinese. Same thing. That was a couple of months ago, had a great experience with that. I like that, and I think that there’s, in Tallinn, anyway, and in Estonia, when you talk about Sweden and Finland, there is a good group of people who those are the kind of games they like, they want to play them. They want to play them in cash and in tournaments.

That’s all for now folks for the first part of this two part interview with Jesse May. Stay tuned to pokerlistings.com for the final instalment which will be published in the coming days, as well as additional content from the rest of the team.

Until next time.