We caught up with Ranking Hero Executive Director Pedro Canali about his experiences thus far during the 2016 Cash Festival London. Ranking Hero is a partner for the first time in the Cash Game Festival after seeing its success and popularity in Tallinn, Estonia during it inaugural festival in November.
Canali is more than impressed with how things are going so far sharing that, "I think it's amazing. It was the first time I played in a Cash Game Festival. It is a new concept and I like it a lot. People are a lot more friendly compared to when I used to play cash games for a living. Some tables are tough, some tables are soft. It is really interesting. A festival in poker is usually surrounding tournaments, and here it is really a new concept for me and its fun, nice, and organized. I am really impressed with the professionalism with the organizers."
While Canali has worked with Aspers Casino Westfield Stratford City, the location of the poker festival, this is the first time Ranking Hero is involved with the Cash Game Festival brand. "It is a long-time we are working with Aspers," shared Canali. "With Franke, it has been two years that we are working with Aspers and we have had a great campaign and our people liking a lot."
He is impressed and surprised at what he has seen from the Cash Game Festival organizers so far explaining, "This is the first time we have worked with the Cash Game Festival and I was pleasantly surprised. People in the poker industry are sometimes not really professional and can be lazy, and this time I was surprised. The media, the tv-table commentary staff, Franke and the other organizers are really professional. It has been a long-time since I have worked with such a great organization. Everything is going smoothly and everyone is happy."
On Day 2 of the festival, Canali was on the feature table in a £1/£1 game. While the stakes were much lower than Canali was normally used to playing, there were some high profile players including 2009 WSOP gold bracelet winner Tomas Alenius.
Despite some of the competition, Canali commented that people were more about having fun making it a soft table. "The people were nice and the table was pretty soft," shared Canali. "Everyone was joking and having fun with lots of table talk. And I ran pretty good flopping a set against two guys who were almost drawing dead. I made a little profit and it was a nice time."
Canali also got into the action commentating on the live stream during Day 2. He first planned to be on the stream for just 20 minutes, but he was having fun commentating for many hours longer. He also shared he enjoyed commentating even more than playing.
"I love playing on a TV table, but like even more commentating," Canali said. "The co-commentator was really interesting and we talked more about life than the action on the table. He asked me a lot of great questions about my past as a Magic the Gathering player, as an entrepreneur, as a professional player. I have been a salsa teacher for 10 years, so I love to talk, I love to share, and had a good time during the commentary."
We asked why Ranking Hero was created and learned it was to serve a niche of lower stakes players and providing a social media platform for players and those in the poker industry.
"We have been one of the few groups of people along with fellow co-founder Nicholas Levi that things have been going good right now in poker and that things are going to be better in the industry soon enough," shared Canali. "So we decided to create a database that takes into account small tournaments with buy-ins below $500. At the time The Hendon Mob wasn't tracking tournaments with that low of a buy-in. I was feeling sick and sad for my friends that weren't playing in big tournaments. I myself was lucky enough to be sponsored in France and was playing in all the big tournaments. Meanwhile my friends were all playing in clubs, associations, and small tournaments. They wanted to brag about their results. They are good players, just don't have the experience yet. I was really sad for them that no-one at the time cared about them."
"On top of that, I realize that 99% of the players don't play tournaments and just play in associations or are part of the industry such as journalists, club directors, floor workers, and dealers," added Canali. "So I wanted to create a space where people can talk about and share anything and ask questions. So that's why we created Ranking Hero. It is a mix between a database and a social network."
