Brian Rast and Phil Laak Start Their New Podcast “Late Reg”

“Late Reg”: Eric Wasserson is the first guest

Famed poker pros Brian Rast and Phil Laak, who have 8 WSOP gold bracelets among them, have started a new podcast together titled “Late Reg”. The first episode was released on May 4th, with guest Eric Wasserson.

Wasserson, a former close business associate of Daniel Negreanu, started the year with quite a bang. He won $1.813 million in a single session on the Super High Roller Cash Game livestream at the Venetian in January. What’s more, he booked that win while playing with a 73% VPIP — as he himself admitted on the podcast, it was a good amount of luck and making good hands, rather than pure skill.

And Wasserson had enough “rungood” left when he went to play on High Stakes Poker last month: in a memorable hand, he flopped quad deuces against Darin Feinstein’s turned full house, which got him a hefty, $700,000 pot.

“Wass” ended that session with $858,500 in the black, by the way, playing “only” 63% of his hands this time….

Is Eric Wasserson a Degen?

As you can probably tell by his VPIP stats, Wasserson is not really a rock-solid, cautious gambler

During the discussion, the hosts revealed that after streamed games, he likes to stay and place chunky prop bets on whether the next card dealt will be red or black on the board. In response, Wasserson claimed that he likes his ability to have this carefree attitude, and he values having fun in the moment over accumulating the most amount of money possible. He also believes that this mindset helped him with his career as a poker player, as it let him deal with the variance of the game better.

Wasserson has one WSOP bracelet so far, despite that — as he said in the podcast — at some point in his career, he focused exclusively on World Series events. His one bracelet is from a $26K Dealers’ Choice event at the 2025 WSOP Paradise in the Bahamas, which earned him $353,340.    

As for the hosts, Laak revealed that he met Rast while playing in a $25/$50 No Limit Hold’em cash game at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, Nevada about 20 years ago. Rast had such an impact on Laak that he was willing to stake him for thousands of dollars without even knowing his last name to allow him to play higher stakes. 

Laak and Rast also shared that the name of their podcast, “Late Reg,” refers to them joining the podcast game late. “We’re the last podcast on Earth, everyone else has one, and we like to arrive late. So now here we are,” as Laak put it.

The first two episodes of Late Reg hosted by Phil Laak and Brian Rast are out now. Jonathan Hirsch was the featured guest on the second episode.