Becoming a Best Ball Bro: What Are We Doing?

JJ Zachariason (0:01)

So Rich, you realize you're the first co-host to ever hit the Late-Round Podcast feed with me.

Rich Ryan (0:07)

Not only am I the first co-host, I'm just a random too. Like you have all these legends, D-Bro last week, Smizz, all these guys that win heaps of money playing fantasy football. And here I am, a random, in front of a white screen, I look like I'm a hostage of some sorts.

You've put this burden on me. I don't know if I can carry it.

JJ Zachariason (0:25)

At the very least, you're gonna be better than Denny Carter. I'm JJ, and I've been playing in best ball leagues for years. But there are people out there who play a lot more than I do. And there are people out there who have won a lot more than I have. And I want to learn from them. This season, I'll be documenting my journey of Max entering Underdog's best ball mania contest. And I'll be doing so with guidance from some of the most successful best ball players on the planet.

This is the year where things start to change. This is the year where I officially become a Best Ball Bro.

Welcome in to the first episode of Becoming a Best Ball Bro. I'm JJ Zachariason. You can find me on Twitter, at LateRoundQB, and as I said in the intro, joined by my co-host, Rich Ryan. Rich, let everyone know who you are, where they can find you, all that good stuff, because you and I have been working together now for about eight months or so. You're the brains behind a lot of the video work that I'm able to do over on YouTube and such, and you've helped me out on the audio end too, although I'm probably still not quite to your standards in the way that I'm editing some of the audio, but let everyone know who you are and where they can find you and such.

Rich Ryan (1:43)

You're so much better on the audio end. It's music to my ears. Yeah, I'm Rich Ryan, Rich T. Ryan across all platforms. I've worked in poker my entire professional career, literally since the day I turned 21 I applied to a position to cover the World Series of Poker that summer.

I covered it for several summers, and then I got a job in operations for a poker company. Now, my main job day-to-day is acquisition for a free-to-play poker company, but I do some video editing in the meantime, and I'm in the Late-Round Discord, great Patreon community. I'm a bit of a lurker there because I'm in a Jets Discord and some other discords.

I've got to be honest, you have a great community of very smart people, so I don't like dipping my toe into the water when I might feel uninformed. I just lurk and get all the great content, and you put out an ad everyone looking for some help video editing last year. I reached out and for some strange reason, you allowed some complete nobody that you've never heard with, interacted with before, to take on all video editing for all your properties, and very happy to be here.

JJ Zachariason (2:51)

Yeah, man, and the rest is history. It's been a fun time since the start of that. And when I, you know, let's talk about the show a little bit because today's episode, I'm not gonna have a guest hop on, no pro, if you will, to hop on, and talk about best ball, because I want to intro the show a little bit. You can throw some questions my way as well. But I really wanted this extra voice on the show, in you, because I think it's really important for people to sort of understand that I'm not the quote unquote expert in this series, in my opinion, in this best ball series, in Becoming a Best Ball Bro. I really want to get to know and ask questions to a lot of these pros and such. And every episode, we're gonna be opening up and talking about sort of like what we've seen within the best ball space over the last week or so, because this will be weekly.

What we've seen in the best ball space, the things that I've been, or the players that I've been targeting, the players that I've been drafting, all that kind of stuff. And just kind of introducing, you know, the guests that will be hopping on. But I do want to say really quick, why is this show happening? I think that's a question that some folks probably have, you know, about this feed and the podcast feed. I went from the Late-Round Podcast being this solo show to then Late-Round Prospectives hitting last year. And that's obviously, you know, sort of created its own audience in a way over the last year or so. So why is Becoming a Best Ball Bro happening in the first place? And I just want to say that I think there's three reasons. I think number one, people have asked for best ball content for years from me at this point. You know, obviously there is a marriage between season long redraft and best ball. It's like, I mean, it's not like you're playing a totally different game. And so there's been a lot of questions about that through the years.