Few poker podcasts earned a place in the community the way Only Friends did. After 719 episodes, the show signed off on April 25, 2025, with a four-hour farewell stream, and the crew's thanks to viewers felt like a genuine goodbye. Now the show is returning, with a first episode scheduled for Monday, November 9, at 11 a.m. PT, and four shows planned each week from Monday through Thursday, according to Matt Berkey's confirmation to PokerNews. That is welcome news for anyone who missed the mix of high-stakes talk, cheating allegations, cryptocurrency and industry controversy that made the show a fixture.
The return also tells us something about the format. The original run ended partly because the crew lost its Las Vegas studio space, and Berkey later said YouTube's crackdown on certain gambling-related content made the timing feel right. Those pressures are real for independent poker creators, who depend on a few platforms and can be pushed out of a studio or a channel with little warning. A show that can disappear and come back this quickly shows how fragile this part of the industry remains, and how much it relies on the personalities behind the microphones.
The part I hope comes back most is the WSOP coverage. During the summer, the daily broadcasts gave viewers a sense of what was happening in Las Vegas beyond the tournament results, whether that was a disputed hand, a disagreement between players or a rumor moving through the tables. Those shows also brought together different voices from across the community. The report notes that the return to weekday shows makes next summer's WSOP broadcasts a hopeful prospect rather than a promise, and I would urge the crew to treat that coverage as a priority when the schedule is set.
The show's relationship with the PokerNews Podcast deserves a mention too. Members of both shows appeared on each other's broadcasts over the years, and Chad Holloway said the PokerNews team took a lot of inspiration from Only Friends and found its ending very sad. Berkey's May 2025 appearance on Episode #965 showed how that friendly rivalry worked in practice, with the crew discussing the WSOP patch war, Charlie Carrel's entry ban and the return of poker at The Lodge.
My conclusion is simple. Fans should welcome Only Friends back, and the crew should aim for the same candor and range that earned it the Best Podcast award at the 2023 Global Poker Awards. The bigger lesson is that the poker media ecosystem works best when shows like this one stay on the air, because they keep the community talking. Here's hoping the first episode in November sounds like the old crew never left.