Ray Zorfold, the founder of The Muck, is set to release a browser game next week called Allen's Bread Winner, in which a cartoon Allen Kessler runs across a casino floor catching bread while dodging a falling chainsaw. Kessler, the actual person, has already approved the project.
The game has fifteen rooms, opening on one called Bread Run and closing on one called Montenegro, with stops named for rooms on Kessler's own real schedule, including Bally's, the Taj Mahal and the Regency. Kessler gets three lives per run. A chainsaw costs one, along with what the game's own instructions call a dramatic faint. A can of Diet Coke slows time and doubles bread points, and a heart refills a life. The later rooms, per those same instructions, are a matter of opinion.
How It Started
Kessler's public reputation made him an obvious fit. Poker media has spent years documenting the sheer number of live events he plays in a single year, a total that outpaces nearly everyone else on tour. He is just as well known for saying exactly what he thinks about a bad structure, a late start time or a buffet line, on record, without waiting to be asked. That reputation reportedly did most of the writing on its own.
Zorfold ran the character by Kessler directly, over direct message. The first version didn't land: Kessler said it looked like Danny DeVito, not him. A revised pass pushed the likeness closer to the real thing, and that one got a plain go-ahead, along with permission to release the game for free and post about it. The game's own credits carry a line to that effect: Made by Ray Zorfold. Allen Approved. A second line clarifies that any dialogue drawn onto the game's artwork is written for the joke and was never actually said by Kessler, the same standard this site holds itself to everywhere else.
This is not the first time the site has used Kessler as a comedic subject. Zorfold ran a running bit earlier this year promising a new Kessler meme for every ten likes on the original post, and kept making good on it for months:
For every 10 likes I'll make @AllenKessler a meme😇
A friend of Zorfold's who posts as SATX_Poker later got Kessler on camera and tried to talk him into telling Zorfold off on the record. Kessler politely declined, and used the moment to compliment the meme thread instead:
My work is done here. Thank you everyone and thank you Allen for being such a good sport.
Watch on XPeople involved in the new project say that history made this approval easier to get than they expected.
Where It Leaves Things
The game is scheduled to go live next week at noon Eastern, with a top-ten leaderboard verified on the server and separate Easy and Hard difficulties, the harder of which the game's own instructions describe as having opinions about missed loaves. Asked whether the fifteen rooms will be harder than his actual travel schedule, Kessler did not immediately respond, which the people who made the game are choosing to read as a tie.
The game goes live at themuck.net/rays-corner/allen-bread/ next week.
Ray Zorfold really did build Allen's Bread Winner, and Allen Kessler really did approve the use of his likeness in it; the game is real and set to release next week. The interview details, direct color and behind-the-scenes quotes in this story are invented for the piece, the same as every other Side Pot story.
