GGPoker, Elky and Fedor: HS Regs' Perspective
After the events of the last few weeks, I wanted to write a post detailing what has happened with GG from the perspective of the HS community.
I personally haven't been playing much poker in the last year, but as a moderator in the HS group have a good oversight of the situation.
For anyone unaware, on November the 8th GG Poker:
- Removed VIP games
- Added Exclusive games where a host gives access
- Added 2knl with an exact copy of 1knl rake, 8bb/100 at the tables
Background to our relationship with GG:
- March 2023 - GG doubles rake at VIP tables overnight with no announcement. Regs realise through TOCs, and organise a mass boycott of the games.
- April 2023 - Elky acting as a rep for GG helps to present the data we provide on why this rake structure change will hurt their bottom line. We close the boycott with just a small rake increase, reduced rake 2-3 handed, and the promises to work more closely together in future
- April 2023 - Early 2024 - We provide a lot of data to GG poker about rake and action from other sites, mainly with the aim of reducing 2-3 handed rake so pros can battle each other, start tables, as they do elsewhere. Elky seems receptive and on board, but GG themselves don't believe that pros will play pros at any rake structure, despite the overwhelming evidence from ACR.
- In the same period, GG agree to give us more input to security, and some long term consensus cheating accounts disappear. Elky goes as far to say he will instantly freeze accounts for investigation, if the HS group mods are 90% sure they are cheating,. We take this bar very seriously, collecting evidence on many accounts, but only use it on two occasions.
- January 2024 - GG Changes their game integrity format, with Fedor as the new game integrity advisor
- Feb 2024 - myself and the PLO rep meet with Fedor on call, and discuss the issues we think are most important. I felt it was a very useful call, he communicated GGs standpoint on various issues, made it seem easier to understand, and also seemed open some ideas we had.
- Feb 2024 to present - Fedor and Elky respond with delays in the chat, but generally I'd say the relationship was good, things didn't get any worse on GG poker. Since then we only reported 2 accounts cheating, both were investigated at least, albeit with a long delay. The second account, Dennis Vetter, was still cheating and playing up to the last day of the VIP games, albeit only reported a week or so before. In the latter months Elky was kind of AFK, we heard he had some sickness so thought it could be that.
So in general, although things were not ideal obviously with high rake, low WR - GG poker seemed to be making an effort with GI and at least there was a line between players and the business.
I would also note that personally I endeavoured to only suggest ideas that would both be beneficial for the regs, and the business (lower rake HU and 3handed the most obvious example), hoping that this would keep some mutual respect rather than spamming with pie in the sky thinking.
My general feeling from these interactions was that:
- GG is profit maximising, but a smart company in general
- Elky was genuinely trying to make an effort to protect player interests. Fedor harder to get a read on, on occasions felt like he wasn't properly reading our messages fully and didn't really think we understood the landscape or situation. EG I provided a report with 4 GTOwiz hits for the same player, and noted that there were infinite more (it was every hand) but I would avoid spamming as they have already been emailed to support, and he responded a month later with a message about how GTOwiz hits can't be used as evidence and this case doesn't look particularly obvious.
For me personally this was a bit frustrating as I was filtering hard which reports from the HS community I thought merited being pushed to this level.
This brings us to early November:
Rumours start to abound that GG are making HS games private. We ask Elky for information, he says on 07/11:
Less than 24 hours later, he is in the middle of a marathon 10 hour session with a table full of recs in these new exclusive games.
Meanwhile, I message Fedor privately to ask what's going on. He says Elky will have to answer, and he has no insight to that part of the company, but he's not planning to play the games.
I message Elky saying I will publish something but can wait for his comment, and he says he'll have something by end of the day - but sends nothing.
Fedor then starts to grind the games too, pming to say he'll probably be playing here and there after all.
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My conclusions from this period are as follows:
GG
GG is a business, it cares about it's bottom line.
It didn't believe HS games were profitable after transaction costs, game integrity, so decided to privatise them with hosts, and raise the rake. I mostly believe the that they didn't much profit from these games. Recreationals have very high PVIs and acquisition costs,
I think over time regs will be allowed back in to increase the liquidity, obviously paying higher rake, likely giving some % of their action the game runners.
What seems clear though is that GG doesn't care about poker as competition/meritocracy or the HS dream.
Despite overwhelming evidence, they maintain that regs won't play regs no matter the rake.
The profitable variants that remain on GG website are largely only profitable through promotions. At 1knl a huge % of regs w/r comes from promotions (leaderboard, envelopes) that GG can pull at any point.
And from the leaks from PokerOK CEO/ other sources privy to their plans, it seems they aren't really concerned about it being possible to win in the long run. If they haven't come for your format now, they will in future.
There is nothing morally wrong with businesses pursuing maximum profit imo, and maybe they should be expected to. In GGs pursuit of growth, they actually resurrected HS poker too, probably benefitting most 500nl+ players to this point.
But if you are a poker player representing the business, with the information I have it seems you have to concede that you care more about the business than the other players or poker as a competitive game, which brings me to;
Elky and Fedor
Their brand is attached to GG. Until this recent period I genuinely would say I believe they were just realistic people who cared about the players interests, but understood they were operating within a business framework and radical change is unrealistic.
This last period though has made me question this assumption to say the least, and unless any further information comes to light, it seems reasonable to say they care more about their bottom line than the game itself.
This is also fine, it's not in my personal taste, especially if already extremely wealthy, but people through the whole of history have prioritised their own financial situation over 'moral' interests. It can also be debated if 'protecting the ability to win at poker HS' is a moral interest, but for me it's the thing that drew me to the game. No politics, just strategy, and the ability to test your strategy vs whomever you'd like.
It doesn't make them evil or bad, but silence on this particularly in Elkys case does mean they can't claim to be champions of the game in my opinion, and this should be acknowledged.
What can we do
Publicly support sites and ambassadors that do seem to have interest in maintaining the game, and the opportunity to play highstakes.
Right now this is:
- ACR, whose reps have been very responsive to feedback from the HS community in general, albeit maybe lacking the business competence of GG
- CoinPoker, with new ownership, Pads, big interesting promos coming
- WPTpoker, with HS games and competent GI as far as I can tell, and an interest in engaging with the players
Research rake and please think before you aimlessly play these new games GG offer. and vindicate their decision making. I counted 80 entries into 2k yesterday with 4 profitable seats.
Honestly though, when one site has the monopoly and seems to be trying to push it, it's almost every other platform.
For anyone reading from these or other sites, we have a discord with all the HS players in which we coordinated to try and make GI easier, streamline investigations and reports, feel free to reach out.
Any reasonable questions I'll do my best to answer in the thread.
Well write post op.
I don’t think we should talk about fedor or Elky. are they good guys ? Prob not but let’s be realistic, in their shoes, 99% of poker players would do the game thing.
Like OP said, gg poker is business and they can do whatever they want. What blows my mind is how they don’t see how big a mistake they are doing… remember what poker stars did when they cut rb, which was one of the main reasons their site is a ghost town nowadays.
As ggbruce said, fishs like to play pros. It’s a challenge… yes sure some fishs would rather play vs fish’s, but being an amateur and having the chance to play vs the elite pros is nice.
And it’s crazy that gg thinks a fish are less likely to lose vs non elite pros than very top pros… like wtf. Elky fedor, any non elite pro will destroy the fishs.
Want make it gamble ? Make it one
50% vpip table . Fish’s will join whatever they want and forcing regs to play half hands are cutting a bit of their edge plus making it gambling while still openning to everyone.
It’s fun how people at top of business make rookie mistakes.
Bucks hired doc.
United paid 50m for fred.
Barcelona paid 180m dembele lol.
Gg makes exclusive pros.
Just saw Elky playing against some whales. If i had the roll and the opportunity i would happily play there. Even paying 8bb/100 rake, i'm 100% sure that i can win.
Fedor repping GG while his whole crew reps Coinpoker:
GG has implemented the classic strategy of cornering a market and then jacking up the prices. They have done this through both legal and illegal means (allowing players from banned countries through agents and VPNs), which has allowed them to crush both fully legitimate operations like Stars, and fully criminal organizations like ACR, alike. Many players simply do not have better options.
On one hand, they have spent a lot of money to get to this position, so they should reap the benefits, but at the same time, they're not playing by the rules and have created a de facto monopoly in a lot of jurisdictions. Players should vote with their rake, but that likely won't happen, due to them having the market cornered.
Well write post op.
I don’t think we should talk about fedor or Elky. are they good guys ? Prob not but let’s be realistic, in their shoes, 99% of poker players would do the game thing.
Im an unknown and i wouldn't do what they did for 500k.
If i had a name brand like Fedor it just makes it a worse play as they are smearing their own name.
PokerOK (russian gg skin) CEO was pretty clear.
They want poker to become similar to slots meaning every player will have a RTP around 95% and there will be no winning players long term.
GG has a history of doing shady ****, here is the list of the top of my head.
1. Fedor Kruse scandal and the aftermath.
Remember when a guy was using RTA on gg and the only reason he got caught was because his friends ratted him out? Well right after he was exposed GG claimed that they banned 80 accounts for using
This is why a few posters were calling out the HS regs for only caring about their bottom line during the gg rake episode.
A hard stance against GG was the only moral move at that point but HS regs just wanted their rake reduced.
Long story short, this industry is all about its bottom line. Every entity out for itself. Every single HS reg who relies on GG to play games would sit if given the opportunity. What else are they going to do?
Am i missing something, how could HS tables be unprofitable? They are raking millions from them, how could that not be profitable? What are the additional expenses?
Hey how about micro stakes where we are sinking 20 years in a row and no body cares
You'd think long time pros like Elky and Fedor would have enough money where they would pass up the opportunity to backstab other professional poker players and win what? potentially 100k?
So either they're scums or are they brokies? My guess is both.
They're doing exactly what 99 percent of poker pros would do and they're likely doing it for a lot more than 100k while a lot of people would do it for way less than 100k.
Backstab other pros? That's hilarious. It's hard to find a bigger group overall of self interest acting short term thinking parasites.
While your interests may align with other pros/winning players at times you're not on the same team as each other.
Am i missing something, how could HS tables be unprofitable? They are raking millions from them, how could that not be profitable? What are the additional expenses?
I was going through some nosebleed PLO hands last year of omaha4rollz, alike etc. 4420 hands of PLO for O4R between stakes 25/50-200/400(ante), he paid $212993,04 in rake. So around $48 per hand. And that's all hands, even the ones he folded pre.
Wasn't crypto this magical new fintech that allows ppl to easily exchange currency with low fees and no middlemen (banks that wouldn't necessarily process gambling transactions).
How do you not turn profit from raking every single player almost $50/hand at high stakes in online space?
If i had a name brand like Fedor it just makes it a worse play as they are smearing their own name.
If Fedor Holz can attach his name to the Prometheus ("Instant solving - no waiting!") RTA tool and get away with it then nobody will care about this unfortunately.
GG to HS online, let's hope there's an alternative, and soon.
Big surprise that the pros that stayed on when Jason Koon stepped down (without comment because of NDA) are a bunch of dipshits. Fedor Holz and Elky are as bad Chris Ferguson et al. ****ing shitbags.
No need to worry about anything guys. The wheel still turning.
If Fedor Holz can attach his name to the Prometheus ("Instant solving - no waiting!") RTA tool and get away with it then nobody will care about this unfortunately.
GG to HS online, let's hope there's an alternative, and soon.
how does it work over at coin, do they just p2p you a set amount that is your roll for the day and at the end of x hours you get to chop the balance or something??
Why I ask is do you think GG is doing something similar for Elky/Fedor as no way theyre firing their own money..
how does it work over at coin, do they just p2p you a set amount that is your roll for the day and at the end of x hours you get to chop the balance or something??
Why I ask is do you think GG is doing something similar for Elky/Fedor as no way theyre firing their own money..
why wouldnt you when youre in a game full of whales with a massive edge? at worst theyre just selling some action to friends to mitigate variance if the stakes are too high
Am i missing something, how could HS tables be unprofitable? They are raking millions from them, how could that not be profitable? What are the additional expenses?
its not that theyre unprofitable gg is just greedy and looking to go the absolute most profitable route and highest EV choice for them
What's up with that?
That's it, I'm joining onlyfans.
why wouldnt you when youre in a game full of whales with a massive edge? at worst theyre just selling some action to friends to mitigate variance if the stakes are too high
its not that theyre unprofitable gg is just greedy and looking to go the absolute most profitable route and highest EV choice for them
I was mostly angling to try getting Gaz to confirm how Coin is structuring deals with streamers
What blows my mind is how they don’t see how big a mistake they are doing… remember what poker stars did when they cut rb, which was one of the main reasons their site is a ghost town nowadays.
If they still had huge influx of whales playing, the regs would still be on there, regs follow the whales almost no matter the conditions, GG has proven that time and time again, they should have been dead in the water from day one if rake/rakeback mattered but they just kept growing mainly by attracting big asian whales, and with them not following any national laws and allowing pretty much any country...
Why I ask is do you think GG is doing something similar for Elky/Fedor as no way theyre firing their own money..
Why wouldnt a professional be playing their own money in a whale only game?.... Even if they have a bad downswing they would have a massive line of people willing to stake them with excellent deals just to be able to get a piece of the exclusive game cake..
Only way to stand with a protest from all games. Getting this to happen in practice might be somewhat hard
welcome to poker where nobody gives a **** about anybody else
it really isn't a team game after all
