PokerOK (Russian GGPoker skin) CEO went fully unhinged. Stables / winning players banned.

Boy are you naive.

This moron spewed so much nonsense about his goals and beautiful future of poker, that any scummy politician can learn from that.

I dunno about translation covering it all, but this was way worse than even WPN clownfiesta when dealing with botfarm news. There were more than enough insights for anyone to understand, that you should never touch GG or that skin especially:
Broken rules of fair play at another room where he was ambassador. Now he fights cheaters, together with Holtz (Insta solver Odin & coaching site with MDA lessons)
He doesn't want to ban stables, he wants only the ones that will work with him. So what are some posters here celebrating again? The ones that work with him will be under his wing, since he needs funds for his private games with Patrick Antonius 😀
One stable he locked, was exposing him on forums. No evidence of cheating presented (because they should be banned by GG security in that case).
He doesn't have his own security at skin, GG main one investigating cheating etc. But he can still lock you w/o security finding you guilty of anything. Not deny service in form of "please take your money and leave". But limit withdrawals & methods of withdrawal.
Skin is scamming on commissions at every opportunity, sometimes breaking GG guidelines or payment processor rules. Skin scammed affiliates & ambassadors before.
Every week there are couple of new stories about accounts being hacked & balances lost at casino. His response was "Yeah, that was some exchange we used that leaked e-mails". Haha what??? Not even sure if they have bruteforce protection in 2024.
He sniffed through accounts & looked into their player notes. Then shared findings with third parties aka stables that will work with him. Security is at GG btw, none of this is his concern.
Ignored questions about superusers, obvious cheating/collusion in promotions & security not being able to detect obvious botters. Just like at WPN, "preflop stats @ position" are close to impossible for them to check out.
Said multiple times that they don't want winning players & that poker should become more like casino/slots.
Was chased out of any third party platform to his safe spaces, where he deletes any criticism & tells people to "*** off".
Said multiple times that all of this was green-lighted by GG headquarters, and "forcing winning REGs out" was in the works for months. Same months MoneyTaker69 and GG client security leaks happened.

So this a-hole doesn't want to clean site from stables, he can't even identify them properly. It was like being in Wolf of Wallstreet movie, and this cokehead telling all his secret on the phone that FBI had tapped. And GG has this guy employed as the head of their skin.
Brazil & Canada probably has similar upstanding citizens running their skins.

With GG the players biggest enemy has always been GG.

So stables are ok so long as he gets a peace of the action?

Before I begin, I want to clarify that I am a solo player and have never been part of any stables. I have no personal interest, and the destruction of stables would only benefit me. However, the reason I created this topic is because I sincerely believe that the main goal of the current CEO of PokerOK is not to fight stables and advocate for ecology, the reason is to earn as much money as possible by consciously destroying poker. The aim is to eventually turn it into a casino where no player wins in the distance. In this topic, I will prove this. There will be links to Russian sources in the text, and if you doubt my words, you can translate the original message using a translator.

Beginning

It all started a few days ago when PokerOK (the Russian branch of GGPoker) unlawfully [U]blocked over 100 players on its platf....

But not only stable players were banned, but also solo regular players, and [U]this is[/U] far from the only case. The CEO Ivan himself [U]confirmed[/U] that 20% of solo regulars were affected
If we consider his [U]estimates[/U], with the number of stable members being 3500, then this means that continuing such bans will affect 700 people not associated with the stables.

After numerous discussions, the CEO of PokerOK, Ivan Bryksin aka DonkVsFish, [U]appeared[/U] in the thread and in a very harsh manner stated that he had started a war with the stables and does not recommend going to other branches of GGPoker because he will "secretly (interesting from whom?) do everything." Why secretly, if this is a fight for a good cause and not something personal?

For those who think this is a management initiative, here are his [U]words[/U]: "First of all, let us emphasize that our position is known and coordinated with the GGPoker network. Management fully supports our line in general and all today's dialogue." Based on this message, it becomes clear that this is Ivan's personal initiative, not GGPoker management. However, it is quite possible that he has conveyed his position to the management, and soon the fight against stables will also begin on other platforms.

Next, I will try to explain why having such a person in a leadership position will lead poker to its death.

Ego and Power

To understand why this person could kill poker, it's essential to clarify who he is. Let's start with the fact that Ivan "DonkVsFish" Bryksin is a former team pro of PokerDom, who was [U]banned[/U] and fired by the room itself due to soft play and chip dumping, but then apparently reformed and joined the "light side" (no).

1. First of all i want to highlight the CEO's communication style with his clients and how he perceives the world (through the lens of power/weakness rather than honesty and integrity).

I highly recommend reading all his messages, if you don't mind using a translator (to read only his messages, you can click on the arrows below the avatar).
At the same time, he doesn't put the room's management much higher than users. Quote: "I said at the meeting today that I will bring up this issue. And I will force them do as I did here." (this refers to why other stables are not touched, only the Ru segment). Can it be that GG's management prioritizes money over principles to such an extent that it tolerates a CEO speaking to them like that?

2.[I][U]Here[/U][/I], he blackmails and threatens regulars that if they stand up for the stables, he will cause problems for them.

I won't insist, but in my opinion, this is a deliberate and very dirty tactic aimed solely at winning the argument and "destroying" his enemies. At the same time, he tries to show that he supports regulars (but you'll understand later why this is not the case).

3. It's very important to emphasize that Ivan Bryksin has a personal conflict with the author of the original post, pokanuktus, who owns one of the funds, and in my opinion, this is personal revenge disguised as a fight against stables.

4. Next, he [I][U]writes[/U][/I] that he will allow TylerRM to play on PokerOK without any obstacles as a token of gratitude for helping catch the superuser MoneyTaker69 and assisting the community in identifying many bots.
From this message, it becomes clear that the CEO personally chooses who can play and who cannot, which is another argument in favor of the fact that this was a personal vendetta. Because if the room follows a fair policy, such a message simply wouldn't exist. Although he was pointed out that TylerRM himself is the owner of a stable(or just a coach, I'm not sure here), to which Ivan [I]agreed[/I], but said he wouldn't ban him because of his help against bot farms.

5. Censorship in Support. If you ask any uncomfortable question (even asked in a correct form), your question will be deleted, and you will be banned. You can [U]try[/U] it yourself . This again speaks to the honesty and openness of Ivan's policy. And the support can [U]tell you to go **** yourself[/U].

Also, Ivan said he would answer any questions, but didn't answer most uncomfortable questions and continued to respond to the same questions in a circle.

Now that we've clarified what the CEO of the Russian branch of GGPoker represents, let's move on to the main point: how Ivan is killing poker. And why there is not a single drop of concern for amateurs or solo regs in his actions (as he sometimes mentions).

RTP 96%

1. More fee is better. Ivan introduced a deposit! fee with Skrill 3%. And increased the withdrawal fee to 3% instead of 1% through LuxonPay ([U]which is a breach of contract on the ... (point 4))

2. Ban on top-ups for regs from affiliates. Ivan personally [U]banned[/U] the Gipsyteam affiliate (I can't say about the others, but I'm sure they were too) from paying a 7-15% RB bonus to attracted regs.
"I don't need regs, why don't you understand that. I'm needed by regs. Not vice versa. It's all obvious. What top-ups? Agents with reg traffic, goodbye, I told them. It's business. I'm protecting it. What conditions for regs are you talking about? We have PVI 0.2 there, all the high-stakes players you see in the lobby know this and continue to play."

3. Here we come to the most terrifying issue. Ivan strives to [U]turn poker into slots[/U], where everyone will have an RTP of 96%.
And he explicitly states that if you play close to the perfect strategy (in the future), you will be banned, and your funds will be confiscated. Thus, the concepts of regs and earning through poker will simply disappear.
It's also important to understand that even very weak players often sincerely believe that they play better than others.
But Ivan wants to eliminate the very notion of "playing better than others." Nevertheless, poker is a game of skill (for now), and if you remove that, why play poker at all when you can spin slots or play roulette? Why merge two fundamentally different games into one.

But if I am wrong and PokerOK genuinely cares about regs, name three innovations that benefit regs? At least one.

Based on all the above, it becomes clear that all the CEO's actions are aimed at draining money, not caring about amateurs or individual regs.

No Regulars - No Poker

Now, I want to express my opinion on why regulars are important for poker, and I hope that this will somehow influence the policy of GGPoker and others.

1. Fewer regulars, fewer guarantees. How attractive do you think tournaments with an 80k guarantee will be for amateurs instead of 1 million? And if we're talking about small tournaments, it becomes even more ridiculous when in a top room there are guarantees for regular short deck or Omaha tournaments with a $10 buy-in and a $50 guarantee instead of $500+. Even regulars often won't want to register for these tournaments, let alone amateurs, for whom guarantees have greater value.

2. Taking PokerStars as an example, when they drastically cut RB, you can see what such radical "care" for amateurs leads to.

3. Word of mouth advertising. Just from me, over 10 of my friends started playing online poker (as amateurs). And they started because they knew that I make a living from poker, and that's what interested them in poker, not because I told them how rooms care about amateurs. I'm sure there are many such examples among users here.

4. Regulars also win big sums in tournaments more often and are written about in the media that are not even related to poker, which brings new players to poker. For example, Ivan Demidov, whose WSOP runner-up finish sparked a poker boom in the CIS region.

Conclusion

If PokerOK successfully implements its policy and poker becomes equivalent to a casino, it will be banned in many countries. The more negativity surrounds poker and the less it becomes about skill, the more countries will equate it to a casino and ban it. And PokerOK's policy (I want to be wrong about this) could lead to governments blocking even good rooms where there is no such shady business as on PokerOK.

My only request to the management is to dismiss Ivan Bryksin. Because simply restricting his rights won't stop him, and he will start looking for other ways to profit from players.

In conclusion, I want to address the users and especially the ambassadors of GGPoker. Do you really agree with the development direction that the CEO of PokerOK offers us? If poker were initially like what Ivan sees it, would you start playing it, or would you just pass by another casino game where there are no chances of winning?

CEO of PokerOK, Ivan Bryksin really crazy!!!
Ivan Bryksin wants to make a casino out of poker, in which everyone will lose in the long run, IT WILL BE IMPOSSIBLE TO WIN!
I'm not a professional, I play poker for fun, I don't want to play poker (casino) knowing that I won't be able to win. He said that he would ban everyone who plays correctly or close to the correct strategy, this kills the whole essence of poker. Now players who play well get account freezes, this is real!!! Simply because they play better than others.
But there are still a lot of bots on the GG network, which professional players help you find. Ivan's policy is very suspicious and strange.
I don’t want to play on this network as long as the management has such inadequate people as Ivan.

whole lot of people here not getting how if you ban the 10 biggest winners at a given stake might suddenly make the 11th biggest winners bb/100 ever so slightly better

what does ghosting mean in this context?

and what's MDA?

sorry for noob questions

lol @ all the obvious russian stable players who just made their account and started posting in this thread.

Probably a lot of that but it doesn't change the fact Ivan wants to turn poker into an unbeatable casino game. He said as much so it's not opinion its a confirmed fact

your small conspiracy minded brain can't seem to comprehend that there are people who care and who can see where this is going. I don't even play NLHE, i don't play on GG.

Ghosting is telling another player that what to do. The rule that sites have is one player one game. MassDataAnalysing meaning having millions of hands harvested and using that to beat the pools. Usually this is one using datamining etc that is not allowed by most sites tos.

Well, Mystery Bounties, increasing rake, zoom, Spins etc. are becoming the standard, this is not just him, but a trend ever since Stars cut their legendary VIP system. It's a game of incentives sadly - all poker if they could, they'd have everyone have 0 winrate, pass money around, deposit and lose to rake.

That's why it's important there will be backlash to his extreme statement - if there won't be, sites will go like "hmm, maybe we can even accelerate the process"

List of respected members of the community supporting the statement:

Fedor Lorem CDMX https://www.twitch.tv/loremcdmx OWNER OF THE BIGGEST RUSSIAN SPEAKING STABLE FunFarm

fixed for you

PokerOK (GG Network) CEO mass shadow bans winning players, tells other GG skins will take same action

At the end of March, an event occurred in the post-Soviet poker community that players from all over the world should be aware of. By the decision of PokerOK (part of the GG network representing it in the post-Soviet space), more than 100 players had their accounts frozen "for personal details actualization," and after submitting documents, they were prohibited from making internal transfers within the network. The only withdrawal method left was to the debit card with a very low limit ($250/day), practically rendering it unusable. De facto, this is a "shadow ban" - creating conditions under which continuing to play is impossible because withdrawing any significant sum would take years. The room cannot completely ban these players as there is no evidence of them violating any network rules. The reasons for such actions were not explained to the players. An important detail is that about 50% of these players were students of a specific CFP team, "RSB."

On March 27, founder of RSB, Ilya pokanuktus, wrote a post on the largest post-Soviet poker forum describing the situation, where he talked about his attempts to get clarification from PokerOK about the reasons for the collective punishment of such a large group of players. He did not receive a direct answer, but soon, explanations were given on official PokerOK channels and by their ambassadors on streams, which shocked many - players were punished for allegedly being part of a poker school, receiving training and backing there, which, according to the room, "harms the poker ecology." Also, an official post was published on the PokerOK Telegram channel stating that all educational projects, schools, and backing funds engage in team play, ghosting, use data mining, and violate all possible room rules.

It should be emphasized that not a single specific example of investigation was provided, neither in general nor regarding players who were subjected to repressive measures. In other words, people were punished simply for belonging, according to poker room management, "to harmful elements." Naturally, such a statement caused a wave of indignation in the community towards the room and support for the unjustly punished individuals.

Later, CEO of PokerOK, Ivan Bryksin, personally interacted with the public. Let's highlight several key theses:

English translation:

Original posts:

Spoiler

Show

We ask the GGNetwork, represented by CEO Michael Kim, to clarify their position in a clear and adequate manner, without threats and blackmail, as the CEO of PokerOK, Ivan Bryksin, is currently doing. Based on his messages, one can conclude that the very idea of improving in poker with the aim of becoming a winning player falls into the category of "harmful activities." If this is true, then the poker room's management wants to turn poker into a variety of a casino game, where in the long run, all deposits are ultimately ground into the establishment's profit.

As representatives of the professional poker community in the post-Soviet space, we call on all players, professionals, and amateurs to unite efforts in the fight for a fair and transparent ecosystem that will contribute to the development of poker as a game of skill and a spectacular, attractive media product, which it has been for at least the last 20 years.

We fully support initiatives to prevent any methods of unfair play. And we want to emphasize that it is in the interest of the player community and the rooms themselves to clearly define the boundaries between fair and unfair play, without "gray areas" that are currently left to the discretion of the rooms, whose security services are struggling even with elementary problems.

It's important to consider that this is happening against the backdrop of the shocking story with the superuser on the GG network, Moneytaker69, whose existence was initially ignored by the room's security service and who was discovered with the help of poker coaches and analysts, as well as the network of bots on WPN. A paradoxical situation arises - with the involvement of CFP and poker analysts, real problems of the poker industry are revealed, but the very idea of coaching and poker analytics - under the guise of banning data mining, as part of unfair advantage - is attempted to be tabooed. And this applies not only to mining, but also to the transparency of data about tournament participants on GG (which banned Sharkscope from publishing full tournament results in September 2023). If this trend indeed exists and is a new vector of GG network policy towards winning regulars, then very soon difficult times may come for professional players all around the world.

Information about what is happening is already spreading in the international community (below we list a few examples).

We hope that this will help to change the situation. After all, if the fight against winning players is conducted under the banner of "ensuring the integrity of the game," then the story of the poker dream will come to a sad end - from Moneymaker to Moneytaker.

List of respected members of the community supporting the statement:

Aleksei Fiat Vandyshev - GG Team Champion https://www.ggpoker.com/ggteam/teamchamp...
Aleksejs APonakov Ponakovs SHS reg
Alex Avrora Borovkov SHS reg
Ilya Legenden Anatski HS MTT regular
Nikolaj dyrdom1 Evdokimov HS cash regular
Almaz Alister307 Zhdanov HS MTT regular
Nikita ebaaa11 Kuznetsov SHS reg
Egor Prokop HS MTT regular
Aleks Shilko PSPC Champion, HS regular.
Yahor Dambrouski HS MTT regular
Ilya pokanuktus Pavlov https://www.pokernews.com/tours/ept/2023...
Andrey TylerRM Streltsov one of the most active fighters for the ecology of poker
Fedor Lorem CDMX https://www.twitch.tv/loremcdmx top streamer
Dmitry spr3216 https://www.twitch.tv/spr_poker top streamer

List of most established CFP projects supporting the statement:

20evBB
AmigosBacking
A Team
Dreamteam
FiatLab
FireStorm
FunFarm
G.O.A.T
ITCPoker TEAM
JAWpokerteam
KOT
MaxEV
MooN
Poker Edge
RSB
StartME

The list will be updated.

List of respected members of the community supporting the statement:

Aleksei Fiat Vandyshev - GG Team Champion https://www.ggpoker.com/ggteam/teamchamp...
Aleksejs APonakov Ponakovs SHS reg
Alex Avrora Borovkov SHS reg
Ilya Legenden Anatski HS MTT regular
Nikolaj dyrdom1 Evdokimov HS cash regular
Almaz Alister307 Zhdanov HS MTT regular
Nikita ebaaa11 Kuznetsov SHS reg
Egor Prokop HS MTT regular
Aleks Shilko PSPC Champion, HS regular.
Yahor Dambrouski HS MTT regular
Ilya pokanuktus Pavlov https://www.pokernews.com/tours/ept/2023...
Andrey TylerRM Streltsov one of the most active fighters for the ecology of poker
Fedor Lorem CDMX https://www.twitch.tv/loremcdmx top streamer
Dmitry spr3216 https://www.twitch.tv/spr_poker top streamer

Most of these are stables owners or coaches. Of course, they don't want to stop working.
But I agree with Ivan’s words and advise others to listen to them.

"You are churning out players who know how to play on an industrial scale, pumping out money and creating a problem for everyone. Imagine if the sea contains 90% sharks and 10% small fish, what will happen? Everyone will die! There will be nothing to eat. There needs to be a balance, and you are breaking it. I would generally ban any software and any statistics so that the game would be closer to offline." ©

totally agree with the gentleman above

Interesting topic.

FWIW, I think the two ideas are not mutually expensive.

Both of the following can be true (or true to some extent/degree) at the same time:

1. GGPoker is very shady, and has a history of using dubious accusations ("bumhunting" etc) to ban winning players and/or confiscate funds.

2. CFPs and Stables are an ethical grey area in poker, and sites can feel like players who are a part of them may be in violation of portions of some T&C agreements.

it's their only plan. go to 2+2 and get community support there. instead they have to fake community support by themselves

Hi namesake, I didn't expect to meet you here, I even registered to reply.

You are still the PokerOK ambassador, aren't you? Poker Room, which was the cause of the conflict. And you still get paid directly from the PokerOK for defending it to the community, right?

Mikhail "Innerpsy" aka "LikeUWantIt" aka "I sold my ass"

Tell me, what benefit is being pursued by the author of the thread, and me? Both of us are not members of funds, I have never even been a member of any reg confer (if we talk about training). And if you think that we just create "fake support", and there is no truth behind us, then you will easily refute my theses.
The funniest thing is that in "fake support" accuses the person who has a contract with the room.

To prevent data mining GG could just remove HH download option and detect all the hand converters (then instant ban). Any case of ghosting can be detected also, that's not impossible. One problem though, that CEO started by accusing schools of all kinds of cheating but then said that poker is not that important for GG, that most of its profit GG gets from casino, that in several years it will be just a casino where people play for fun and get 96% of their deposits back, that winning players hurt his profit and shools are his enemies beause of that. And that it's not just his initiative, everything has been approved by the owners.
So it would be great to know exactly what is going on. Sure, all kinds of cheating must be prevented/eliminated, cheaters must be banned. If that's really the reason, no one would argue. But not each school cheats. Mr. Holz has a school, really doubt they do anything unethical. But if the goal is to gradually eliminate most of the winning regs, please make this message clear.

The main thing for me is to hear the opinion of the management of the GG network. The CEO's statement from the region looks like a comic book.

But you are a russian stable player who just made an account to support your fellow cheaters

Are you ready to put your money where you mouth is?