GGPoker killing the HS poker dream?

Highly doubt this gets reverted. It’s arrogant of pros to think they have a place anywhere in the ecosystem.

Sites don’t want them taking money off-site, very often fish don’t want them taking their money without much gamble.

A site like GG that probably has enough players to run much-closer fought fish games is incentivised to do so, as money stays on site, and everyone’s winrates are much closer (so they can rake more).

Over/under on the posters thinking this is a good idea, being washed up failures who can't beat the games anymore?

I Don't agree with this statement. In terms of revenue for a site it's the trick to bring recs in so that regs will come and rake, the difference of what regs and recs rake in absolutes is huge and if all the pro's or semi pro's would leave the site today the site will become a ghost town and soon you would see someone from the gg marketing department posting hh's in the hs thread. And a new ecosystem will create itself with some recreationals becoming pro"s. That is the nature of the game, it's a skillgame and therefor there will always be sharks and fish, also in this newer private format. Because yes a rich vip who had too much to drink might lose less to a nitfish but still a bunch. Also recreationals like to play on demand just like someone else mentioned here, if there is no one to play they will withdraw their money and play somewhere else.

I think online high stakes poker should be built around reg battles and then fish jumping in.
Place like GG is lame cuz rake so high for reg battles.

Hopefully ACR can capitalize cuz their low rake games are great.

And high stake poker players that refuse to reg battle can get banned for all i care.

what recs don't realise is that private app games are the scummiest scammiest ruggiest cheatiest of the games and that hs public games online are some of the cleanest games in poker as a whole. ofc there are cheating ****s but its not that common.
I don't know if this is good for GG or not, at the end of the day they're the ones making the calculations and settling on a play, but it's definitely awful for players who focus on improving at their craft since now your EV comes down to how much you can bribe people, pretend to be friends with a whale and overall just spend your time sucking dick.

hard agree on everything you said. apps are overwhelmed by bots, predatory collusion, RTA, and even if you manage finding a clean game, no one can guarantee you can get the money off most apps

A fairer balance might be offering both invite-only and open tables, so dedicated players can still grind without the networking game.

Without professionals it is just another casino game. Casino games are more profitable for sites, but the prospect of potentially being a professional in the game is what made poker great.

Killing the dream of being a winning player would destroy the interest of poker because if I just want to gamble and lose money there are so many options that are more entertaining.

HS whales don't give a **** about becoming a pro poker player because they're already rich anyway. Everyone else who loves the game enough to dream about HS isn't going to suddenly quit because their hypothetical chance at playing nosebleeds has been taken away from them. Mid-stakes pros are making too much money to quit and get a real job. The rest just never cared in the first place.

HS Recs are sick to death of having to play with pros they don't like. 10/20/40 at Bellagio is the graveyard of crushers who aren't wanted in the 100/100 and 100/200. LA is a political nightmare for anyone who's read a hand-ranking chart. High-Stakes private games around the world have pros scratching at the window to be let in from the cold.

GG will have done their homework. I can't imagine the Asians on GG will have enjoyed knocking 2M into the nosebleed sharks without any sweat at all. They'll have rung up all their HS whales, gauged the interest for games on their site without pros, realised what an absolute cash monkey it's going to be and launched it. We'll know in the next few weeks, if they let us spectate.

GG has never been kind to regs and pros so I imagine one day it'll get worse.

GG Poker intentionally overlooks obvious bots to divert attention from mid-stakes and low-stakes games. These players have been reported countless times without any consequences. Based on analysis through tools like SmartHand and by examining account names, it's clear beyond a doubt that these players are bots. There’s no question that GG Poker tolerates these bots. The best action is to avoid GG Poker altogether, as it's apparent that cheating is being condoned by the platform itself.

GG Poker's growth is also due to high-stakes (HS) regulars who only look out for their own interests, without helping NL100 to NL500 players address this issue—even though many HS players are aware of it. Sponsored players who represent GG Poker should be ashamed. If we, as a poker community, could stand together, platforms like GG Poker would never have grown to this extent, where players are charged 10bb in rake and then forced to play against house bots or tolerated bots.

GG employee spotted

- What is the ratio of regs to recs, on GG and just generally? Don't have to be precise, approximations will do
- Considering the ratio above, how much rake do pros pay vs. recs?
- What do you think the business of an online gambling/poker operator's is?
- Do you think the "group" (regs or rec) which pays more rake, especially when its a substantial majority, would have a place in the ecosystem?

Humbly,
One of the "pros"

What about volume? Don't pros play the vast majority of hands and produce the most rake? So by running all the pros away isn't GG shooting themselves in the foot? Imo the most likely scenario is a small number of players will hog all the recs to themselves and gatekeep everyone else. Losing players will still be losing players. The only players i see benefiting are the breakeven and **** regs who will no longer have to compete with the most elite players

It seems people like to make caricatures of online pros like they make of live HS players. That they are mostly unlikeable, that they are always under hoodies or they don't communicate at the table in the case of live players.

This is mostly done by weak regs that don't want competition at the table, even if there are a few bad apples at live hs and online of course.

But one could guess that closed and invite games are as much prone to cheating and shenanigans as open games even if people "play nice". I even want to say that they are more likely but I have no data to support that.

Let's record a few instances online:

- App games are some of the most cheated and colluded on without a doubt.

- When people ingratiate themselves to agents or to be invited to a game they're more likely to be fake personalities. Let's think of those online poker HS games that various people promoted and invited others. It doesn't mean that people who made the invites like Brynn Kenney in gg for example were cheaters, but people who associated with him because they played nice could possibly been.

Open markets/games are more fair and trustworthy all else being equal.

This post shows what borg was talking about . Most pros are so caught up in their own egos they don’t understand recs at all.

Most recs have absolutely no desire to take poker all that seriously , let alone become a high stakes pro . They have careers and families and own businesses, they also see poker players as not contributing to society in a meaningful way /not paying income tax and are basically parasites. Not to mention all the scummy underhand behaviour we have seen over the years .

These same recs also don’t want to play vs people who have spent so much time studying and sharpening their game for obvious reasons. They want to play other people who do not study , they just play for fun/ gamble …and try and outwit each other with instincts and bravado.

Any deterioration of the online scene can be laid firmly at the feet of online pros behaviour and recs should feel no sympathy for them whatsoever . Anything GG does to attempt to build rec heavy tables to battle each other and exclude professionals is all good with most recs

lol no

when the HS PLO regs boycotted gg for the rake increase why were all the tables dead 24/7 and there werent a bunch of fish battling it out then ?

ultimately whether GG has a problem with RTA/bots or not doesn't really matter on whether they take HS games semi-private or not. there's a perception that they do. even jungleman has talked about cheating online on his podcast. you're somehow ignorant or just plain snowing if you think any online casino is pure clean. whether RTA beats high rake is kind of irrelevant. it was a big deal that tamayo was consulting charts in the WSOP in between hands. not wanting to play a nosebleed game where anybody can sit down and just have charts on a second monitor the entire time or a full on AI bot advising them on every hand means you're washed at the game. OK.

going semi-private makes doing security for the games easier but I'd still be suspicious of the game. I think at the moment it's kind of necessary though until we see anti-cheat solutions that are correspondingly advanced relative to the tools for cheating that are out there.

if every existing pro quit after the game going semi-private GG would just offer other pros effectively prop player deals and the games would be propped and running the next day. it's a lot easier to do this in a semi-private game.

I don’t think you have any authority to speak for most recs.

I’m a rec and am highly competitive. I have a family, career, and business that take priority. But I also have a drive to test myself and prove what I know I’m capable of at a poker table.

I don’t play HS because of my other responsibilities in life and the knowledge that variance is a real thing so even if I believe I’m good enough to compete at that level, I can still lose it all.

I would absolutely love an opportunity to play against these guys to test myself. But only if it’s a freeroll.

Successful people like to be challenged - that's why they're successful. We're talking about high stakes not 1/3 live in a hillbilly casino somewhere. You say they see poker players as low lives yet these guys are involved in the high stakes scene pretty routinely - if they felt that way they wouldn't. I do think though the recs want to win here and there - they don't mind being challenged but if you're constantly getting slaughtered it's not enjoyable. Poker is a double edged sword - you want to win at the highest rate but people end up dropping out quicker the more they lose. Think this is the way to slow the bleeding on the casuals which is better long term for the ecosystem.

Private games are easier to cheat on. Most cheaters are caught publicly and by pros, who have the best eye to differenciate legitimately strong play and computer play.

GG doesn't actually care if there are cheaters or not, they care that people know about it. As long as no one can tell it's all good. That's why they b anned datamining right after it was used to detect superusers

The 1 app game I play in is just the phone version of a private live game and the same people who win and lose in the live game win and lose in the same ways in the app game. I’m sure these random af app games that aggressively recruit online and you’re playing against people you’ve never met are extremely shady.

Easier to cheat doesn’t mean much because the bar is very low. It’s arguably harder to cheat and not get caught in counter-strike than it is in poker.

Regarding regs good or not for the games, i think we have a good practical example already.
Just check Pokerstars lobby, not only is there no HS games running anymore, but also midstakes is quiet even at peak times.

I know pros left the site for different reasons, but the fact is they left and this is the result.
Like it or not, at least online, pros are important part of the game.

The gg boycott example is good too - during that time very rarely there was a game running.

Yep we already have examples of what happens when the pros leave. Yet some think it will be different this time

It’s of course typical communist rhetoric. Anyone pursuing their dreams and ambitions highlights their own impotence.

They cheer and celebrate when nobody is allowed to win.