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.
great write-up g
inb4 american live regs
elky was playing PLO200 with me a couple days before the changes practicing for these exclusive games I guess. He fully knew what was going to happen before the changes came into action.
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.
he was lying to you on all 3
Elky was grinding apps a lot for 2 months prior, obviously practising for the upcoming changes.
For those who don't know: he has afaik never played a hand on GGs highstakes games before they went exclusive (or maybe a few, but he wasn't a regular in the games at all). And since they did he probably played more hands than anyone else.
Him telling us one day before the changes took place that nothing has been confirmed obviously was a straight up lie.
But now he has his own harem of recreational players.
A post on the Russian forums that I stumbled on by a HS reg that I think makes a great point about the hypocrisy of how GG markets with and glamorizes poker pros and framing poker as a game of skill yet is constantly trying to erase the possibility of skill edges and winning in poker and act like pros who aren't sponsored by them (a lot who grew up wanting to be like some of the big names in poker who now work/worked for them) must be removed from the environment and shunned for poker to thrive. When in reality it seems they mostly have always just wanted pros removed for their bottom lines to thrive.
This is Similar in my opinion to how they have always pushed the narrative hard to say they want no bumhunting and good etiquette in their games and to be a good environment for recreationals while constantly raising rake and putting max pressure on anyone who dares try to beat their games forcing a cut throat environment where players must bumhunt and never battle other regulars in order to have a chance at profits on their site in this skill game they market and pretend to support the future of - which in turn makes the recreationals experience guarenteed to be people snap filling tables when they sit and snap leaving when they bust their accounts
It's like they want their cake and to eat it too where they have leaderboards for every stake drawing in as many pros as they can to grind for rakeback on their site which contributes to having a lobby of 10+ regs hovering every table snap sitting when a recreational does while also trying to push pros off their platform maximizing rake at very step possible , sending out bumhunting warnings, and now removing public highstakes games. It feels like if the community happily accepts yet another big blow to the poker dream that gets many people playing poker recreational and pros they will just continue to take and take - They now own WSOP what is next on their agenda? Privatize certain MTT stakes or series? Raise the rake many times over as they grow their MTT monopoly and continue to fight off the possibility of winning in their games through tournaments?
One last note is how can some of these ambassadors such as Elky and Fedor push for and/or accept changes such as these recent ones removing public highstakes games and act like HS regs have no right to be upset when they themselves started at micros and grinded their way up pushing for and living the poker dream at one point as well. Now they are happy if that is taken away from the next generation as long as they are paid well to support this new realm of high raked private online games on the biggest site in the world that opens the door for much more scummy behaviours that you see in app games everyone warns against playing and shady private live games? You cannot say this is what is best for recreational players when they are still going to be losing and preyed on, they are just losing their money to a curated list of pros the hosts hope are mostly losing and GG ambassadors themselves now instead of whatever pro decides to risk their money and is able to find a seat playing a public highstakes online game as it was previously.
Online poker is in a sad state right now, is there anything we can do together to change that directly do you think?
Damn.
Elky obviously lied, he knew. but what else can he say if hes under contract
shitty and or tough situation for those on the outside
Not surprised by Elky; the way he always pretended to be having fun in Yo Viral's game was so fake. Elky is one of the biggest bumhunters in poker.
Also woops got carried away with my own reply - Great post George and agree hopefully we can support a different site that still encourages passion for the future of poker as a fun strategy game where you have the potential to make money or even a living playing it
the way big companies work, this didn’t just happen overnight - there will have been meetings, plannings, contracts, testing, etc
if it’s true that elky minthon misha and fedor are helping to run these games (they’re playing all of them, so it’s possible), then they’ll have known for however long it took to go from ideation to release
The only ppl who make me want to vomit more that GG ambassadors or GG itself, are HighStakes poker players themselves who in the past 3+ years actively participated in process of making this brand the way it is today 10x of any other site which obviously leads to stuff we have tdy. It all started with those 100k games we all remember very well. Pokerstars was ~2.5x bigger than GG back then from pokerscout. Its what 10x less now as is any other site. Im not here to discuss PS btw. i dont care not about PS not about this poker `industry`. I am a 16 year online poker player who made enough to know what he is talking about.
You guys are pathetic. GJ grinding millions in the past 3 years, while any ~SSNLMSNL regs were forced to play 16hours per day to get leaderboards prizes w insane cantbeatrake variance day to day via GG poker cash platform.
Now they dont need you cose noone can touch them. You perfectly know its well known fact that its just not profitable to have HS for any online poker site due to transaction costs no matter what the rake is. Stop pretending they lose rake if these games dont runblablabla. Jesus christ there are ppl who will read this nonsense and will bite it. The only reason the kept these games long enough is marketing. Now they are the king nr1 cant be touched like Roy Jones Jr. So get ur longtermfairness ecosystemcaring oppinions-guns ready to blast.
Its also just the matter of time before they approach HS/MTT.
Thank you for expressing your very important to community opinion how y`all care about ecosystem fairness and the blablabla.
At least elky and innerpsy are men enough to admit they dont care about anything besides their own bottom line and where this industry is going (it may as well burn in hell).
Truth is - each human being is same way. There are only limited nr of haxtons/jasonkoons in the world (who can resign from PS/GG when they smell smth is wrong). Usually such rare guys are rich to begin with, and somehow have some morale left (which tbh is surprising in todays day and age).
Most likely they will revert changes so u guys will be able to keep making millions and promote GG as the best thing happened to poker. Then u`ll will act surprised when something like this or HS rake changes will happen again.
So pathetic.
Whats worse there are lowIQ ppl from lower stakes who actually read ur nonsense (u are HS players in the end!) and are sympathetic to you (believing that these changes will make other ppl lower lives worse long term hahhahahaha lol).
Guys you shouldnt be sorry for millionaires - they will do just about fine with or w.o GG. There are there for a reason. And main reason is they dont care about people around them.
These changes mean only one thing so far: its just that innerpsy and Elky now will travel with yacht not 4x per year (like he did before), but ~10x, and u`ll have to travel it 6 times not 12 per year.
glgl Warriors Of The Light `for all the good, against all the bad` mentality. hahaha.
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.
I just need to know if limitless has access to these games but decides not to play so I can fanboy even harder. Ty.
We need a new boxing match against Lex
The ambassadors have acted with no integrity or care for the future of poker
Nonetheless if HS regs want the games to run with fish they should demonstrate to some site how it can be profitable for that site.
There are probably hundreds of thousands of potential recreational players who can afford to play 5k+ and would want to. Only 100 or so are needed. If a site like ACR/coinpoker offered some kind of finders fee to sign up some of these people how hard can it be?
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.
Why should GG care about the HS dream save to the extent of using it as a marketing tool? They prioritize others making money from their site to the same extent the HS regs prioritize GG making profits. Note how you describe how HS regs pushed back on GG trying to take a larger cut.
They have solid evidence regs won't play regs at a rake level thet they feel makes it worth their effort. Why do you feel they should put effort into fields where even you admit they did not feel was profitable. As for GG no longer being champions of the game they NEVER were that any more than HS regs that fought to keep their rake low to the point you admit GG did not feel it profitable thus putting part of the cost of their games on the lower stakes player were ever champions of the game. Both groups want what is best for them.
GG was beta testing the "Exclusive" games last month. No way Elky didn't know.
Elky lied. People died.
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 RTA (names like Dom Nietchse and Apestyles were among them if i remember correctly). Now please tell me how the **** do you go from not detecting anything to overnight banning 80 accounts, what changed?
2. Austrian flag.
If someone is not aware, 90% of "autrian" players on gg are not from Austria. Insane volumes of multiaccs (shoutout to Ali Imsirovic) etc.
3. Kazakh bots in shortdeck
In the second half of 2023 group of shortdeck regs identified 12 bots that were playing shortdeck. They had a very bad leak which confirmed that they were not human. Collective letters were written, no response from GG, since 2024 they were not present on the platform, no compensations, no letters from gg, nothing.
4. Moneytaker69 situation
Pretty sure everyone remembers this, but i'll focus on a different thing. There were only 2 reasons why he was caught.
Firstly he was incredibly obvious and didn't even try to hide, but that would have not been enough.
Second reason was because of availiability of hand mining, where we saw the ridicilous showdowns.
In the statement released by GG after his ban they didn't even give credit to those who actually found this out. Instead they tried to not make any fuss about this so nowadays nobody even cares about this stuff. This should've been the end of GGpoker. Credit to Jason Koon, who if i remember correctly, stepped down as an ambassador for GG after this situation.
5. Chinese bots/operators colluding in shortdeck, farming leaderboards.
Since april changes to shortdeck format, bunch of chinese accounts appeared out of nowhere farming the leaderboards, teamplaying for leaderboards. Again, letters were sent to gg, no response.
And that is just of the top of my head. Also the way they manipulate the online user count. (e.g if someone plays 6 tables of cash, it will count as +6 online players)
GGpoker becoming the biggest platform is the single worst thing that has happened in online poker.
I want to adress the elephant in the room. Previous vip games worked with PVI (super smart idea), regs were recieving less rakeback to encourage the fish to play (or give him a bigger chance of winning if you will). The rake seem the same at the current tables as before, that would mean gg would lose a lot more per table running maintaining the previous rb% for fish. Clearly it won't be sustainable if they already were losing when 5/6 of the table had 10-20% RB. People have long speculated some recreationals have >100%.
Either GG are pocketing all the extra rb that was given before or they are lying about wether the games are profitable or not is my conclusion so far.
If recreationals wanted to play higher rake games vs weaker opponents im sure they can find them in a bunch of places. To my understanding a big pull to play on gg, ftp or stars in the hey day is that people/recreationals/weaker regs actually wanted to play with the big names.
I have previously made the argument that having big names playing the highest stakes is extra publicity. In a similar fashion that FTP pros like Ivey, Antonius and Tom Dwan etc had a clause in their contract that they could only play on full tilt. People have made the argument that it's not quantifiable how much these players actually provide for GG, which I also accept to some extent. I do however think it doesnt serve their image of trying to come across as the good guys that want to grow poker. In most other industries if a house hold name wanted to endorse / use a product or visit a restaurant/event/night club or whatever they typically get paid and get discounts etc. GG is essentially saying they are indifferent wether Linus is playing on their site.
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
The same thing is happening at the midstake cashgames 100-200 the entire year. The leaderboards in RNC are won day after day by new accounts that disappear quickly. And on top of that a significant amount of new regs in both RNC and the reg tables seem to be bots that crush the regs that are not aware of them. It is hard to be 100% certain but you will be 90% sure on many of them if you know what to look for and you are an experienced reg playing these stakes. The amount of potential bots is higher right now than I have ever seen on GG. It has been getting worse since start of the year. Reporting them has 0 effect because they make profit a 100 times and got their next name loaded up before they finally get banned 6 weeks later. It is probably happening at lower stakes aswell. This is the real elephant in the room at GG right now imo.
When do we get Fedor Holz Emoji???? at GG