GGPoker, Elky and Fedor: HS Regs' Perspective

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GGPoker, Elky and Fedor: HS Regs' Perspective

PlasticElephant avatar
OP
48 posts · member since Jan 2013
1yr ago

After the events of the last few weeks, I wanted to write a post detailing what has happened with GG from the perspectiv

12 November 2024 at 06:01 PM
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coordi avatar
6424 posts · member since May 2007
1yr ago

Not Rob Yong, Richard Yong

5 posts · member since Feb 2019
1yr ago
by Fijiwaterboiii

Is this really true? Yong is behind GG?

I mean they are key partners..investment,sponsorship ..

52 posts · member since Apr 2021
1yr ago

Michael Kim CEO of NSUS owner of GG poker. APT. APPT & WPT


16 posts · member since Dec 2024
1yr ago

Maybe im stupid, but what would be the point of owning WPT and GG if they compete for market share?

Kojika avatar
9 posts · member since Dec 2009
1yr ago
by <*Krill><

Michael Kim CEO of NSUS owner of GG poker. APT. APPT & WPT

That’s a different person. This one pictured here is a known scammer in Asia

602 posts · member since May 2022
1yr ago
by Fijiwaterboiii

Maybe im stupid, but what would be the point of owning WPT and GG if they compete for market share?

What is the point of two players colluding at the same poker table if both are competing for the same dollars? Phrased in these terms do you see the advantages of owning both?

757 posts · member since Nov 2015
1yr ago
by Fijiwaterboiii

Maybe im stupid, but what would be the point of owning WPT and GG if they compete for market share?

Fake competition. The consumers believe there is fair competition but in reality there is not, only minor differences to keep up the illusion. Buying WPT and keeping that brand going while controlling it is better for GG than to merge it into GG.

16 posts · member since Dec 2024
1yr ago
by Polarbear1955

What is the point of two players colluding at the same poker table if both are competing for the same dollars? Phrased in these terms do you see the advantages of owning both?

Yes thank you

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

16 posts · member since Dec 2024
1yr ago
by Kebabkungen

Fake competition. The consumers believe there is fair competition but in reality there is not, only minor differences to keep up the illusion. Buying WPT and keeping that brand going while controlling it is better for GG than to merge it into GG.

Thanks for explaining

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

25 posts · member since Nov 2019
1yr ago

Does GG really own WPT or are you guys mixing it up with WSOP?

2 posts · member since Dec 2024
1yr ago
by TopPair2Pair

Also if you poker rooms really cared about us, there would be 11handed plo games to reduce the rake at these levels. With public HH for us to tail and rail in NVG.

I personally can't think of a worse suggestion than 11-handed plo

HooLeeSheet avatar
31 posts · member since Oct 2022
1yr ago
by LuckyScum

I personally can't think of a worse suggestion than 11-handed plo

we haven't discussed stack depth yet.

9 posts · member since Nov 2024
10mo ago
by coordi

Not Rob Yong, Richard Yong

Rob Yong is involved with gg poker enough to be the main reason behind them removing the GG HS games and adding completely private HS Games on the ggpoker client that you can only see if you get invited personally by him or his friends

at least his new live poker tour is doing well though

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PlasticElephant avatar
PlasticElephant
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PlasticElephant avatarPlasticElephant
1yr ago

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.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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....

Zebest7r
1yr ago
by borg23

I'm not projecting it's absolutely true. Pretend otherwise if you want. Lol@ thinking a bunch of pros turn would down the chance to play with all whales if it freezes out other pros. That's adorable.

Fat man coming down the chimney with presents next month too?

Literally logged in for firet time in a year just to say you are wrong.

I quit my role with GG to avoid going down this path that you say no "reg" would ever take.
I was nowhere near the level of these ambassadors of course but it was the eventual goal. Other streamers went through the same dilemma.

There are non-streamers who have done the same, most notably Jason Koon.

Stop saying everyone would do it just because you can never see yourself turning down money for integrity....

TreadLightly avatarTreadLightly
1yr ago

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....