[ClubWPTGold] Unofficial Thread

Worse than GG?

So you'll need 2 whales at the table to break even most likely or to think about making a profit

Same. I played a ton of hands and bricked every promo.

I'd like to see something that's reasonable.

This seems like it's too high to be sustainable IMO

I would ask Code Doug and Brad to make sure it's legit since they are being used to endorse the site

Heh - after running to hot this weekend (despite bricking the couple spins I finally got for 2 $5 SNGs) they decided I'd lose every all in today regardless of equity.

This seems to be the way on this site. While I'm sure it has something to do with the fact that whales do ridiculous things in PLO - and always have more equity than you think - the days when they just doomswitch you for 1k BBs just feel too common.

That said, it's the best option available to me, so I'll take it.

WPT is crazy, RNG? Yah more like...Rigged Number Generator! I've gone on multiple 10+ buy in downswings, the higher I move up the more variance there is, and they had the nerve to still make it so I ran 10bb+/100 at 100NL and 200NL with 50k+ played hands at each stake! Are you kidding me? Could it be that the players are better the higher you move up increasing variance? Or sample size is an important consideration? Someone please clarify.

Never understood how anybody could detect alleged unnatural fluctuations in the RnG. I've played many millions of hands of online poker throughout the years, on many different sites, and not once have I noticed any odd thing with any site's runouts one way or another. It seems extremely much like the common human phenomenon of blaming external factors for one's struggles. I don't think I've ever once thought about the RnG while playing. What's the point? It's not like you can control it or detect the truth of the rigged-ness of any RnG beyond random feelings anyway...

No issue with Raked's post, it is obviously at least a little tongue-in-cheek, it just reminded me of this. I have no complaint here; it just really tickles me how my experience in online poker can be so much different than another's.

Cool story bro. 10bb/100 isn't even near winning on this site with the rake though.

Thought it was obvious my win rate was after rake...bro. I'll spell it out for you next time.

Yeah what's the point? Why question the fairness of a site I(and others) have paid obscene amounts of rake to. If we were all like you, the numerous online poker scandals would've never been exposed.

I think it's great to question the fairness of any poker site, but to firmly believe that the RNG is why you are a losing player without any concrete evidence is patently absurd. I am not saying this is your belief but it seems like this is the belief of some players in the thread. As far as I know, all of the online poker site scandals have had to do with cheating using bots, RTA, collusion, super users, the UGIEA and Full Tilt not having player funds separate from company funds. Has there ever been an online poker site scandal that had to do with the RNG? I would genuinely like to know. It would'nt make sense for a site to rig the RNG. It would be like a casino rigging black jack. Online poker sites are going to make tons of money with the rake, so no need to take on extra risk, especially an online poker site that is operating in the grey areas of the laws in the US.

I am finally disturbed enough to make a post claiming ClubWPT is rigged. At least in the PLO cash games where I have been playing.

A bit of a preamble. I know anyone who makes a post about a poker site being rigged is either thrown into the conspiracy bin or into the sore loser bin. And this is usually justified. However, I assure you I am in neither of those bins. I am absolutely not saying this to brag, but I think if I give a bit of my poker credentials it will make what I am about to say a bit more credible. I have made over 1 million dollars playing online poker. I was the winningest sit-and-go player on the internet for the year 2010 before Black Friday. I have played unknown millions of poker hands.

Ok, so to the point of this message. I have played almost 30k hands of PLO on ClubWPT at mostly the $.25–$.50 and $.25–$.50–$1 stakes. Obviously, my poker winnings from the past are gone (non-poker reasons). Despite my claim of it being rigged, I am up around $1200 total over those 30k hands while running impossibly bad. That is how bad the level of play is here. And I am aware the rake is very high, which makes it difficult to profit as people have discussed here. I also should point out that my bias if for wanting this site not to be rigged. Because it should be easy money. I keep trying to convince myself it isn't but it really is impossible at this point.

So here is what I have observed. The worse players are being extremely handicapped in these games. When an 80+ VPIP type player sits, they run up a big stack a much higher percentage of the time than they should. I would even say it is more likely they 3x-plus their initial buy-in than it is for them to lose it. And just tripling their buy-in is a mild run. 5x to 10x buy-in runs are standard. And I have seen some 30x all the way to 85x buy-in runs from the worst players imaginable. Importantly, I have only seen these mega runs from the high-VPIP terrible players. I have never seen it from a regular or someone I would label as decent. I myself have been playing long hours most every day since ClubWPT came back to NY on 1/13/26 and have yet to win or even be up $300 at any point in a single day, while I am constantly watching clueless players winning way more than $300 in short order. It is enough to drive a person insane.

I did finally record some data on perhaps the most egregious God-mode run I have come across. A 92 VPIP, 29 PFR player bought in for $10 at an 8-handed PLO .10 .20 .40 table ($40 max). He was able to run that $10 up to over $550 in just 81 hands. He got as high as $850 after about 300 hands. After 430 hands (5:30am), when I couldn't stay awake any longer to track, he still had over $530. Now what is even crazier is I counted his total winning hands out of the total I had recorded. Out of the 419 hands I had recorded, he won 158 of those hands. The 419 number is less than the 430 total hands I saw him play because I missed a few random hands when taking pictures with my phone of my computer screen of each hand. It was pretty tedious to take that many pictures, and some didn't snap. So he won somewhere close to 38% of the hands he played at this 8-handed PLO table that was basically always full.

You may think this is not a big enough sample to say much. However, I ran the probabilities through ChatGPT and got the following. If everyone had an equal chance of winning each hand (12.5%), the probability of this run is 10^-54, something like winning the lottery 5 times in a row. But this is a loose, aggressive player, so his actual odds of winning each hand are much higher than the typical player. If his true win rate is 20%, the odds are 10^-20. If his true win rate is 25%, then the odds are about 10^-10, or 1 in 10 billion. If we are very generous and assume a 30% win rate, the odds are about 1 in 3,000–5,000. When you coincide this with the fact I had already observed crazy runs regularly by these types of players, and the fact that he managed to win at this rate all on a single $10 buy-in playing terrible -EV poker, there is no real question that something is not right here. I wish I had even more data to share, but hand histories are not available on ClubWPT Gold.

I have witnessed a lot in my 21 years of playing poker professionally. I know crazy things happen, and crazy runs by people who have no business winning happen, especially in a game like PLO. I even think it rates to happen far more than our intuitions would suggest. But I promise that is not the explanation of what I am seeing here at ClubWPT. It is way beyond that. It is a repeated pattern of the same thing over and over and over again.

I won't claim to know exactly what is going on here or how it is being done. All I can say for certain is what I have observed. But here are some thoughts anyway:
I am not ruling out the possibility these mega-fish are plants by the site, but since they often eventually lose, that is not my base case. Anyone who would say “why would they risk doing this” needs to think it through a bit. The fish drive action. The longer they keep their money, the more games that run and the more rake the poker site collects. And the longer people like myself break even, the less I withdraw and the more I continue playing in pursuit of winning against the fish, even if its an illusion. The soft play is the biggest thing that ClubWPT promotes about their site. It certainly isn't the software.

I have done a bit of research on ClubWPT Gold. Someone please correct me if I am wrong about any of this, but ClubWPT Gold is not really affiliated with the actual respected WPT brand that runs live tournaments around the world. They just pay to license the name for credibility and are a completely different entity based in Cyprus. ClubWPT Gold has no real oversight or gaming commission to make sure anything about them is legitimate. I don't even think we know who owns this poker/"training" site, as that information is not publicly disclosed. All this seems pretty crazy for a poker site that is likely raking in millions of dollars per day.

Sorry for the long-winded post, and thanks to anyone who read through it with an open mind. I know I can't be the only person who has observed these things, so hopefully some other people will speak out and give their experience as well, and not feel like they will get ridiculed for doing so. Or feel free tell me I am an idiot. That is fine too.

The action at 2/4 PLO 6max is also great, just as good as 1/2 at ~half the effective rake.

Can we get the rigtard posts contained back onto the other thread? The rake discussion is at least informative and would be great if it helps us get more 2/4 games running / pay less rake

*

Edit/MH: Relevant posts moved to dedicated thread at https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28/di...

This is semantics. If you agree that "it's great to question the fairness of any poker site", then you should worry less about the specifics of the terminology and more about the underlying concerns users have.

This is how women argue when they know they're wrong and want to avoid admitting it by arguing irrelevant details.

You come off as a WPT bot given every one of your 7 posts is in WPT threads, and very few of them are interesting or insightful.

I feel like if we put a Captcha in front of you - you'd be unable to pick out the bicycles.

What are you even claiming that I am wrong about? This statement adds nothing to the discussion and is quite petty. The details are relevant because the fairness of a site isn't just black and white, so the semantics matter. It's not either 100% fair or 100% rigged. For example, the ACR RNG is fair but there is a huge bot problem that the site seems to not care about. So I don't play on ACR.
I still stand by questioning the fairness of any site, even the RNG but to sit there and complain about it without any compelling evidence and continue to play on the site is ridiculous. If you don't think the site is fair then move on.

Overall, I agree with your post. However, to answer your question "Has there ever been . . .", I believe the scandal involving Planet Poker many years ago was close to being such a case. Not rigging per se, but a fault with the RNG which was exploitable.

If you recognize all the of the corruption that has taken place within poker sites in the past then why would questioning the RNG be something beyond the pale? You also recognize these poker sites risk operating in legal grey areas. If they are willing to do that then it isn't crazy to think they could manipulate card distributions in a way that benefits themselves. Especially when they have no one regulating them. They claim to technically not even be gambling sites. I don't think there would be any legal recourse at all if ClubWPT Gold was found to have done something nefarious with the RNG.

ClubWPT Gold has no hand histories available and doesn't to my knowledge allow any tracking software. So how would you suggest anyone to provide concrete evidence the RNG is not fair if it in fact wasn't? I had conversations with some LLM's and they all say it would be trivially easy to change the RNG to favor certain players or player types. Yes there are many nonsense posts that give stupid reasons as to why they think poker sites are rigged. But there are a lot of reasons to suspect something is wrong with ClubWPT Gold. Including suspicions from winning sober minded poker players like myself.

Questioning the RNG is not where my problem is. The problem is the reasoning or lack there of behind questioning the RNG. People say stuff like, "this doesn't feel right" or say something about running bad. I don't think I've seen one long term winning player who plays on WPT Gold complain about the RNG in this thread.
Generally speaking, I think it's difficult for people to wrap there head around large numbers and they don't really understand how difficult poker really is. Check out a variance calculator and put in an average win rate of something like 6-7bb/100 and see how different people can run over 100k hands. I've gone on 20+ buy in down swings and multiple 10+ buy in down swings on WPT which really sucked but I just kept grinding and learning until I got good enough to beat the limit I was struggling at and move up. The RNG is fair because the players with the most skill are winning, moving up and not complaining about the RNG.
The last thing I'll say about all of this is WPT Gold is unequivocally the softest site there is online and if you're a losing player on WPT over a significant sample, guess what...The problem is you.

Reread my post until you understand.

Six max SNGs! Lower SNG Rake!

Doug rake us less.

these are blood sucking vampires. raking like theyre an armo club game. nasty, nasty work. RNG is fucked? No, idts. But it doesn't even really matter when they're taking 5 fkn %

Not bb/100. Straddles/100. More rake is better

From playing on here a bunch, I think the RNG is completely fair. Global, on the other hand, had some weird ****ing runouts that made me go WTF quite often...