Rumors about the imminent reform of MTT on GGPoker and the GG Network began to circulate on Telegram channels in mid-autumn. In early December, details leaked: Alexey Fellini foreshadowed on a stream that the rake in tournaments would soon differ in different showcases of the network. The alleged head of PokerOK (GG's Russian branch), then promised in the comments on Lorem's channel that everything would be ready by mid-December, and he kept his word as the King of the Night.
Aleksey Borovkov (Avr0ra) was the first to notice the changes in the lobby. He posted two screenshots of the lobby of the Bounty King tournament for $320 — from the Natural8 and PokerOK networks:
The screenshots differ in one number: the size of the Loyalty & Promotions Fee. For Natural8, it remained at 1%, for Russian-speaking players on PokerOK, it increased to 3%. The room takes this commission "to strengthen partnerships and cover key logistics costs, such as trophies and deliveries." Representatives of the poker site emphasize that all the money goes to raffles, freerolls and bonuses, that is, the money is returned to the players one way or another.
How exactly all this will affect the payouts in tournaments, Fedya Lorem showed that same evening. See how the payouts in the same tournament differ on the GGPoker and PokerOK platforms.
For example, Russian player MagerOne1 received $1,843 for 6th place. And in the GGPoker lobby, his payout is reflected as $1,914. As a result, $71 sank into a black hole somewhere between the tournament and the cashier. It is also clearly visible that the payouts for the first two places in the tournament "according to PokerOK" are almost $200 less.
This is significantly higher than the stated difference of 2% – and is probably due to the fact that the additional commission is taken from the general prize pool (along with the bounty), but the payments for knockouts have not changed, so the main prize pool suffers. Another consequence of the reform was the complete abolition of the divisions in tournaments – apparently due to the fact that the prize pools are no longer the same for players from different countries.
Lorem tweeted Daniel Negreanu, Fedor Holz, Alexandra Botez, and Parick Leonard and asked what they thought about it all. Only Pads responded:
"I'm the only one tagged who isn't a GG ambassador, so I won't comment too much. Taking extra off prizes is definitely something I haven't seen before, charging extra rake is maybe similar to Stars, where countries get less rakeback based on their jurisdiction? Sweden can't compete in leaderboards for example. If so higher "loyalty fee" seems potentially reasonable, but money taken off prizes seems strange way to do it."
Lorem responded quickly -
"I think it's important to notice that the reason for changes are officially 'we are planning to kill poker pro as a profession in 2 to 5 years, so we are testing stage 1 out of 3 stage plan to get there'. so I feel that comparison to Swedes is a bit farfetched in that regard.
You are tagged because your opinion is always interesting to hear and you're also the one who is not shy of discussing of topics like that, unlike many unfortunately."
The GipsyTeam editorial team also contacted famous players for comments.
Alexey Borovkov ( avr0ra )
It may not seem like a big deal, but the difference and impact are bigger than it seems: the average professional high-stakes online player has a 5-10% ROI. Plus, the precedent itself is very bad and offensive. I don't think there have been different conditions for different regions in the history of online. It's scary to imagine what will happen next (help).
It is also a shame that the admin fee is the same regardless of the buy-in. Now a situation may arise where the same tournament can be played in the plus with a European passport and in the minus with a Russian one. Unfair.
Well, what can you do, it's a business decision that we'll have to live with. We'll work with what we have. The chance that it will be rolled back is exactly 0, since it took 6+ months to think it through.
The most effective method for professional players is to support GG competitors online and offline as much as possible.
Fedor Truntsev ( Lorem )
In general, it was clear for a long time that the rake would be raised, and raising it in the form of an extra loyalty fee is generally the most straightforward option. Most likely, these +2% are not set in stone and may grow further over time.
This change will have the worst effect on weak plus regs (they will stop beating the game) and on amateurs (they will lose even more). As funny as it may sound, but this may be good for strong regs, because weak regs will stop playing sooner or later, and more money from amateurs will go to the top players.
That's why Ivan wrote that these changes could actually be good for the funds. Which, naturally, hints at the real reason for these changes – to survive as many regs as possible, and at the same time take money in the process.
Overall, I don't think 2% will scare anyone much, it could have been much worse (I expected at least 5%). We'll see what happens, but I would assume that everyone will just swallow it and continue playing as if nothing happened.
Gleb Tremzin ( Ti0 )
Innovations, of course, are not liked. But there are already similar things in some rooms. For example, on PS.es there is no rakeback for some countries, representatives of some countries cannot participate in the WCOOP/SCOOP leaderboards on PS.com…
ROI will definitely decrease, but it is difficult to say by how much. I think it will be around 1-2%.
Personally, I didn't play the last Mystery Bounty for $2,700 precisely because of the huge rake. And I can easily skip some further series tournaments if I think that there are more interesting options in other rooms.
Andrey Streltsov ( TylerRM )
It is believed that if you are an industry leader with the best software and the best geographical coverage, then this is a reason to raise the price of the game. But recently, GG hosted a $2,500 tournament with 12% rake and a $2.5 million guarantee, and about $467k of overlay was formed in it. The market quickly adjusted to the innovation, and the price increase did not give the room a higher profit.
The poker market is extremely efficient and has punished such mistakes more than once in history. In no room in the history of online poker has an increase in commission ever led to an increase in the room's profit. The collapse of the Ongame network began with the refusal to pay rakeback, PokerStars also lost its leading position after they raised their prices.
GG representatives say they do this to make the game softer, so that fewer strong players play and the weaker ones have a better time. But the good thing about playing in tournaments is that you can compete with the best players in the world without restrictions. If some of them quit, it makes the game worse in the long run.
Anonymous Poker Fund CEO
We had previously been very wary of tournaments with an additional rake in the form of a 1.5 percent admin fee, since in reality, in terms of the impact on ROI, it worked far from linearly. Therefore, with rare exceptions, fewer players were placed in serial tournaments than in regular ones.
Now it looks like most serial tournaments, especially with buy-ins of $100 and above, have stopped being fought on PokerOK with any adequate ROI in principle. This is definitely discrimination based on regional characteristics, especially considering that even if a player moves to, say, Argentina, he is officially prohibited from changing the platform.
I think this will simply result in an increase in the volume of multi-accounting and playing via VPN, which is already flourishing. And instead of fighting this and other security issues, the PokerOK management is busy hunting witches under the pretext of caring for ordinary people, while raising "taxes" for everyone.
Ilya Pavlov ( pokanuktus )
In cheap tournaments with a buy-in of less than $99, where the achievable ROI is initially double-digit, most likely, nothing will really change. But what is more expensive is already a big question mark.
As Aurora correctly noted in his post, for a very decent number of super-high stakes players from the CIS community, most of the regular grid will be minus/zero. There, the initially achievable figures are in the range of 2% to 5% ROI.
At midstakes, everything is also sad, a bunch of flagship tournaments in the range from $150 to $250 on GG were fought by the best players at 5-8% ROI, now, accordingly, it will be even lower.
In general, everything is happening in accordance with Ivan Bryksin’s original plan (the gradual killing of the regular profession), except for a small caveat – for now only for the PokerOK showcase, and not for the entire GG network.
Let me remind you that initially everything was presented as a crusade against the stables, but in the end, ordinary regions will suffer to a greater extent than the funds.
Alexey Vandyshev ( Fiat )
Funds are evil.
-- How exactly will the expectation change?
Arthur madtim , DreamTeam fund selection specialist:
There is a tournament on GG with a prize pool of 100,000. If a player with an admin fee of 1% registers, he will fight for a prize pool of 99,000. A player on PokerOK fights only for 97,000.
An example with a knockout tournament is at the beginning of the article, and here is a freezeout:
