Daniel Cates: "I Am Actually in Favor of Private Games"
GipsyTeam
23 November, 13:2825 November, 20:47359
On 2+2 and Twitter, discussions about GGPoker are ongoing, Matt Marinelli calls for more pressure on ambassadors, and Inner insists that all regulars don’t give a damn about each other.
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.
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.
The reaction of 2+2 users was predictable:
– "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."
– "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 want to address the elephant in the room," wrote GGBruuce. "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."
Recently, Lorem posted a screenshot from a closed channel in the Discord of players. One of the users accused Elky of stealing money from his players' accounts for a year. Dominik Nitsche confirmed that he heard this information from a very reliable source.
One of those who was not afraid to openly support the GG reform was Daniel Cates, who was one of the first to gain access to closed games:
– "Guys I am actually in favor of private games happening and will support it. People should have the ability and freedom to reliably choose who they want to play, for the ecology and betterment of the game.
I don't agree with all of GGPoker decisions, especially not removing 25/50 but I am pro private games.
The political aspect of the game has now become part of the game. If you now bypass that by ghosting, it's effectively cheating the game and stealing from the players and ecosystem."
– So you're against ghosting to get into these games, Jungle? – asked another top reg Alex Trevallion joined the discussion and added a link to an article about the Portuguese scammer Girah, whom Jungleman ghosted. – Ghosting is a huge problem in closed games. I've played in apps, and it's clear that different people play from fish accounts.
Highstakes regulars have done a great job of keeping the game fair at GG, and have caught a lot of cheaters thanks to this. It will be much harder to do this in the new closed games.
“I'm fine with private games and there's plenty of them available on apps,” agreed Matt Marinelli. “The problem is removing all public games and taking away the option to play high stakes at all. Shouldn't you equally support people's ability to play on an open platform if that's what they want to do?"
– "I do," Jungle replied, "but why do these players need to play nosebleeds against fish? Lol? To get richer to do nothing of worth for their money?
High stakes players crying that they can't play high stakes games with VIPs, the true biggest value adds to the poker at large, just boils down to outright GREED."
– "lmao GG is only doing it so they can take even more money from the fish at the casino. If your argument was "that's capitalism bro, deal with it", then I'd actually weirdly accept that, but don't make an altruistic argument out of this."
– "You ignored all my points. How does this allow GG to get more of their money? GG may be self incentivized but they've also done loads of things for the game"
– "Your main point is poker players are greedy fucks, but GG is literally just doing this because they could make way more to send the same recs to the casino. They don't give a damn about poker or the well-being of recreational players, so I reject an altruistic defense.
Yes, I'm very grateful for GG and I'm sure they've made tons of money along the way. I just don't want them to turn their backs on poker now that they have a monopoly position.
The median reg won at 0.9 evbb/100 over the past 365 days at 50/100+ on GG, btw. Just in case you wanted something quantifiable, because regs aren't exactly rolling in dough in +10bb/100 games every day."
– "That would be where I don't agree with them. I don't think it's right that the host takes such a large % of the cut of the client," Jungle admitted.
– "So why do you support them closing the VIP room entirely then? 40% of regs have a losing year at 5k+ on GG as it is. Only a very small % of total hands are played vs super whales at 40k+. Playing GG is a high-variance, low margin, 1bb/100 grind; I wouldn't consider that "greed"
– "So, you’re right basically. And it should NOT be that hard
I’m in support more of the idea of private games
There should be public high stakes games somewhere for sure
Likely someone will take the void that GGPoker left"
– "To the players, I feel for your rake situation. It isn’t right that rake is so high even winning players can struggle to make a living. On this I disagree with GGPoker.
The dream of becoming rich and free from poker should remain alive.
Looking into solving this, and if it’s within my power I will do what I can to make it right."
Here, Matt Marinelli was waiting for Cates again:
– "Thanks, Dan. It could be helpful to pressure the ambassadors. Attached is an image Elky posted in a high stakes discord as a GG site rep after being MIA for months. 24 hours later he played a 10 hour session in the Exclusive room. This type of behavior completely erodes trust."
Here is an English translation of Misha Inner's post from Telegram. He is one of their biggest streamers and has access to closed games. How can the biggest room encourage such hatred toward professionals?
– "Every regular doesn't give a flying fuck about any other regulars," – Misha answered. – "Just sometimes they have their interests in line and might feel like they care about each other, but they actually don't and all they care is their profit. Prove me wrong."
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