Matt Berkey: We've had this discussion a lot in the past regarding whether pre-flop charts are RTA or not. In the past, it was always a matter of the terms and conditions of the site you're on—some allow it, some don't. However, as we continue to advance, especially with the ability to use tools like ICMizer and Hold Manager, these pre-flop charts are going to become much more powerful. But with Wizard, for instance, there's really no fair play check when it comes to these pre-flop things. I know that throughout the database with Nacho, you were able to take a much deeper dive and examine, but the community at large can't really police this aspect of it the same way they can post-flop.
How do you feel that impacts the online environment?
Patrick Leonard: Well, I mean, as Landon will tell you, maximizing ROI in online tournaments is seen as the best way to get an hourly rate. When ROIs decrease so much because many people cheat, let's say your ROI before was 50% if you started at the start of the tournament because you got many free gifts and whatever, now maybe your ROI is capped at 5% because of structures and stuff. So, you may as well, instead of playing seven hours of late registration or whatever some of these ACR tournaments have, you may as well maximize late registration. And when you max late reg, there's basically no post-flop play because you get 12 big blinds, and everyone else realizes going post-flop isn't really advantageous. Around 90% plus of decisions you make in a tournament would be pre-flop based, maybe even more, because you're going to probably see a flop, you're going to VPIP something like 20%, and I would say 5% of the time you VPIP, you're going to go post-flop—something like that. So, that's like 1 to 2% of the time you're going to see post-flops. You don't even need to study post-flop at all; you could just use the available charts with no delay, and you have very big time banks on some of these sites.
It's literally possible to cheat your entire way to heads-up like that, which is scary to think about. You don't need to know post-flop at all, and the tools are available really easily to use and are pretty simple to use and very undetectable. There's no delay; it's hard to detect because you know it's just pre-flop. Yeah, I mean, if someone wanted to get like 10 horses to just do this and all cheat together and even share cards, whatever, it's completely possible. And it's going to go more and more in that direction as we continue to advance, as more people start to lose their bankroll and give up on online poker. The people who are going to come through and cheat are just going to do this—max late reg, tank every spot, use the GTO Wizard with no delay stuff.
Matt Berkey: You've been very outspoken about wanting to put the genie back in the bottle, so to speak. How do you think poker sites can combat cheating with GTO Wizard's availability to the general populace? Maybe adding a delay or some sort of safety measures such that it's not able to be so readily accessible as a cheating tool? I guess with even what you just outlined there and the direction that online poker is heading, do you think that's more of a Band-Aid or do you think that actually can be a fixture and a permanent solution?
Patrick Leonard: I think you need to probably change the structures of the tournament too—like ending late registration earlier so you are forced to go post-flop. Right now, late registration on ACR and some tournaments ends with like eight big blinds. So if you end with eight big blinds and you're like two double-ups away from getting into the money, playing for six hours of late registration in a 5% ROI tournament is really silly to do. So, I would cut late registration down.
I would make late registration close with a higher average stack size. Also, it's not fun for amateurs—let's just imagine an amateur who likes to gamble and plays his tournament for a few hours, sees post-flop a lot, and then like 100 people jump in with 12 big blinds. The average stack size goes from like 30 big blinds down to 14. There are never any more flops before you can't play any more suited hands.
This is going to drive first of all, like regs are going to get cheated from cheaters, and the amateurs are obviously going to dislike it. It's not fun for amateurs to change and play like this. I mean, I don't know many amateurs who want to play like every single reg max tanking so they can get into the money quicker and no one seeing a flop. This is not poker. I don't know about you guys, but for me, it seems crazy that this is what online poker MTTs are right now.
Matt Berkey: Maybe I'm a little bit misguided as far as what constitutes an amateur online. But like, isn't the qualification of a fish very different online? I feel like when we think amateur, we think like Paul Phua, who's very sharp and certainly a winner in most live fields.
Dominik Nitsche put up a tweet, and I found it to be interesting. If you equate the language one to one of both online to live, I think there's a very big disconnect between what he's talking about and what the average consumer of poker would understand. But he said:
– The truth is, if people got banned for what Nacho allegedly did, there would be zero fish left on any site. Fish love looking at GTO Wizard while donating at the tables. Yes, it's mainly fish who cheat, but they still suck. Anyway, a lot of people here accusing Nacho of the worst for having pre-flop range up either are entirely clueless or outright malicious. The man has four tables up; he's not in some unique river spot solving and executing a perfectly balanced strategy. Also, if this scares you, the best time to stop playing online poker is now; it was 20 years ago. Grow up. He's not playing perfectly because of what's in his background, and I'm sure a bunch of the accusers know this too, but they just want to talk shit."
To me, that statement is twofold. One, I think he's heavily incentivized to put that statement out because he has a competitor to GTO Wizard. Two, that completely goes against the grain for what I understand the general user base of GTO Wizard AI to be, as well as the people who are able to weaponize it. I don't think in any capacity it's what I would envision as a fish. You know, I would never imagine—and I mean this with all due respect—he's a lovely human, I love him to the core—but I wouldn't ever imagine Bill Klein being on the other side of a monitor scrolling through GTO Wizard, max time banking, min cashing, and playing perfect ICM ranges.
Patrick Leonard: No. And like when we play on GG and D sites, and the fish we play there, they're usually, you know, the Chinese or the Russian fish, and they're certainly not doing this either. They're very splashy, they're very loose, they're very, they want to see flops. You know, you have like RRomashka and all of these guys; there are a lot of them, and they're not doing this. I don't know about Dom's information about fish versus pros who buy GTO Wizard or use GTO Wizard, but I would imagine that all pros have some access to some kind of database, whether it be GTO Wizard or something else, whereas not all amateurs do. You know, and also, you can have access to something, but using it is different. Having access, like, I'm sure some—I don't like using the word "fish," but let's continue using this word—fun players have access to GTO Wizard; it doesn't mean they want to use it in-game, you know.
It's like if I'm going to go and play, let's say I play a $1 PLO tournament or a $1 Texas Hold'em tournament—relative to a bankroll, to a really rich fish, I'm not going to want to use GTO Wizard. I'm there to gamble, I'm there to have fun, or whatever. You know, so it's like I don't even want to use it. Maybe afterwards, I want to check some interesting hands or whatever. But if I'm playing chess, for example, against somebody for like $10, I'm not going to use the engine to cheat because I'm trying to have fun playing. Maybe afterwards, I use the engine to study it, you know.
I would buy the engine, I buy all the chess products, I buy everything to analyze. I have a chess coach, but I'm still terrible at chess, and when I play, I play for fun. Do you know what I mean? There's a difference, whereas if someone plays competitively, they might want to use it to cheat, to build up their rating or whatever. And I think it's similar in poker—amateurs may have GTO Wizard, but I don't think they're trying to use it in-game. At least, the ones I'm thinking about are not trying to use it in-game.
Landon Tice: It's also just like the difference in vocabulary—I imagine like Dom's definition of "fish" could be a "bad reg."
Matt Berkey : I think he's kind of implying that Nacho fits the profile, and like, okay, that's all well and good too. And perhaps maybe that's even true. But it's still speaking more to the ultimate arriving at zero. Like, if these are the people that you feel are weaponizing the tools and software in order to reduce their negative edge and get it closer to zero, well, the same counterbalance has to happen on the other side. The people who are winning a lot off this person previously are now not winning as much. And there are many, many layers to this, right? We can talk HUDs, we can talk MDA—mass data analysis—you know, the list goes on and on. Pre-flop charts—there's just so much that is readily available to you online that you're stripped of live. And you kind of have to memorize, and this even applies to Dom, right? The final table of the main event—you know, he's trying to downplay all this stuff, but he was paid to coach a member of the final table, and what did he do? He showed him pre-flop charts, you know. So, it's like to say that this stuff is completely worthless—I think is certainly diminishing the impact. It's more so highlighting, I guess, that good players just know this stuff.
Patrick Leonard: It's also the percentage of the tournaments—a lot of people always say to me, "Yeah, well, people have used these push-fold charts for like 20 years, you know. They used to be these Genia charts." Yeah, but like, they weren't a big part of the tournament because the tour was more deep stack—people went late reg, like the average stack size was a lot deeper. So, you often weren't shoving and folding—you know, you were often like 40, 50 big blinds deep and going post-flop and all that kind of stuff. Now, 95% of the game is pre-flop at this stage, you know.
Landon Theis: Yeah, at that point, like you might have been the only person in the tournament with 10 BBs, but now everyone has 10 BBs. Like, if I knew how to play perfect pre-flop from 20 bigs under, I would be very confident playing any tournament in the world, really.
Patrick Leonard: 100%. I mean, we used to have like rebuy tournaments online, which were such a big thing because everyone used to accumulate these massive stacks, and that's how it used to be. And they took off the rebuy because they realized they would rather get re-entry, as they charge a rake on re-entry rather than the rebuy. But what that made was, basically the average stack size goes lower, and now like these charts would actually not be bad compared to like 15 years ago. Like, you said you might have 10 big blinds, but everyone else has 50. So, it's very different.
Matt Berkey: I know the one thing that you and I don't necessarily see eye to eye on is like how much of this responsibility falls on GTO Wizard. I'm kind of of the impression that it's none—you know, they came up with a product and a tool that was needed and demanded by the community. And fair play is not necessarily on them. I do think that they've taken some steps to ensure that fair play exists.
Patrick Leonard: I don't disagree with that by the way. No, I just don't think that poker sites should partner with them as partners. You know, like I don't think the reason why GTO Wizard is big is because they have so much money for marketing, and that's because like people work with them or whatever. You know, like I feel like they should be like blanked out. I think they should be like seen as the bad guys—like they can do whatever they want.
If I was GTO Wizard, I would do the same. I was like everyone works with us; they have all these contracts. We set this thing up where basically we make sure everyone cheats on your site, and we sell like a consultancy service where we then catch the cheats for you. So then we now have extra money to do marketing to get new customers. Like, of course, their business is incredible. I would buy a piece of the company tomorrow because it's amazing. At CoinPoker, we don't work with them. I said to CoinPoker, there's no way we should work with GTO Wizard while they do this. If they had a delay on a Sunday, if they had a delay during the World Series, if they had a delay here, let's partner with them and let them help us with security. But until then, let's not fund their operation, and we don't, you know, that's a big thing which we're not going to do. And I feel like all companies should do that.
And even the World Series, because the World Series is associated with GG, and GG's biggest threat to their games is GTO Wizard. I assume, and I have no idea about how much, but I assume all of these companies are paying hundreds of thousands, if not millions, which then bankrolls GTO Wizard to do marketing to get all these new people to play and then cheat. And it just goes around and around—there are more people cheating, so GTO Wizard has a better security service to then give to them. They can pay for ambassadors, you know, all this.
Matt Berkey: So, I would push back strongly. I think that's how you saw the problem—I think that you allow it to perpetuate and mass like that, and then you create something that is large enough to solve. Even in Mario's tweet, he said GTO Wizard has an incredibly powerful tool, and it's everyone's interest to push for change—introduce delays for solving during peak hours, enable online sites to cross-check hands and timestamps at scale. That's the service they offer—is allowing access to those databases, giving all of the information to the actual operator themselves.
Patrick Leonard: But, not for free though, right?
Matt Berkey: No, not for free, because they're a business.
Patrick Leonard: So, they're setting up a business where they create cheats to then be able to catch the cheats. It's like the police selling drugs to then go and catch the drugs or something like that.
Matt Berkey: I think you're just seeing this too much as them as one solo entity. If you remove them completely from the ecosystem, this all exists at a black market level.
Patrick Leonard: It was always available at the black market level; you could always buy these things. But people, maybe it happened for like 5% of the field or whatever—now 100% of the field can do it, and very easily, right? But I would argue that that's a better system when everything is out in the open like that, and it's abundantly clear that it could be utilized by everybody.
For example, on PokerStars, which has a proper security team, or some other sites, what happened there was if there was one or two guys using these tools and the rest of the field weren't, their stats were so close to GTO, and then the sites found them out from these things like turn probes. Anyone who played turn probes correctly before the sites could, but yeah, these guys were using some lookup tools; they were cheating. Now, if 100% of the field has access to this, it's very hard to find the people who are actually cheating. Before, if someone played perfectly pre-flop or perfectly in three-bet pots, for example, like Fedor Kruse, he got found out very quickly because he was playing perfectly in three-bet pots. He had his own lookup tools to do it. Now, everyone can play correctly, so it's a lot harder to find people who are cheating.
If 5% of the field have some tools to cheat, it's very easy to find these people. If 100% of the people have access to cheat, how do you find it? Because everyone has access to it, so like you just allow everyone to cheat, basically, which is what happens now. Which is why I don't play on these sites. Before, when a few people had lookup tools, I was okay with it because I was like, okay, eventually they're going to get found out. Or even if the site doesn't find them, we have a community ourselves, the high stakes community, works together; we can find people who are playing correctly in this way. If one guy was coming and nailing free bet pots, we would find him and we would kick him out; there's no question about that. Now, it's impossible to do that.
Matt Berkey: I think that bigger picture, and when I said that we disagree, I maybe misstated, but maybe where we can circle back to being in full agreement is that this is an operator problem to the core. And I don't think that there's any skirting it any longer. If online poker stands to survive and thrive in any capacity, whether they work with GTO Wizard or they work against GTO Wizard or the next iteration thereof, to me this is no different than Chess.com having to figure out a way to integrate Stockfish
Patrick Leonard: If I was ACR would just continue doing the same thing—like the Venom still gets the same numbers every time— why would they even care?
Matt Berkey: So, I'm really glad that you said that because I think that that's the crux of at least where my stance is on all this. When you came out last January after the bot situation on ACR, he basically said, "I'm taking months off online poker for the first time in decades." That to me was like the call to arms—that's the putting your foot down, taking a hard stance, and saying like, "Okay, there is no future in online poker if we allow the status quo to be what it is." And I don't think anything has changed at all since last January.
I understand that CoinPoker has come into the market, and I know that you're an ambassador there and that you want to have change happen from within. I'm confident that there are conversations taking place where you guys are making strides in the right direction. But at the end of the day, the fact that this is like a web-based lookup tool and everybody's pointing to that as a reason why it can't be policed is just not true.
Patrick Leonard: It can be, but yeah.
Matt Berkey: If win rates continually decrease, you end up with a bunch of people just breaking even, paying rake, which is exactly what sites want.
The evolution of online poker is all about increasing hourly rates; it's all about bettering your bottom line. And I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's not like I said it's not that they need to ban all this stuff or figure any of this stuff out. It's more so that some sort of sweeping change needs to occur at the level of the operator. And you know, maybe we were headed in the right direction when everything became PKO—maybe it's evolving into some other format of online tournaments, maybe it's finding some sort of tournament-cash hybrid. I don't know what the answer is necessarily, but it does seem like operators need to be investing not just in security but in product development to a very high degree.
Right, cash games are all but falling by the wayside. You know, we've talked about this a lot, but what was high stakes when I was coming up is now like unfathomable. What was mid-stakes is now nosebleeds, and so on down the line. It just seems very difficult in a true zero-sum game, and maybe that's the final finale when it comes to online poker—that enough volume is getting pumped out that the game actually does truly just regress to being zero-sum for all.
Patrick Leonard: I don't know why anyone would play online like I just don't, and that's sad to say.
Matt Berkey: Now, it's like the Wild Wild West. All the same necessary components of development are still there—putting in volume, analysis, database review, MD—like all this stuff that will build a bulletproof strategy for you to carry over elsewhere. But yeah, you're paying not just the rake but potentially a heavy cheat tax. You're paying it—you're paying a cheat tax
Patrick Leonard: But I said to CoinPoker that what we should do—and I don't mind if ACR steals this idea—is that they should have a tournament every day called like the "Daily Goofball" tournament. Which is basically what they do—like they make fun of it, they have a fun name, whatever—but basically, whoever wins that tournament each day, their security team does like a full investigation of the account for that tournament. So, check every hand they play, check the final table, check GTO Wizard against all the timestamps of every hand. And then basically, if you play this one tournament, you know that this is like a safe tournament because if someone wins and they cheated, they will like redistribute the funds somehow.
Matt Berkey: How crazy is that though? That should be the expectation of every event.
Any final thoughts before we wrap on this subject?
Patrick Leonard: I think we're f***ed.
Matt Berkey: I got to tell you, you're taking a lot of weight off my shoulders by taking this stance. I think I'm just often positioned as the adversary to all of this, but I just try to be very realistic. And I don't have a dog in the fight like I'm not out there battling in those streets. So, I think people view it as like, "Oh, you want to see it fall because you don't play there anyway." I want to see it flourish, man.
