No Game Without Ambassadors: Week 1 of Closed Highstakes Lobby on GG Network

Phil Galfond asked his Twitter followers how they felt about the high-stakes reform at GG Network:

– GGPoker has lately been the home of the most regular open online high-stakes games. It appears they’ve now closed them (above $5k) and switched to a private, game model. What do you think about the decision?

“Public high-stakes battles are more fun,” CoinPoker representatives responded.

– "High stakes players welcome (with much lower rake) at Phenom," – representatives of the new room tried to take advantage of the situation. "Phenom is happy to invest heavily in monitoring for cheating, collusion, RTAs, etc."

Two Patricks, Howard and Leonard, spoke in more detail.

"GGPoker appears to be transforming online poker into an unbeatable casino game," Howard said. "This shift negatively affects everyone involved. While professional players are directly impacted for obvious reasons, recreational players also suffer because such changes could diminish the game's popularity and make it indistinguishable from other casino offerings.
In the end, the only winner here is GGPoker, capitalizing on increased profits at the expense of the entire poker community.
Currently, these changes only affect very high-stakes games. However, GGPoker is also raking NL500-2K to the maximum. It's hard to imagine them lowering the rake at these levels, but it's plausible they might increase it further.
What surprises me is that GGPoker ambassadors who originated from the professional poker community have not jumped ship yet (with the notable exception of Jason Koon). Instead, they seem to be participating in actions that could contribute to the decline of online poker."

Pads (Patrick Leonard) was not so categorical:

– [Big post about this]
I think high stakes battles is a great marketing tool for a site, but GG don’t owe players anything. They are a business and have the biggest market share. Their vips losing to regs instead of playing casino is “bad for business” and they are a business. For the last 4-5-6 years they tested the waters with admin fees, increase in rake etc and in general in pivotal moments regs showed that they didn’t care really. Cash games is first, but who says tournaments won’t be the same? You get a host who runs the tournament club, he invites vips and people who are losers/ “good for the game” and creates a healthy ecosystem. Do I like this? Not really. Are GG the worst for doing it? Not really. Is it smart business? Probably. GG have to weigh up marketing via high stakes games vs protecting vips who can lose more in higher ev (for GG) games. Coinpoker for example have more value in marketing via high stakes battles.

In the new lobby, some activity is observed only at the Omaha tables. In Hold'em, the tables are almost always empty; without the room's ambassadors, there is no game. Misha Inner and Elky often sort things out among themselves rather than with other players.

Fedor Holz sat at the tables for a couple of sessions but was quickly punished by Jungleman.

On Tuesday morning, the lobby was splendidly manned by strong regular Andrew Graham ("lol voidaments" on WPN, OhHeyCindy on PokerStars).

How he got access to these games remains a mystery. In the WPN network this year he is one of the leaders in both profit and valume.

Perhaps Andrew is lucky that his GG account is still in the negative.

Barak Wisbrod and other top regs are forced to settle for playing NL2k.

– They won’t let you into closed games?

– No :(

– Sadly

According to GipsyTeam, some players have also already received rejections, even those with strong media presences outside of the poker world.

The passion for new expensive tables in the GG network does not subside.

Feruell put out a call in his telegram: "Whoever has access to closed VIP games on gg and is interested in backing, write to me."

A heated discussion unfolded in the comments, sometimes going beyond the censorship. NA$DAq, who apparently was not given access to the closed games, was especially zealous.

But amidst the unprintable remarks, a voice of reason was heard. Top high-stakes reg and Triton attendee avr0ra shared his expectations for the new games:

– In fact, it is very interesting what will happen with these private games. In fact, there will be no regular games there, since there is no one to hold the lobby. They will be held exclusively by agreement, like show matches.
If you need a regular game, then you need to let in at least 20-30 regs who will hold and monitor the lobby, and they may already be very unhappy with the conditions, they still want to play any table in the black, and not just with ultra VIPs.
In Hold'em at NL10k, by the way, the effective rake has grown by one and a half times!!! (they removed RB completely, slightly increased the base rake cap, and added a minimum VPIP (which will increase the rake significantly at a full table). It was 3.1 bb/100, now according to preliminary calculations it is 4.5+.

An account supposedly belonging to Ivan Bryksin (the CEO of GG Network's PokerOK, a GGPoker alternative) visited Lorem's Telegram comments for several days in a row. He exchanged a few lines with Avr0ra.

Avr0ra: Elky, by the way, writes in the high stakes regs conference more or less actively, and as I understand it, there will be a fork in the road now:

Or there will be very few invites, and then high stakes will remain in the form of rare show matches with ambassadors/famous players.

Or they will invite everyone in a row, and everything will be more or less as it was, just with the ability to close access to the most impudent + with an increased rake. In general, in any case, GG won here.

User: There won't be a second option. There are a lot of media personalities/streamers there. They will be enough to hold the lobby, etc.

He also confirmed rumors that reform will also take place in MTT in the foreseeable future:

– With the new changes that are coming, there will be so much hate) everyone here will have real reasons to hate fiercely and write out all the ambassadors. But business is business. It will affect everyone in PokerOK. This is the saddest thing. I will not spoil further. Perhaps I am exaggerating, but I do not think so. In general, as Aurora told me, people will hate both me and all the ambassadors. And in general, there is no point in even arguing here.

Nikolay Evdokimov also predicted in his channel that there would be problems with playing at the new tables:

– The change is definitely negative. Yes, perhaps, given my media presence, I will be able to gain access there, but I am not sure that it is worth it.
The thing is, I think there will be practically no game there. Very rarely and little. Throughout my career, playing HS, I loved to communicate with amateurs. I have good English, I often talked to them in the chat, found out where they were from, what they did, etc. In general, I kept up a conversation if they wanted. Therefore, I have a lot of contacts among amateurs, including foreign ones. In my experience, most amateurs who are ready to play expensively are older people who do not really want to play some new incomprehensible formats like squid game or hippo squid, etc. As a rule, they want to play the usual good old 6-9 max version of hold'em. This is also evidenced by the fact that I played a lot of hands on HS GGPoker, and guess what percentage was on ante games? 5%! Only 5 percent, almost always a regular standard table was played.
What I'm getting at is that I think this change will result in the game simply dying out and being reduced to 0. And before the HS changes, there were a lot of games on GG.
For now I'm taking a break and will watch from the sidelines to see what this will lead to. Perhaps the change will be ineffective from a financial point of view, and GG will change the system.
Maybe some other room will take advantage of the situation and will be able to take some of the HS traffic from GG. I am sure there are many amateurs and regulars who would not mind playing a regular NL5K table.
I will also add that I am ready to support such initiatives from other rooms in every possible way. I can stream if necessary, and participate in some analysis, practically anything. If you are a representative of a room and you need some help, I am open to cooperation.