Yes that will be a tough issue to sort out. One of the problems is when you make an unpopular decision, the data from month to month or year to year is noisy so you can never really isolate the effects of the decision.

For something like a price increase, it can still be fine because you gain extra revenue. But for something like manipulating pay tables, it's a much tougher ground to justify. And if players are rejecting the product because of this, it's just a painful decision.

For what it's worth, I personally don't think the pay tables have much of an effect on the guarantees here. But I could definitely be wrong.

I actually didn't know that was a laffer curve. I had encountered the shape before and Googled some terms to try to find a sample graph that fit what I was looking for. Did some reading about the Laffer curve and it was nice to know. Thanks!

Yeah that was a tough one was very excited to see that turn 3-way I figured it was very likely someone had a flush or trips. Hope your Sunday went well.

I did have a decent Sunday, thanks. That said, that shove was a bit optimistic on my part especially with the turn being a heart, me having a 9 kicker and you betting twice into multiple people from early position haha... I was a little tilt-y from a hand I folded and wished I hadn't just before you arrived on our table. Oh well, live and learn or something like that.

I'm fairly interested in your feeling on almost every guarantee in a non holdem event being missed and having overlay in the MicroMillions, especially after your last post.

the thing how payouts affect GTDs on stars imo is this
- most recs dont want to play because almost every payjump except mincash is insignificant and when they get lucky and get on FT they will win max ~10x-15x buy ins if they dont get super lucky and bink it so day in day out they play less and less MTTs because there is no "dream" to chase...

- on the other side, regs dont want to put volume in anymore (multi tabling/sacrificing roi for higher hourly) because they need to play reg infected pools where they need to at least finish top 5 in at least couple of MTTs or bink at least one to break even/make profits (every session on avg) , so regs are lowering table counts (playing less tables to maximize roi) and playing "best" MTTs combining all poker sites...
for ex


So less people playing one MTT smaller GTD prize pool that MTT will get => Smaller GTD one MTT has (+ bad payouts) less people will want to play that MTT


To sum it up:
Imo taking huge % of prize pool out of FT and dispersing those money in mid payouts/ more % of field to min cash (+ obv rake increase) is killing MTTs

Hi yugiohpro. I got a general question for tournaments where i asked this in another thread but i got conflicting answers to this.



When you play progressive tournaments... say its a bounty builder 109 on stars to make it simple since you play high stakes. I only play small stakes. You have starting stack of 5000 chips. Everyone shows a 25 dollar bounty on each player when tournaments start.



When a player goes all in and action is on you to make it simple, how much chips in addition to pot odds do you add to it? I read an article a while back from upswing where a guy mentions its worth the entire stack. Example if that player with $25 bounty shoves, you add 5000 chips to the pot odds. So if a player has a $50 bounty showing on stars, well you add 10000 chips to it. Is that correct or incorrect? I asked this in another thread and some people said that is wrong. The issue is some people say $25 means you add half the stack of 2500 chips only. But then some people said its 1/3rd starting stack or 1667 chips. Someone then mentioned its 1/4th the starting stack which is 1250 chips.


I have a tough time thinking its 1/4th the starting stack because at the stakes i play, i see lot of players get very aggressive with bounties. And if it was worth 1/3rd or 1/4th the stack, that seems very loose etc.


So if a player has $100 bounty showing... do you add


1. 20000 chips?
2. 10000 chips?
3. 6667 chips?
4. 5000 chips?
5. Something else?

PaulyJames, in pko 1 starting bounty is worth 1/3 of the starting stack at the beginning of the tournament and it slowly increases as the tournament goes on because money is being taken away from the prizepool so chips lose value. As a guideline you can use 1/3 starting stack at the beginning, ~40% starting stack when you are in the money. And on ft even more. Keep in mind that on the final table if you are one of the chip leaders and have a high chance of winning a tournament bounties become even more valuable because if you win a tournament you will also get all the bounties which are on your head.

Hey iaudrius. Is there a reason its worth 1/3rd the starting stack at the beginning? Someone mentioned a site said it was worth 1/3rd the stack, i think it raiseyouredge or similar and said that is how much it was worth.



Then why does in upswing, someone who seem to be very reputable mention its worth an entire stack? Thus 25 dollar bounty in a 109 bounty builder on stars is worth the whole 5000 chips?



Wait so the bounty to chips amount is constantly changing throughout the tournament? I never heard of anything like that. I thought it was for every $25, you add whether 1667 or 2500 or 5000 chips.


So how in the world do you calculate this during the tournament then? So in the middle of the tournament, $100 bounty on someone would be worth like how do you even calculate that? You say its worth 40% of the stack when in the money.



So near final table or final table, theres a different formula for calculating this? Yes i know in a bounty tournament, its worth more because at the end you either get all bounties or nothing.


I always thought it was a flat number times the 25 dollar starting bounty etc. Thus if someone had 200 dollar bounty... you multiple 8 x either 1667, 2500 or 5000 etc.

I took 1/3 starting stack and increasing in value from raiseyouredge and it's accurate for sure. The formula for $109 is 25/(25+50) I think. The reason why bounty value increase in chips throughout the tournament is because money is being taken away from total bounty prizepool. Lets say prizepool is 10k (5k+5k) (100 entrants) and starting stack is 5k. Later on in the tournament people knockout others and take away bounties from the prizepool so now there is less people and prizepool is 9k (5k+4k) (1k is being distributeb for knockouts), but the total amount of chips in the tournament didnt change. What does that mean? That each chip is worth less money. Its like ICM in regular tournaments, you can not stackoff on FT in close to breakeven spots because chips are worth less because if you win all the chips you will not get entire prizepool.

I think it's very difficult to calculate bounty in exact chip amount during the tournament, buy it would also be very impractical, so what I do is 33.3% at the very beginning ,then lets say after a while 35%, in the money 40%, ft a bit more and you will not go wrong. In thr late stages bounties are not so worthy anyways so those few % will not mean much.

Excited for this one.

Just caught up with this thread after being away a while. All I can say is keep it up, I love your posts here. Since I live in the land of illegal online poker, it is nice to live vicariously through folks who can actually play online on decent sites. That said, things have changed so much. And live tournies have also changed. Late registrations that last for hours and multiple/unlimited rebuys have just ruined things for those of us at who can afford only one bullet in a $400 live event. It changes the game and creates an uneven playing field where skill matters less. But, we just have to roll with the punches. I remember before Black Friday when late registration where I played online was increased from 30 minutes to an hour and I was pissed. LOL. And, while I see a lot about how online sites make it harder for pros with the supposed idea that this benefits recreational players, I feel it is often quite the opposite. One of my only options is Ignition and I don't want to play anonymous tables. Maybe the bottom line is that all players are getting hurt. Makes me sad.

Agree with this. My thoughts on this are for a longer article but in short the evolution of online poker with many competitors to the Stars hegemony arising has made it so it makes a lot of sense to trim down the main schedule from what it is currently to something more concentrated on larger prize pools.

In fairness to Stars they are sort of doing it with the constant release of series after series but that's not as sustainable as looking into and fixing the main schedule in the first place. And it's been a long time coming for the main schedule.

Pauly it looks like you're looking for one clear answer which I don't have. Audrius did a pretty good explanation of at least one leading theory. PKOS in general are very complex and you're never going to get one true answer.

Hey thanks carolinabay you've definitely been one of my favorite posters in this thread. If it was up to me I'd try to run tournaments with no re-entry but again it's a complex issue. Same with anonymous tables/HUDS/etc. All complex issues. I think for live tournaments it's even better to not allow re-entry but re-entry obviously leads to bigger prize pools.

I won the 6% of the yugis action in the 100$ tourney on 888, congrats Jae man u crushed jays94
its very Nice that I found your thread

2019 Wrap Up Post

It's been almost a year to the day that I left Pokerstars. IRONY: In a thread called There and Back Again I find myself back to where I started the year. I can actually go back and read the OP of this thread and feel mostly the same way.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a little wiser. Better at poker and better at handling adversity. Better at getting along with my wife despite some big ups and downs. The question is am I improving at a rate in poker that puts me above the pace that winning regulars are growing at?

Professional Growth

My wife miscarried recently. Her sister just had a baby boy and I think it was on her mind so one day she just trapped me and didn't let me out and boom. I was taking a lot of hot baths too thought the ol S.C. would be weak but I guess your boy delivered a power stroke that day. Ok let's leave TMI-ville.

I felt a bit of guilt because I didn't want the baby. And then we lost the baby very early in the process right when I was warming up to the idea. Her sister called her baby in the belly "Mochi" so I said let's call our baby "Mochi-Rella." Sick out-do with the name there. When my wife was briefly pregnant I felt a lot of future financial pressure on my shoulders. Our marriage was also a bit rocky we almost even filed for divorce and were undergoing counseling. But Mochi-Rella came through and warmed us back up again. And I began looking to diversity outside of poker and keep my resume busy in case this whole poker dream thing didn't work out. The grind in Korea does wear upon the soul after a while.

Fast forward a bit and I'm working as a freelancer for Fuse Media which led to talks with a great guy managing writers for RIO which led to signing on to produce videos for Run it Once. I'm planning on coaching a bit as well which will keep my mind mainly focused on poker which is where I want it to be. But as I started writing for PokerFuse I felt that passion for the industry rising up again. And I feel I have a lot of knowledge in the industry that should be directed somewhere beneficial.

So then I started streaming with an eye toward vlogging in the future. And I wasn't expecting much at all but the channel started gaining momentum and eventually I was averaging 100+ viewers and then made affiliate and began applying for partner. And I heard my old friends from Stars were watching (who I miss terribly) and I started getting beautiful visions of becoming a poker influencer, linking up with my old team, making hot content to inform poker players about their options and how the industry works, and even hosting a stream with my best mate kleath since he's one of the funniest guys I know.

I streamed for a few weeks and it was pretty enjoyable. And then I reached the point where you gotta go big or go home. I was looking into a new layout, a video editor for YouTube, and extensive upgrades to my entire setup. I was going to line up a prop bet on 2+2 for a $100 to $100,000 Bankroll Challenge in 2020. Even went back and reread some old prop bets including Chuck Bass's. And then it kind of stopped making sense for me.

I took a look at the big names I admired in the landscape right now and noticed they're mostly selling something. Doug Polk and bigbluffzinc are mainly who come to mind. I also saw how jcarver and tonkaaaa hit the top of the mountain and then actually voluntarily walked away from it. And I thought about how my streams were filled with a lot of people I play against. And how I was just dunking on everyone left and right just D-Negzing out hands and posting double digit EVs all day and giving out game for free. On the last day I streamed I was streaming a Sunday session with huge sweats for ~36 people.

And I thought about how much I'm neglecting my actual poker play due to stream-related stuff. And how I'm so behind on replays and training content and sims. And it's ironic that it was looking at bigbluffzinc's approach that I realized it wasn't meant for me.

Me and BBZ

Jordan was my first backer and coach in poker and is largely responsible for my run in 2012-2014. I still owe him a lot and would do anything for him if he asked. There's two things I've always admired about Jordan. One is that he has a real winners mentality. He talked a bit with me about his upbringing and his parents and he really built everything he has through his own personal qualities and determination. He has a real CEO mentality which extends down to his poker play, investments, physique, etc.

It never really sat well with me the way I left my position at BBZ Staking and cashed out my equity. It kind of put him in an annoying spot having to cash me out. The truth is I was scared due to losing at poker, the stable not doing too great either, my girlfriend (now wife) with a big health scare, and the prospect of having to reload funds for the stable when almost my entire net worth was tied to my position at the time. With the benefit of wisdom and hindsight what I would have done is actually move to Vancouver and try to live closer to Jordan and partners. And then learn from his winning approach at life and improve my own approach. I think despite how hard things were for me personally at the time, he deserved more faith from me for all he had done and that will always sit a bit uneasy with me. Don't get me wrong though this isn't a sob story. I've done plenty of great things for him as well and he'll always be winning.

The second thing I've always admired about him is the faith he has in his horses. I'm not sure if he's still doing this but back in the day he would take some really thin spots with his horses BRM. And I would say Jordan please we gotta keep these guys out of the $1k's and $2k's+ but if you work hard he will believe in you. And it takes a lot of faith to think your stable has the best approach, even when a lot of your players are viewed as fishregs and swinging wildly, and then back it up by pumping money into it as well. When I watch him stream super high stakes the truth is nobody knows if he has an edge against the fields except him because we don't have a database. And whether it's for the brand or for the stream or how business would usually be handled, it's impressive to see that willpower and self belief again. Almost like it doesn't matter if you believe in him or not. He believes in himself and he will invest in that belief and we'll see how it shakes out. Side note: I should have realized I was sun running in 2014 when we were comparing graphs and his was all high stakes and just straight down.

Anyways, I bring up BBZ because I looked at his Twitch channel and how professional the design is and how he just exploded growth due to a few super great strategies (linking up with all of the top streamers for YT videos and having a USP of bossing high stakes). And I realized what I'm doing is pretty much mashing buttons compared to someone like him or Doug Polk. I don't really have anything to sell so I'm giving up a lot of EV for very hazy future prospects. How interested will people be in someone vlogging $100-$100k with thoughts about the poker industry? Probably not enough. And then another thing is the whole vlog/personality thing just isn't really me. Maybe it would have been me when I was in high school or something or maybe the introvertedness of PIO really worked itself into my DNA. I remember asking members of my team if they're going to parties or workplace mixers and they're just like "nah I'm gonna go home and read a book and fix some tourney scripts baby." Good times.

Part of me thinks that winning in life involves swallowing that pride and doing what you gotta do to get ahead. Whether that means kissing up to the boss, or covering your own ass, or stepping over people. And in the streaming streets I guess it would mean having a very driven personality, willing to network with others, and really wanting to be "out there." It's not really me. And I think poker has always appealed to me because it is a game where you mostly succeed on your own merits (and some luck). Yes you can network better and kiss ass and get mentored by people like some scummers I came up with but at the end of the day you can improve yourself and get that pot of gold. And that's why I've always loved poker and that's why BBZ Staking, PokerStars, Twitch, and other very worthwhile pursuits didn't outweigh the joy of making 100 racks on your own horsepower and feeling very in command of the game. I feel very in command of my game right now but not currently seeing the $ results. We'll talk about the year in poker play in a future post.

So I'm right back where I started. I want to focus on poker. I want to keep improving. And I want to write more blog posts about the industry and also try to help the industry somehow. I'll be back with more in future parts of this wrap up.

Great read as always. Sorry for the loss of your baby, not sure what else to say besides best of luck on 2020.

I agree that you can improve on your own and do very good in the poker, but I also think that there are plenty of ways to connect with other peoples and try to progress in your life/career. Yes many of them might be a scammers or not so good people but even if they are that the fact that they can HELP you its the most important thing man and I don't think that you should see that in a very negative way and basically just run from that. We need people around us, nobody ever achieved greatness by himself, he needed help of a many people, ex here in poker u needed someones help, like bbz like you said and probably few more peoples along the way. So you should not look to avoid people and trying to do all by yourself but rather accept the fact that everyone is different and that its not a shame to have some connections for some period of your life even with that kind of ppl for your OWN good.

my 50 cents.. dunno
GL !

2019 Wrap Up Part 2: The Poker




They say a good compromise leaves everyone unhappy. If my poker journey is going to be an epic one then this year was the “character building” phase. I went through a lot and also learned a lot. In the process I’ve grown stronger and more confident but I do feel wistful that I didn’t quite spread my wings to the maximum this year.

Biggest score was $37831 in a Party $320. I have a long list of close calls including 8th and 16th in 2 WCOOP tournaments with ~$200k to 1st and a lot of other shots at mid five-figure to six-figure prizes. No feeling quite like flipping for tens of thousands of dollars!

I’m a bit unhappy with how everything broke and I want to say I ran poorly overall. But there’s a lot more to it than that. This will come a bit unstructured but I want to just write out all of the things I’ve learned this year and all of the blessings that came my way despite feeling like I left a lot on the table and achieved below expectation.

Flaws in Approach

I split my year into three periods: before the downswing during the downswing and after the downswing. Before the downswing I thought I was just the coldest and was feeling untouchable. During the downswing it felt really dark and I felt like I would never claw out. And I suppose I’m still in the post-downswing phase right now as I write this.

As long as downswings don’t break you and make you quit poker I think they’re quite healthy overall. It’s a bit late now but I was recently listening to a podcast with bencb and elmerixx and they were talking a lot about some of the things I felt I learned during my downswing. The key points are:

1) Rather than focus on the short term day to day $ swings you should focus on treating every session as an opportunity to improve your game
2) Winning all the time can lead to complacency. This has happened to me before. Downswings should cause you to reflect on your leaks that have accumulated and can help improve your game

There were a few flaws to my approach during the downswing for sure. The main two flaws:

1) Chasing HS overlay without being able to stomach the swings
2) Playing daily games that are a bit too tough especially in suboptimal circumstances

Ex: Winamax $250 High Roller: playing against a mix of tough regulars and bots in a short-handed format near mid-end of the session while 12-15 tabling. DUMB

And then there’s a third one:
3) Not having the confidence to just straight up register the HS tournaments with good fields

I watch pretty much every HS replay and I actually think a lot of the regulars aren’t that good. I’m not quite in the life situation or swag level where I want to go chasing the toughest MTTs out there but I'm trying to get there. And thinking of playing early levels against elite players doesn’t really strike my fancy. A few six-figure binks should do the trick. I would put my short to mid stack game up against anyone.

Through the tough times I got a lot better and I have better habits than I did at the start of the year. I had to analyze a lot of the things I was doing incorrectly and I’d give my pre-downswing self a 6.10 or something compared to where I’m at now.

Blessings in Disguise

The combination of the downswing plus my wife’s second pregnancy also made me search for other pursuits just in case this poker thing goes pear-shaped. I’ve done some consulting some writing will be producing training content for RunitOnce and am looking to get back into coaching. I even tried moonlighting for a bit as a poker streamer.

I've given up the stream dream but streaming was a blessing. It tapped into my love for the game. I made a few friends. And most of all (as corny as this sounds) I really learned to believe in myself. The streams were mostly filled with me just dunking on average regulars left and right. And it made me think hard about how the midstakes player pool is composed and what kind of scum nit tendencies they have grouped together.

You don’t need to play GTO or tough against players like this. I will improve by getting real exploitative on what these players are doing. My friend kleath said it best: regulars have a pretty decent floor now due to training materials. But I feel they’re mostly exchanging variance with each other and collecting $ from the weak players and from sun running a few end games. There are tons of regulars I don’t rate that I look at Scope and they are clawing out a decent earning by either playing off-peak or lower ABI or whatever it is. But I do think that at the end of the day poker is going to continue getting tougher and you need to aspire to more than that or you will get left behind.

The Plan for 2020

I’m going into 2020 quite hungry. All extraneous pursuits are mostly out now. I will devote my time outside of the grind first to my family. And all time left over will go towards making interesting content for RIO building a network to exchange strategies with and coaching (which gives me new perspectives and keeps me sharp).

I feel like 2019 was a lot of time spent roaming in the wilderness searching for answers and eventually finding a small piece of direction. 2020 is going to be the year of becoming an absolute poker animal. And if things break well I’m going to take my shots and move higher and higher. And if things don’t go well maybe I’ll go busto. Who knows what's in store? But I’ve "paid the cost to be the boss" and I’m going to try to take flight in 2020 starting with Winter Series. I’ve already started adding in a few choice $500’s and managed to FT the $530 BBHR for the first time the other day. The $1k+ still look too tough but we’ll see. I’ll reevaluate the trajectory after Winter Series.

Best of luck to you in 2020 and thanks for reading if you've stuck with this blog all this time. I'll wrap my year end reflections post up with a final post about industry stuff.

Excellent post. I can relate to a lot of what you said especially the complacency in good times. Thanks for sharing and GL in 2020!

First of all thx for sharing all this with us and being strong after what u and ur family have experienced. I wish u all a lot of strength and love for 2020. I also agree that longterm u wont benefit enough from the streaming. Specially since u play a lot of reg war games and many small fields. If i would play u regularly ill would just watch 2-3 streams and would find for sure some exploits vs u. Dont think the ev u lose through that can be compensated monetary by twitch.

On which ABI did u achieved this sick ev/bb100? Do u reg from the start or do u follow a late reg strategy? Im really impressed by your results for someone who was away from the online grind for quit some time.

Furthermore im really interested in what u have said about the Winamax 250€. U spoke about though regs and bots. I wasnt aware there are MTT bots at Winamax. Can u pls elaborate a lil more about it and may share which other sites have bots in MTT fields. I was just aware of ACR, Party Poker and some other unregulated **** sites.

Looking forward for ur posts. Take care and crush it!

Thanks mante appreciate the kind words.

Wish you the best of luck for 2020 as well and thanks for your post. Agree with you that exploits against streamers can easily be found.

My ABI was $85 for the year. My ev bb/100 was noticeably lower (over a much smaller sample) in the higher stakes games though my ev bb/100 at 40bb stacks and lower stayed fairly similar.

In terms of being away from the game I actually stayed quite active playing while working at Stars and never fully quit. My weekend results are what gave me the push to quit. Near the end of my time there I was actually looking forward more to the Sundays and that's when I knew it was probably time to move on. I'll always be grateful to Stars for changing my life trajectory though and giving me a chance to do meaningful work.

In terms of late reg strategy yes I'll late register the low end of my buy-in range (mostly $22-33's). I try not to late register PKOs except in extreme circumstances and am more conservative with late registering higher buy-ins.

I'm not aware of actual MTT bot cases at Winamax but based on the holes in their security with the Spins scandal and the playing profiles of some of my opponents in these games I would wager a fair amount of money that there are a good number of "assisted" winners in the pool. In general I don't trust sites outside of PokerStars to police their games effectively.

Thanks for this post though. It provides a good lead up to my next post which I'll start on now :P

In the spirit of Christmas I'm going to be writing a brief guide/thoughts on each of the sites I play on. I'll save PokerStars.com for a separate post so I guess this will be a 4-part end of year reflections series.

2019 Wrap Up Part 3: Online Poker in 2019 (except Stars.com)

I want to do an overview of the different sites I play on along with notes for the operators and users. If this type of analysis benefits your business feel free to DM me. I've provided consulting work for a number of parties this year and am always looking to work with people who believe in poker.

I said this in a previous post but the current mix of sites I'm playing (Korea is barred from Party/WPN/GG right now) makes my overall site lineup quite close to what it was before I left PokerStars. Which makes me quite salty considering I resigned and moved across the country. Basically I traded Party/WPN/GG for Stars and Stars.FRESPT.

This list is numbered for readability but not organized by how much I love each site or anything like that.

1. PartyPoker

I've always been a big fan of PartyPoker even while working at PokerStars and brainstorming ways to stop its rise. Unfortunately I haven't been tapped into the flow of what they're doing lately since they've blocked service to Korea and many other markets ~4 months ago. There's a few interesting things I've noticed.

1. Party is a HUDless site with a Chip to BB feature which means you can just sit and play.

2. Sometime this year Party decided to stop going head to head against the COOPs. Instead they're scheduling side series like KO series to clash with WCOOP and running their flagship PowerFest at a different date. I'm curious about this strategy shift. It seems like every year PowerFest was getting closer to the COOPs and Stars was straining to keep ahead in the arms race. I'm not going to go too much into this because of NDA so I'll just leave it at "I find this interesting."

3. It looks like Party's Millions was a success overall (I'm sure they spent a LOT on promotions to reach the target though) and Party is also struggling to prop up a $1 Million Sunday tournament. Poker Industry Pro says that tournament has whiffed six consecutive weeks. It's always going to be difficult to try to create a Sunday Million and even PokerStars might have problems continuing the Million in the future if markets continue closing up. I'm going to go into my observations on Stars on a separate post but my hunch (not confirmed by any colleagues or anything) is that a lot of the incentives with the seat added satellites and value to High Rollers was created because Party is too close in market share at high stakes ($100+ or $500+ or however you want to slice it). But I can't play on Party any more so take this with a grain of salt.

4. I strongly disagree with Party's decision to pull out of most Asian markets and other markets and it reeks of colonial imperialism to me. I'm joking but Party's parent company GVC is a very large publicly traded company so I guess they're trying to stick to clear markets on the up and up. Still think the decision is WHACK and hope they reconsider. You're never going to catch up to #1 if you're blocking yourself from entire continents and I bet some of these fat overlays would be mitigated with some Asians and other markets back in the hunt! wink wink nudge nudge pray pray cry cry kneel beg etc.

SHOULD YOU PLAY: Yes 10/10. I've said this before and I''ll say it again. The online poker landscape would be a much darker place if it wasn't for Party. We don't know their endgame but for now we know Party believes in poker and it is investing money in that belief. Throughout the history of poker I can only think of two cases where all poker players are honor bound to vote with their dollars and play on a site. One is PokerStars when they bought FTP and reimbursed Black Friday players. And this is the second case. Through spending on overlays/promotions/live tournaments/rakeback/bounty pricing/and more Party is funding a war for the future of poker here and you need to support it.

2. GGNetwork

Again GG is blocked in Korea so I'm not as familiar with it as I was when I was living in the Isle of Man. But GG is the second operator that believes in the future of poker and is investing big time into it. And that should move you to play and support it. It’s also a HUDless site. So is Unibet (shoutout to Unibet a site that I won’t include here because I can’t play it but will always support). Maybe there is a correlation between this policy and a love for the game?

Other than a slight lag in the client that causes tables to refresh as if they're reloading a webpage and a lack of chips to BB feature.. GG is maybe the best software out there. I love the colors, the chatting, the innovative features, aggressive guarantees, and high stakes tournaments. I wasn’t a fan of some of the stories of seizing balances and refusing service but I’ve heard less of those recently and I can understand a poker site that tries to protect its ecosystem, especially when it’s investing to bring recreationals into the fold.

My impression is GG has a lot of momentum and it will continue growing in the future. It’s blocked in Korea but actually quite prominent in Asia with a lot of Asian representatives and even a few Asian skins. I think poker in Asia in general is a large untapped market that’s very difficult to break into for non-Chinese native companies. If a site can ever unite them all, it will explode into a glorious peak.

SHOULD YOU PLAY: Yes 8/10. GG offers great incentives and pretty good games overall on the flagship competitions. It’s not a moral imperative like it is with Party because Party is spending a lot of money on guarantees and overlays to try to become the market leader. All sites are guilty of doing "dodgy" stuff so I won't get into specifics but there are a few issues here and there that ding this rating. And Party also probably spends more on game security. On GG I would avoid the withered stuff like the daily Blues and Bounty Hunters unless you’re trying to fill table space for that sweet hourly. I’m also not sure how sharp their game security is but yeah I like this site a lot.

3. PokerStars.FRESPT

I love PokerStars.FRESPT. I find it offers some of the best games at midstakes in terms of guarantees + softness and it has the great PokerStars software. All of its drawbacks are tied to its parent PokerStars.com’s policies so I won’t get too much into this here. I read an article recently that they’re removing their meager bonuses to non-French/Spanish residents which makes senses as a business policy but only further strengthens the only criticisms I have about them. Even then I’ll continue playing on this site because it offers great tournaments and a great experience

SHOULD YOU PLAY: Yes 10/10. One of the safest sites to play on and everything just works the way it’s supposed to. Very competitive guarantees and this should only continue to grow as that combined FRESPT market is going to continue to be a big part of online poker

4. Winning Poker Network

I like big guarantees and I cannot lie. Yes I have a lot of issues with WPN including unlimited re-entry/possible cheating/structures that can last too long/+ more. But I can’t argue with the fact that WPN is consistently offering some of the best daily prize pools in the game and the amount of American mutants makes all but the highest stakes games still great spots.
After WPN we’re going to start seeing a decrease in the quality of sites so this kind of marks a break off point.

SHOULD YOU PLAY: Yes 8/10 especially if you play later on in EU hours where Stars/Party/WPN become kind of the only games in town. Most of their issues can be avoided by just practicing sensible game selection since there’s more than enough fish and fishregs in the pool to chase your shots.

Let’s break it off here and I’ll be back with more sites. So I guess this is going to be a FIVE-parter.

Nice review One thing I would like GG to change is min buy in for cash games, but I guess this is more mtt review

boss hog gangsta. Grats on a stellar '19 brother. Even bigger 2020 awaits <3

party poker will never be no1 with asia out and with the current landscape (regulations)

Great update and good luck in 2020

Yes I'm not as aware of non-tournament issues but feel free to post anything you have here. A lot of industry people are reading this blog.

My man! Let's get it in 2020

Yes it's my impression that Party had a lot of momentum at the start of the year and they've stalled out a bit. But I no longer get the internal data or reports so it's just an outside impression.

Thank you