Yeah, I can see Negs getting harassed the whole podcast. You guys are in for a complete let down unless Joey never wants him on again.

I think the dbag.. I mean dneg pod will be interesting but don't see it being very positive in terms of people hearing what they want to hear.

Online poker is ****ed!

+1

I am actually surprised he had the courage/nerve to show up given the whole online poker community attitude towards him (dont get me wrong, he deserves every bit of it)

Joey if Dnegs is coming on please prepare ahead of time with specific topics and questions for him, the chat will be a clusterfxxk and if he is coming on and not open/willing to talking about any topic or questions its just a waste of time imo

For sure, didn't expect that.

It's pretty ridiculous he pretended that his resignation was in play, and then when nothing at all changed he just said "oh well, my quitting wouldn't help the players, but I can promise there are some mind-blowing promotions coming next year". Now he basically said there are no promotions. I don't see how this guy can call himself the ambassador of poker.

Delayed props for the Ryan Marks podcast. I'm a LOUDPVCK fan, so nice to see him make an appearance. I liked his DJ related stories and was impressed with the fact that he didn't say all the dumb **** I'd expect a non-pro live player to say
Seems like he has a healthy outlook, both in his music career as pokerwise, as to where he stands, where he can improve, etc...

Being too lenient on him would be hugely disappointing given how he has profited from shilling amayas attempt to kill off the online poker as a profession.

With that said, no need to be rude or go on an all out attack.

He is an ambassador of himself.

When did he say there are no promotions coming? Not that i had any hopes for it, but would be interesting to check it out.

Lol you guys are funny....

A couple of things, I invited him to come on the podcast to talk more about his new podcast and other things.

To say DN isn't an ambassador of poker is one of the most ridiculous things I've seen. If you see him interacting with people during the WSOP and on social media you would see he is a really good ambassador for the game.

It is obvious Pokerstars mission is to drain as much money as possible from players through higher rake, spin n gos, etc.. and the promotions are "Raise it" and Jackpot/KO poker while also eliminating poker as a profession. I plan to discuss it with him but what do you expect him to say out of the ordinary?? I'm not going to be an ******* about it with him.

I didn't really realize how disconnected the live poker world is from the 2p2/online poker world until being out in Vegas this summer. I doubt he has thought about the online poker community more than a handful of minutes this year.

Will be live with Daniel at 1pm EST

10 A.M podcast for us west coasters hell yea Papi. My intuition tells me Dnegs new podcast won't be half as entertaining or real as Joe's...

I just listened to a bit of Dnegs first episode and his guest was some lawyer/agent guy and it was boring as all hell. Joe has the poker podcast game on lock so good luck Daniel with your crappy audio quality and boring non poker interviewees.

Daniel is pretty much shilling and spreading false information to the casuals via his social media.
He is also constantly getting into ****storms due to his ignorant statements about the world in general.

But fair enough, let me clarify: he is not a good ambassador for online poker.

Looking forward to hearing about Dnegs podcast strats.

Sure, but that makes a Vegas pro like him a pretty odd choice to be a pokerstars pro or a "player representative" or whatever he was spinning himself as being.

To be clear, it's not just about what level of zoom people can beat. Someone like Chris Moneymaker, whose story is rooted in qualifying online and going on to win the WSOP main event isn't open to the same criticism. Even Neymar who was playing anyway and named his dog "poker" before PS ever got involved - at least he doesn't look down on us like DN does.

Joey, you should ask DN why he lets Stars manipulate the narrative. The vast majority of changes Stars has made that 2+2 has been up in arms about HARM RECREATIONAL PLAYERS. No one is taking offense to the fact that they added Spins. Smart business move that seems to be well received by fun players. But all these rake changes and removing games of interest harm recreational players on a number of levels to make their playing experience worse and to make the games they play in that much more impossible to have even modest short term success in.

Again, no one takes issue with their desire to change the climate and try to make it feel less predatory but all their big changes have done very little on that end and have instead just made the games far more unbeatable for 99% of players, ESPECIALLY recreational players. The more they feel it's just impossible to win, the less desirable playing becomes. Raising rake and making one table per stake means the tables that do run are filled with only the best few players combined with being even more expensive to play. How is that going to work out for a rec?

Basically, don't let them own the narrative that they are doing things in the interest of rec's when what they are really doing is a very short sighted money grab that is destroying the site. Pokerscout shows this with their dramatic drop in traffic over the last 12 months. I think the money grab is detrimental to their long term bottom line but it's a public company and maybe they don't care or don't understand. Amaya did run another site into the ground so their track record actually growing a successful poker site isn't so great. Oh well. Just sick of hearing the same canned lines.

the whole ambassador for poker thing is pretty overrated. the game stands on its own merit. these people are generally replacable and there'd be another charismatic sociopath willing to fill the void (read: make a **** ton of money shilling) if it wasn't renegs. given the general shadiness of hellmuth, ivey, renegs, id guess the community has run kinda bad w/ ambassadors, and we did more than alright for a number of years

I hadn't checked in for a couple of months and then I saw you got Perkins, Mercier, Boeree, Galfond and Negreanu on in the span of two weeks, lol. Great job, especially loved the one with Perkins.

Not a huge DN fan but there is a seriously warped view of what he owes to 2p2'ers in here. He's obviously an ambassador, friends I have who don't play poker know who he is and know he's a poker player. He's almost definitely attracted punters and aspiring pro's alike to the game.

As for his role at Pstars, Stars has been ruthless in recent years. If Dnegs wasn't a valuable asset in terms of adding to the value of the brand or attracting players to play, then he would have been ousted a while back.

This should be interesting. He's been pretty much silent bout' online poker (other than some claim of being able to beat 5/10 or wtv) since the whole SNE thing went down. Hopefully you ask him a few tuff questions but would understand if you took the chiller vibe route.

Fair enough. Maybe he does a lot of things. I'm just mad because of how he's handled the whole Stars SNE/Rakeback thing. He represents an online poker company, so if he's deemed a bad ambassador by online poker players, that counts for something imo.

What did you guys think about the DN podcast??? I thought we had a good back/forth about it in the first part of podcast. He has a pretty "good" answer to everything I really think they inject it into his brain


Im some ways I can very much see where they (I will use they for DN/Pokerstars) are coming from with what DN is saying but I think it the truth is more on the side of WE WANT TO MAKE AS MUCH MONEY AS POSSIBLE AND ALLOW AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE TO WIN and they found a way to deliver that message to make it sound as if it is some economy stabilization. They have basically said that to us over the past year.

I really don't think this can be the only way to achieve some of this economic stabilization and as a professional cash game poker player it does make me incredibly sad that they are killing off my game. I can't even feel good about recommending people play the great game of online PLO anymore most sites outside of MPN refuse to lower the rake in order to allow players to last longer in the games and get more into the games.

I'm sure the new fun players are losing less at Spin N Gos/tournaments/variations of it compared to 1/2+ PLO/NL cash and with it this way the site will take more per/player and potentially have them playing longer because they will actually win SpinNGos sometimes. From an objective POV I can understand this but I find it incredibly hard to look at it objectively and I'm also not 100% sure that scenario is an accurate depiction of things right now.

From this tunnel POV this would allow them to believe they have no incentive to get players to ever play cash games over SPNG+ and it might just be true but it seems pretty wild to think having high stakes games running and nosebleed games doesn't do a ton for motivating players to pay attention to poker and want to play way more poker.

I never thought I would say this but it might be a good time to be a tournament player

I think they are both entertaining in different ways




What would make a good ambassador for online poker??? Somebody who ignores what is happening completely and encourages people to play on the poker site without actually talking about the reality of the situation like people on Twitch do?? A good online poker ambassador brings new players to the game and/or upholds certain values that online poker professionals have??? I'm really curious what other people think about this because I am not very sure myself.

I used to think a good ambassador for online poker brought new poker players into the games but I really feel like most new players are being lead to slaughter with all the changes designed to **** over all levels of players at cash/tourney/sng/spinngo and limit winners. I also think that with the changes being made to mid/high stakes cash games, the incentive to start at the micro stakes and work your way up becomes less and less to the point where suggesting players start out there, put in one/two years time to be able to barely have games running above 100plo and 100/200nl when you finally get to that skill level isn't very appealing. I can see scenarios where these stakes struggle to run sooner than later which is

With that said, what should a good ambassador for online poker do?? Be honest about the landscape and the challenges new players will face when it comes to being a winning player?? I really think most are doing a terrible job at it if so.




What do you mean by look down at us?? I'm sure if some of these other people had a chance to speak as freely about things as DN does they would say (and have said to me) very similar things.

I agree that he probably isn't the most GTO "player representative" for the professionals but I think he made it pretty clear is he a pokerstars representative/ "recreational player representative."




They can own whichever narrative that they try to. How would anything I or you say change the narrative they want to sell to us?? If they want to own the narrative that they are doing things in the interests of rec's and good hearted/etc/etc and then come with "evidence/facts/statements" that support that narrative, I don't think we can really make them change that. We can have an impact on if people are buying what they are selling when it comes to that which is what I've been trying to do. I think that is all the people who are on the opposite side of belief really can do about it.



I don't think it is that overrated, if the right people are ambassadors for the game, the potential for growth or finding new people is going to be much higher than without. I agree the game stands on its own merit but certain types of people as the face who are going above and beyond has to be massive. If we were going to see someone fill the void for DN specially then we would probably still see that person right now. There is plenty of room for multiple DN type figures in the community.

I think you can use a sports comparison for this, most of the lower tier American sports are in belief that if they had the right faces/ambassadors for the game, that sport would grow in play and in popularity.

Nice podcast and i think he has some valid points.
Regulars often will be like


Golden times are over for a long time now and aslong as US players wont be allowed to play and other bigger markets will be explored they will have to adjust. Thats how free market works and for many years the whole situation was imbalanced towards winning (or even losing pre) regs. Its important to understand that PS is no charity for young men wanting to make an easy living.

We're still talking poker, a game of small edges, its your job to find those.
Pokerstars isnt making up shrinking playerpools and recreational players deposits. They are reacting to it and while there mught be better ways than those we are seeing right now, I still believe they are doing a good job.

Ike, Kanu and Ansky fought for the players when Stars were making terrible changes. Where as Dneg the man with the biggest voice at stars who is ment to represent the players did jack **** and told us a bunch of lies. In no way is he an ambassador for online poker.

Ike and Kanu were onlingrinders, that became pokerstars pros. Coming from the community of onlinegrinders it only made sense to voice their opinions and concerns, whereas dneg is just a pokerstars pro because of his fame from livegames.

Also lol @representing the players. PS pays him to represent PS not the players.
If you want him to represent the players he cant be sponsored by PS at the same time or atleast you wouldnt want that, ducy?

At this point on stream I tell people online poker is probably not worth their time as a serious pursuit if they are a beginner unless they live in a country like Bangladesh or somehow their circumstances truly make it their best option otherwise (which isn't the case 99/100 times), unless they simply want to enjoy the game and improving within it on the side/as a hobby, asking them to be honest with their vision of the landscape 5 years from now and what they are looking to get out of the game. The reality of the game between the bots/bot development/collusion, progression of regs and overall game quality, scripts and various other software, shrinking ceiling, and industry leader choices doesn't make it an optimistic pursuit for someone deluding themselves, which seems to be a common reality for people just getting into poker. Poker IS a good game at tricking people into thinking its both easier to climb the ladder than it is, and convincing people they have more figured out than they do. There are infinite layers to the onion, which is why the game still functions to this day.

That being said, it's a game I still love, and people have the right to enjoy it, much like chess. Out of so many things I've dabbled with and moved on from, it's one of the few that had enough depth and was interesting/enjoyable enough to hold my attention for so long. There IS something raw and awesome about it that makes it a truly great game, in several variations.

Learning it and delving deeper is a fascinating ride and does have benefits as far as honing analytical thinking, approaching learning, building self-reliance with visible progress, etc, but there are likely more optimal ventures that provide the exact same things, and though online poker is also a good PhD-level course for playing live, there would seem to be better pursuits than a lifetime of live grind for most people, though I'm sure some people actually do love it more than anything else they'd be doing (not that someone can't use the money grinded out from live to do infinite other things with, and can very well once again be the best option for someone in w/e random situation they find themselves in, poker is still a decent way of turning "some" into "more" compared to many other things people waste time on)

TL;DR: Truth seems to be a solid ambassador for anything, fk spin & go's, turning poker into a slot machine isn't a solution for poker. It is what it is, people are people.

Haven't read above posts yet and only 30% of the way in the podcast but just wanna type this:

Every time DN or any stars rep admits the SNE thing was basically money stolen, it makes me fkn puke. YOU CAN STILL PAY PEOPLE BACK YOU KNOW??!!! They just seem to be like: "yeah this is kind of blowing over now, we admit it was totally f'd up but still don't make a single effort to make it right even though it would be extremely easy for us to do"

scum.

every single thing dnegs has said so far is tilting me superhard