Hello Joey,

It is strange to be writing to you, as with you I never know what is real, and what is exaggerated for show to get attention. But you did seem genuinely upset talking with Doug Polk, so I am writing this.

Firstly, I am a great fan of yours. I love poker, but am useless at it as I have no discipline, and don’t study hard enough to learn from my mistakes. So I have mad sessions when I get burned out from playing too much, and losing, so I deal with this by having self imposed breaks on pokerstars, as that is the one site I play. And having a complete break is good, just as I hope you have had a nice break from making vids to show online.
So a big thank you for all you do with your vids, it gives me an insight into a world I will never be able to enter myself, and also helps me wonder if it is even worth entering in the first place, as there is so much dishonesty and nastiness in the poker world, so is wanting to aspire to do well in that world even a good goal in life?

It is interesting to see you looking for a meaning in life, there is a lovely story I remember reading about a knight in King Arthur’s court, and it has a real relevant message to you (and others!) in it, a knight sees a beautiful woman far away, so rides on his horse to get to her. But the more he rides, the further she gets away. Then, when he no longer chases her, he gets close to her. So the moral there is don’t be too impatient, and you will get the things you want.

You seem really cut up with the pressures of video blogs. It was weird, I was looking for a YouTube dance instruction vid, and found a great one, and then saw another of the vids the person made, because she is very beautiful, and she was so unhappy about her blogging career, the stress of strangers making comments about her appearance. do a search for "The Sad Truth about being an influencer" on youtube and you'll find the vid, and I am sure you will relate to what she says. So it is weird, something started for good reasons – to share ones love of things, like plo, or whatever, can end up with pressure.

Joey, my advice for you is keep things in proportion. Poker has gone so quiet compared to the past that it is now a minor interest. So you do fantastic vids, but still get 10s of thousand views, rather than the millions they deserve, just because poker is so quiet. When you did mainstream wresting you got ridiculous high figures, which amuses me, as I think wrestling is so fake and dumb, so funny how many take it so seriously. But the skills you have developed from making poker content transferred so well to that bigger audience.

Personally I would love to see you branch more into interviewing on things other than poker, as your journey is so interesting and relatable. I used to see you as a bit of a fool, always chasing girls and partying, but now you are looking for more meaningful things in life, and are trying to find out what they are. Maybe it is balance needed, limiting yourself to one day video making a week, so it is a pleasure you look forward to, not a heavy responsibility.

When I got divorced, I was very bitter, always moaning about women and my divorce, until one day I got sudden peace, when I had that little voice inside me saying, “Jimmie, you wont be the first person to divorce, and you wont be the last”, and that instantly made me stop feeling so sorry for myself, and realise that I was going thorugh what toins of others also go through. So with you Joey, whatever your problems are, there are lots of others who feel the same, so you are not alone. It was amazing how honest Garrett was on your show, and it is great you have been equally open. I hope you feel proud of all that, as it is hard to face onesself at times, but you are doing really well at making sense of things, just keep doing it patiently, not expecting instant peace.

I think at heart you are quite traditional, so I fyou can get settled down into a fixed relationship, and have kids and all that stable stuff, it may bring you some peace of mind. But even if those things happen, they can go wrong, and then you are back with yourself again, so take the time to get to know that really cool guy Joey, and look after him, as he is great, and lots of people like him!!!

You take care of yourself, as you are doing miles better than you let yourself realise, and the world needs a happy productive Joey.

All the best from over here in London.

Man that was awesome. You should cry everyday on your podcast.

Polk was awesome to and had some great words of wisdom and comfort. I have a new respect for the guy and will watch this when I get depressed.

+1

+2

Rob appears semi-frequently on Jeff Gross' podcast, but since Jeff is a party poker pro/associated/streamer/whatever, he's too biased to put his employer under bad light.

Player community needs you on this one Joey.

I'm flabbergasted that party just swept under the rug the fact that the HH ban was circumvented in just days. No statement, nothing. I truly doubt they even care about this, since it's been 3 months already. If they do, then show us what they've done. As for now, it's just empty speeches.

I've always played by ToS, but since I know partypoker's incompetence of enforcing such rules, I've been pretty reluctant to play mid-high stakes there ever since the ban. (My play was cut down drastically in the first "anonymised HH phase".) In my eyes they just increase to skill gap between recs and steroid powered regs who possibly use real-time assistance and, at this point for a fact, illegal tracking tools.

EDIT: Also 10/25+ is no longer a no-no for me. To me, the real name policy is ludicrous. I can't even imagine what a recreational player would feel like, esp. if he's well known. (Professional football player for example.) Rob's argument is that players in casinos are not anonymous either. What a bonkers argument is that? Does he think the casino will provide me identity of some player, if I make such a request, even though the player across me refuses to tell me his real name?

Just wanted to chime in and say don't be too hard on yourself and as others have mentioned you don't owe us anything Joey. Myself and others definitely appreciate the content you put out and the service you provide by warning others of shady sites and such.

I can remember streaming on twitch a couple of years ago to literally zero viewers. I was also watching a video Joey had published on youtube that day when who should randomly join my stream?? Chicago mother effing Joey! Ha! You said it was like an "Inception" moment. What a cool guy checking in on streamers at the very bottom. You're the man Joey! Thanks for the content.

Haha thanks . There are some more epic threads than mine in PGC that you could invite on the pod imo if you're looking for people.

I, like Joey, also have a story about being big timed by Phil Hellmuth. Playing at the same table as PH in between hands and while no one was talking I told him I liked one of the books he wrote and he just blanked me. No response no thank you he just looked at me. What a jerk!

Question for Rob Yong:

Currently, for 6-max cash games $5/$10 and lower there is an option for players to choose to play a "Real Name" table or a "Standard" table. When players are given a choice, it appears they prefer "Standard" tables. The lobby is evidence of this; almost all tables running are "Standard" tables for 6-max cash games $5/$10 and lower.

Would it be possible to extend to players the choice to play at a "Real Name" table or a "Standard" table, for ALL game types and stakes?

Thank your for your consideration.

This was an amazing show.

Didn't realise that ONE guy who owns a Vegas casino basically locked off online poker in the US.

Will be live w/ Rob Yong in about 30 mins - will try to touch on as many of the questions posted in this thread. I understand this is a very serious topic for professional online players.

Joey ask about hand histories!!!!

Ask him about guarantees being met at his casino with staked players whom are backed by sources close to Rob.

Rob just repeats the same nonsense he's saying for months now over and over again trying to weasel his way out
Also Robs VPIP's probably higher than his IQ.

It's a very revealing conversation so far. Definitely worth a full watch for anyone who's interested in partypoker, online poker (dot-com and U.S.), and poker site policies. The episode is still live at this moment.

There's a Twitter thread related to Rob Yong's comments earlier today RE: Phil Ivey vs. Crockfords/Borgata edge-sorting disputes. Not sure if this should go here or in the one of the separate NVG threads.

I attempted to get these comments into the show, but it was very near the end and mic issues were significant distraction.

Full Video Segment (from Post #9883) [1:26:23-1:36:02]





DIRECT QUOTES - ROB YONG (Poker Life Podcast, Sep 20, 2019)

"The casinos should... pay up."

"I think everyone should have better things to do than persecuting Phil Ivey..."

"I'm struggling legally and morally to understand what Phil Ivey's done wrong."

I hope I covered all the questions that people had about the major changes at PP

You both had a great conversation. I wish things weren't at such a horrible point U.S. online poker-wise so that initiatives by Rob and others would have a better chance at making headway. I'd love to contribute in some positive way to restoring some of regulated online poker's chances in the U.S., even if that's on a volunteer basis, but I've just become so dejected about the topic these past years after spending a bunch of time researching and writing about publicly-available laws, lobbying expenditures, and player-derived concerns.

I've finally come to accept that U.S. online poker's chances aren't very realistic due to a number of factors that are out of any of our control, whether that's players/media/fans/sites. I hope I'm wrong and that Rob's visit to New Jersey/New York opens at least a few dialogue doors that have been closed for years.

Rob Yong's comments about the lack of value that high stakes players bring poker sites and about his belief that Stars is also likely to block downloadable hand histories were extremely interesting. He also mentioned that PokerStars is likely to block hand histories back in June when he did Pokerfuse/CalvinAyre/PokerNews interviews. Rob put that timeline at approximately 6 months IIRC.

Also very interesting what Rob said near the beginning that the battle vs. bots can be easily won or lost... that it's a matter of whether sites are willing to make the significant investment necessary to effectively crack down on prohibited software usage.

P.S. Thanks for the kind words and fair take on 2+2 Papi. <3

Haven't listened the pod fully yet, but I think Rob's making some highly contradictory comments.

He says (at around 29:06) HUDs give "only a small edge over another regular player, it doesn't give you an edge over a recreational player who's not played a thousand hands".

So why is partypoker willing to put ToS-abiding regulars against a disadvantage versus regulars willing to create illegal HUDs? In my eyes HUD ban was created to protect recreationals, but Rob's comment refutes this.

And btw, the Moomcy's vid shows him converting partypoker handhistories to PokerStars HH format, which can be imported to either PT or HEM. Start HEM replayer and it will show you a HUD. (And no, it seems like Moomcy's method didn't involve any screenscraping.)

If real problem is people using real-time solvers & tools, then why not allow regulars to help partypoker with the help of HHs and HUDs to report potential suspects?

@ezdonkey re your last point

Because he doesn’t think high stakes players’ contributions are as valuable as they think they are.

If I'm to be honest I wish you would have pushed back a bit harder.

- I still don't know what sort of metric is being used to evaluate if these changes 'work', but OK, I'm sure if volume is going to be significantly down they'll act in their own self-interest and reverse them
- There were YT clips showing software that is extracting hand histories in real time. Is he saying they were fake?
- AFAIK it is not that difficult to create such software and the only way for the site to combat them is to systematically keep changing the fonts/layout. I'll grant his argument that HUDs don't give that much value to go absolutely out of your way to invest time and money into making one work on the site, but it's just frustrating to keep hearing the same false narrative over and over and over (that these programs don't work/people won't use them) with no legitimate push back.
- Him downplaying HH being analyzed by players to bring down bot rings. If sites were on top of handling bots there wouldn't be threads on 2+2 outing bots, massive winners on various sites (Pokerstars being one of them), nor there would be the need for HS players to e-mail them for months about players like 40and7 and OBORRA.
- Him saying 9/10 of HS players he asked were in favor of real name tables. I would be willing to bet a significant amount that if you ask a decent sample of HS players a lot more than 1/10 would be opposed to this. A lot of these changes seem to be based on a whim and without any public polling. Also I've never heard him address this point - what kind of positives of having forced real names could possibly outweigh the drawbacks (VIPs dropping off, because they're ashamed / even more bumhunting / some people getting doxxed or stalked)?

I do however appreciate his honesty that the site doesn't care about HS apart from its potential promotional use.

Rob is probably talking about “high stakes” guys like Sam Trickett.

My goal isn't to push back in every single spot as much as I can, especially on topics I'm not incredibly knowledgeable about to know what exactly to push back on. When I start to get similar answers for any follow-up, I have a good idea of what the answers will be for future follow-ups, I'm not sure how much they accomplish outside of continuing the topic and getting similar answers.

1. I don't think it matters to anyone but Rob, he made it clear he has a vision for these changes and if they work to him, he will keep them and if not, he won't. He also talked about how poker players advocate for changes that are among their own self-interest as well.

2. He said that software does exist, he purchased 4 of them. He also said that people will always continue to find ways around it and that will continue to exist. He didn't say anything was fake.

3. He never said the programs don't work, he said a few of them didn't work well or were slow but not that they didn't work. He also said he wants to stop the programs that become wide spread. I did follow up on that topic. He made it clear he is aware the programs exist.

4. I think the point he made on that is it's worth more trouble than it solves. Very debatable on that but that seemed to be his stance. I could see us going back and forth further on this point but his argument that most reports end up being a waste of time and not worth it vs. a small number of threads over the years on 2p2 isn't worth it. I could add a few things in this spot but I don't think it would matter at all. He is defending his point that their security team and detection methods is strong enough to handle these future incidents on their own. We shall see if that's true.

5. I'm not sure what the push back would be on that point, I have no idea what the number would be and neither does anyone else. I would go organize something on your end and ask as many HS players as you can what they think if you want to make a point on that. Speculating that a decent sample of HS players would be against it doesn't do much and is a weak argument vs 9/10 of HS players he asked were in favor.

"I think most would be against"
"9/10 I asked are in favor"
"I think most would be against"

6. Ask him on Twitter - his stance seemed to be high stakes is dead already, I would get rid of it if it wasn't good promotion to have it.


Your main point and many others seem to be that these programs are easy to create and will continue to exist, I don't think he disputed that they will always exist in some form but he seems to be okay with the trade off provided it's a small number vs a large number of users. I'm not sure the penalty on regulars being caught using one, that's one question I have to ask after.


Online poker at a level where you can make a bunch of $$$ on a regular basis is going downhill fast and it's pretty sad to see.

I'm no tech expert, but I don't think anyone competent does this. They read such info from computer memory.

Obviously if you want to have no memory reading processes running on the computer you play poker with, then have a Linux/Mac run a Virtual Machine that you have your Windows installed on. Then on the Linux side screenscrape the table data so you can input it in your real-time solver, HUD database (running on Linux) or whatever. Poker client does not know it's being run on sandboxed OS.

Agree with Rob on the fact that playing styles leave a fingerprint. How well they manage to catch these guys is another thing, though.

It's hard to take his word on their security department's, or derp-artment, competence when he acts on the podcast like the hand history extracting wouldn't be an issue anymore, which it absolutely is. (Or atleast to in my eyes, because all I've seen is two YouTube vids of the security measure being circumvented, and Party has done nothing to say it's fixed.)

Fair enough, don't get me wrong, I think you did a good job. I said I wish you would have pushed back more, because of my own self-interest as personally I'm confident the changes are very bad for the games (I see no reasons to believe otherwise). And as I suspected the changes are not a calculated team decision, but rather a single individual in power, a bit out of touch with the online world, who has his own vision and, let's put it this way, doesn't seem to be easily swayed by contrary feedback.

Yeah, he said only 1 out of 4 was even working, but it was super slow. The one someone posted on Youtube seemed to be working fine. That's why I think it was worth asking him whether he believed the video was fake.

Only problem is I'm not sure if we shall see if that's true, because without hand histories it's going to be a lot more difficult to spot bots on our/the players end.
OK, good point.

I might be wrong here, but I believe Rob offered a prize to anyone who could prove that you can extract HH on Party and when the Youtube clip started circulating he banned the people posting it from his feed. Despite what he might claim it seems like there's not that much room for discussion here.

Yeah, what I meant is changing fonts/layouts is all they're left with if the HUD leaves no trace for the site to pick up on.

I've completely abstained from online poker about a year ago here in the U.S. This is only reinforcing that choice.

The bot operator / poker client "contract" theory is intriguing.

One of the greatest fight breakdowns of my life

I can definitely understand where you're coming from with your push backs and concerns which is why I tried to address it up to a standard I would have been happy with when I was playing full time and changes like this were being made that I thought were bad for the games. I'm not exactly sure what changes would be great for the games now that didn't entail some type of very hands on approach to making sure the games were fair. I think that Rob has a unique approach to the way he thinks about things compared to a majority of people I've spoken to on the business side of the poker world. I think that the approach they initially tried was losing them a lot of money due to many factors that were difficult to overcome. PartyPoker shitty reputation prior to taking over, inferior software, online poker decline, etc. I get the feeling that he decided that the advice he was getting wasn't working, and he had to take it into his own hands and come up with other ideas. He spends a bunch of time having conversations with players and others from every part of the poker world so I don't think he randomly came up with this on his own and refuses to listen to anyone else who disagrees with him. The guy seems to be a machine of productivity which makes sense how he can handle so many different things. I agree that he is out of touch with the online world compared to players who have been grinding day in and out for the past 10 years - but I don't think he is an idiot on how it all works. From my conversations with him, I think he understands the business side of the world infinitely better than anyone who is a player could and approaches his decisions from that standpoint. He made note of this on our podcast yesterday.

I look at the way Amaya approaches poker and I look at the way Rob/Party are approaching poker right now and I'm happy to see someone actually giving a **** to try something radical at this point.

I agree that it does suck to not have HH's available as poker players, I ****ing hate it on the American sites I play. I don't have much faith in poker security either when it comes to stopping bots so I understand the concern about putting it in the hands solely of the operator.

I didn't see any type of post like that Rob made but if he did and someone has proof, he seems like the type that would give the person a prize.