A few weeks ago, I was introduced to Global poker while playing at a home game. I was surprised that on-line poker was even available in the States -- having found out about the legal loophole and frankly shady approach this company has taken to undermine on-line poker gaming restrictions in the U.S. Anyhow, I decided to make an account and deposit a small stipend to check out the site.

For starters: The games at the micro-stakes are extremely soft. I have made small deposits such as $20 and have ran it up to a few hundred within a day or two; albeit I tilted it all back on my first run. For me, this has become more of a platform to pass time. I'll deposit a small amount and if I win or lose I'll just take it as entertainment.

Here are the things that disturb me about this site:

1) $50 minimum withdraw requirement. I find this to be extremely stupid since the site accepts a chip purchase for as little as $5.

2) You have to essentially gamble the full value of your buy-in before being eligible to withdraw your funds. Example: You deposit $50 -- but will have to basically gamble $50 before the site lets you withdraw your money.

I find this to be a total scam! Its our money and we should be able to cash-out whenever we want for however much we want, plain and simple. If I deposit $50 and make $40, then I should be able to take my $90 and be done with it.

3) Cash-outs take way to long to be approved. Cashouts should be automated; unless flagged for manual review. I recently submitted a payout request over 24 hours ago and it is still pending.

When players buy chips, their credit/debit cards are immediately billed. Global Poker does not waste anytime pulling pre-authorized funds from player bank accounts. You'll see the purchase pending on your statement the day of the purchase and the following day the funds will be debited from your account.

4) Bots galore! I have detected several bots on the micro-stakes levels.

I would suspect that on-line poker sites would of developed a way to curtail the use of bots on on-line poker sites. I will say, however, that the amount of bots on Global Poker does not even compare to the ocean of bots on Pokerstars.

5) Player collusion: This is very hard to detect. But just last night I observed two players on a $.50/$1 6MAX table that were raising and re-raising excessively on the table when the pot was 3 handed. As soon as I left the table and rejoined as an observer, the colluding had stopped and both players had left the table.

6) Customer service: You would think that this poker site would offer a live chat support system. But instead all players get are canned replies from support that seems to be nothing more than copy/pasted material from their FAQ portion of the website.

It seems that you have to spam them with support tickets before you will actually get a live response from someone.

7) Gameplay freezes: I have never lost any money as a result of this since I always immediately refresh the browser page when this happens. But gameplay freezes happen way too much for my liking.

This is something that needs an immediate fix. People are playing for real money, and having their game disrupted by a software glitch is not very reassuring in terms of the security and integrity of the software.

8) The rake is just too damn high when playing micro-stakes; especially when the game is short-handed.

I understand that the site must generate profit to keep it operational. But lets just factor all of the aforementioned and conclude that the company needs to provide a way better experience in order to justify the rake that they are charging the players.

9) Conclusion: I don't trust the integrity of on-line poker sites enough to play mid/high stakes games. You never know how many people are sitting inside of a room with multiple laptops using multiple accounts with multiple IP addresses; working in concert together to defraud honest poker players at any given time.

Like I said earlier in this post, that I will deposit small amounts just to pass the time playing cards. I look at it as if I bought a few beers at a pub -- that if I were to lose my buy-in that it would not make the slightest economical difference in my life. Considering all of the aforementioned, coupled with illogical and arbitrary buy-in/cash-out policies, bots, collusion, software glitches, and an overall absentee poker support service, I just don't see myself continuing to play on this site further on down the road.

Thank you for sharing. Good bye.

If you two clowns can't contribute to the posting, then don't contribute at all.

to be fair, you contributed nothing as well

Touche! Haha.

Well... I mean... what do you expect? They run a business. Seems like decent critique though. I'll still try to play

i guess im just jaded from seeing posts like this over and over for a decade.

1. Theres a reason for play through requirements and every poker site ever has it.

2. Processing cashouts for $5 wouldnt be worth it for the site as im guessing theres a base fee then a % for processing a transaction.

3. Cashouts from global are actually quick in today's poker world. I know new players have no reference for this and just want everything immediately, but they really are good at this.

4. It's quite impressive that you are able to detect bots when you seem to have no knowledge of how online poker works. What is your system for detecting bots?

5. How many hands? Did they showdown any hands? Did you contact support?

6. Spamming support that is already slow seems like a great plan to increase
response time for everyone.

7. I personally haven't had many problems with this, but have seen others complain about this. Did you alert support?

8. Agree rake is high at micros

9. Most of your considerations are ill-informed, but that is not your fault. There's a stigma about online poker that will always exist. Generally people have a hard time trusting something that they can't see or perhaps can't understand. You seem to enjoy playing the game for small amounts of money and there's nothing wrong with that. I hope you continue to enjoy playing this game, but you should understand that you may not know everything there is to know about the workings of an online poker site.

I thought about posting basically this exact list yesterday when I first saw this thread but thought it wasn't worth the effort. Thanks for your reply here, basically spot on. Complaining about playthrough, min wd, and cashout speed on Global is just nonsense...but yes, rake is too high

This. At this point mocking a thread like this is extremely called for.

The rest of his post is spot-on as well.

Don't tell me what to do, you're not my daddy.

A-are you?

Today at a 4-handed final table I saw a guy minR BvB with 35BB vs a BB who had less than 3BB. The BB shoved on him, and he folded getting like 3-1. I thought for a moment that they must be colluding, but as it turns out, the guy was just a huge moron. This is a common theme on Global Poker.

I think it also must be contagious because not 10 minutes later I misplayed my own hand so badly and cost myself a nice chunk of much needed equity that I seriously just want to ****ing kill myself rn.

OP's so green and salty

I got to somewhere around point #2 when I knew for sure OP was going to get roasted for this post, having no idea what he's talking about. Thanks sirswish for the detailed reply.

Not meaning to dig on you further OP, since you haven't been around online poker for years (it's always been available in the US post black friday), it's natural that you wouldn't understand how online poker sites operate. Play through requirements for example are very common/standard and not just poker sites, all gambling sites, calling it a scam simply because you didn't know about it is kind of laughable. Saying cash outs are too slow from one of the fastest sites online for processing cash outs. Again, you just don't know any better.

I don't want to make a point by point list since sirswish did a nice job of that already, but I will add to the comment about support. Yes, support tends to start with a canned response. I find this very frustrating personally, simply because I find their canned response is often not on point with the question or problem I've submitted. I will play devils advocate for Global here, I think it's likely they get droves of, quite frankly, idiotic questions from droves of recs that can't be bothered to read anything on the site, so the generic canned responses may help an appreciable number of them without requiring their manpower, which would bog down the support system further. That doesn't excuse sending a canned response that's wildly off point, that's a training issue and imo likely stems from support agents that don't actually know poker well or at all. But I understand why this model is in place. Many businesses at the first query for support direct the customer to a FAQ page as that will answer many of those questions without the need for human intervention, it's the same concept. I have found that a second email along the lines of "Thanks, but this doesn't answer my question/resolve my issue, which is......" gets a human response interaction. Spamming them is not only unhelpful and unnecessary, it's down right stupid. If you want faster response times, flooding their inbox with the same issue over and over isn't the path to getting us there, it only bogs down their system further as they now have to sort through multiple emails to address the same issue with the same person. I'm not suggesting sending that 2nd email and forgetting about it forever, certainly if I haven't received a reply in a couple days I'll reach out again, that's reasonable. But flooding them with a dozen emails in a 24 hour period (or whatever you consider spamming them) is not reasonable nor helpful.

Spot on about the rake short handed of course. It's been discussed ad nauseam in this forum. Hopefully they will make some adjustments there eventually.

I just want to say that I believe there are actually quite a few bots on Global (at least in NLHE) but not the types of players people would expect. I believe they do not look like most of the regs though. I won't give my reasoning for believing this in public as I have reported what I am seeing directly to GP but I do believe there are actually quite a few. I will say in public that there are specific lines that I have taken over-and-over to exploit holes in the abstraction that lead me to believe this. I believe these bots use a Neural Network model to train which leaves holes in lines which are infrequent ie very little data to train against (think issues with pokersnowie). Again, I believe most of the regs are not bots on the site. If you want to talk more PM me.

Lets hold our horses though , were all used to this yes and actually what op is complaining about , were all actually happy to have at this point . (which says more about the current online poker climate and the foolish greedy bull**** we have to put up with from american politicians) although op isnt wrong , all of this would have been valid 10 years ago .

OPs post is actually really interesting to me , it kinda shows what would need to change if there ever were going to be another online thriving poker economy. it shows what the average rec would be looking for although maybe its lost because if op thinks there is bots on here maybe the skill level is just too far gone for recs to not just get absolutely slaughtered these days. i drunk and rambling but its interesting to say the least.

Consider yourself lucky for the playthrough. I am required to play through 20x before cashing out.....

Any updates on that matter Jared? You should post about that on Twitter and tag @official_glp
That should get their attention.Gl

I agree. There certainly was no reason for people to take the antagonistic tone in response to his post. Not only is indicative of how far away we are away from having a thriving online poker, it is counterproductive. I mean, from the dismissive responses of these elite (although clearly autistic) experts, one would think that this would be the type of player they’d want to reassure/encourage to continue to play. Instead of, you know, immediately stroking their own egos by belittling and mocking him, thus ensuring the exact opposite happens.

Also, while I can’t say I have ever suspected I was playing against any bots, the way they demanded evidence is a little disingenuous consider GP seems to intentionally make accessing and analyzing hand histories as cumbersome as they possibly can. Clearly some compelling evidence is necessary before one can credibly start throwing around that type of accusation, but GP itself is not a bastion of transparency. Note that these types of unfounded accusations would occur even if they did provide complete hand histories in a less convoluted manner. Can you really expect that they wouldn’t (or shouldn’t) when they have such questionable practices?

That’s a rhetorical question, by the way, since it was pretty clear they just wanted to put someone down rather than sincerely address the OP’s claims in a way that is productive, helpful or beneficial to poker ecosystem.

Wow, I didn't know I was part of the "elite.". I'm so proud.

And how is it NOT appropriate to mock someone who admits that he knows little about online poker in 2019, yet says things like "This is a total scam?". Also he detects almost immediately that the micros are infested with "bots galore."

Lite mockery isn't out of place in this case, IMHO.

Oh, I almost forgot the OP's reference to Global 's "shady approach" to entering the U.S. Online poker market.

Mockery in this thread is not only appropriate, but is arguably obligatory.

I addressed your questions in my original post, but briefly:

1) Having uninformed players benefits the more informed players. How anyone doesn’t understand this in 2019 is beyond me (see what I did there?).

2) I didn’t say his claim of bots was justified, only that demanding proof was a bit hypocritical when you know the site impedes players from readily compiling such evidence. I also stated that these unfounded accusations persist across the whole of online poker, including sites without such evidentiary obstacles in place. The accusations occurring on a site that makes evidence, both incriminating and exculpatory, difficult to gather should be unsurprising. I mean we have all heard this before—it is 2019, after all.

3) Lite mockery is counterproductive, especially when it is someone’s first post—as oppose to someone who has had this explained to them but then continues to make such claims anyway.

Or maybe I am missing out on the benefits of mocking and driving away dead money? Is it some super GTO, max +ev strategy that I am not aware of or something? I am admittedly a filthy casual, rank amateur rec—but if you’re willing, I am always down to learn something that might help me take my game to the next level.

I agree with all of the above. All very well said.

But the OP earns mockery when he boldly calls GP approach "shady", as if he actually knows something about the topic.

I'd bet he couldn't detect a bot if his life depended on it.

Whyd u make a new screen name to defend yourself in your thread?

You actually got lucky to get a real response from me as an OP like that will almost always get ridiculed. I really don't care about "offending recs". I think its more important for there to be correct and logical information on this forum and elsewhere about online poker instead of misinformed diatribes from people who feel slighted by a site or game they don't fully understand. Hundreds of OPs such as this have been posted over the years all over the internet and when you search for things like "online poker rigged" or "why cant i win on global poker" and so forth you find these long sermons from angry gamblers who feel the site is cheating them. That's whats hurting the game. People don't even know that online poker is available in the USA, and if they dont search it out, garbage like this isnt helping.

The thing is with all these OPs, since this is your first post, you haven't seen any of the posts in the past, and you wont see any in the future since you'll disappear forever or until you have another problem. So to all the future creatures that make these threads, just stop. Email support, search old threads, read the FAQ, calm down before pressing submit reply, and just understand that you are not helping anyone by making these threads.

2) You have to essentially gamble the full value of your buy-in before being eligible to withdraw your funds. Example: You deposit $50 -- but will have to basically gamble $50 before the site lets you withdraw your money.

This is how online poker generally works you have roll requirements. don't let these trolls get to you. Its obvious your new to online poker and how it works. It sucks dont' say this stuff up front but you just have to look at it as learning experience and know in the future you will have roll over requirements when you deposit on poker site. they have fees too when you make a deposit and if everyone depositing and cashing out right away they will lose money.