I started playing on PPpoker about a year and a half ago. A lot of the NYC underground clubs started rooms. They were in a great spot to do so, they were already comfortable with illegal poker, a lot of the games run on credit anyway, and they knew people.

I suspect I'm one of the largest users of PPpoker. I have about 200k hands of PLO across a couple of accounts, and significant OFC play as well. A bit of NLHE, though most of the action on PPpoker seems to be PLO and OFC. I'm up a significant amount in total. My $.02:

1. I think people overestimate, or at least have no evidence, about the RNG or algorithims being off. It's my own view that people severely underestimate the inability of the human mind to calculate odds and appropriately project the possibility that unlikely things happen over very large sample sizes. Of course it's possible that something is rigged, but I've yet to see any evidence over it.
2. The real risk here is that your agent or a club runs away with your money. I have a great agent, I trust him and have made a good deal of money for him, and he in turn has always paid me live, in cash (I dont' want a ton of money flying around electronically). However, there was a large club that folded when I had 11k on there. My agent made me good for most, but not all, of the loss. He also had a sense things were going south and had me stop playing there weeks before it went bust.
3. The games are soft, but the softest games are in one-off clubs, rather than unions. When the games unionize, the player pool increases and the fish inevitably get filleted. I played a ton in VIP both before and after union, and the play got markedly better shortly after it was unionized. This is most evident in VPIP of players. I used to run a 50% VPIP in PLO and was the tightest guy at the table. I now run a bit below 40% and am middle of the road.
4. I've never seen any evidence of collusion, but would be surprised if it never happened. That said, most people I've played with do not seem competent enough to collude effectively.

You need to find a reputable person. I’ve been with mike Mizrachi since he started. Never had someone not get paid.

Very very good post and big +1 Id be very cautious putting real agent names out there ESPECIALLY if operating out of the US. I dont think you doing him a favour by this even though it might look like you do...

FBI is probably closing in on him as we type.

I wouldnt underestimate land of teh free law enforcement agencies but thats just me

Whats up guys. Could anybody shortly explain me how do those club work? Especially, when they are parts of the union, how the transactions between clubs and unions are handled? Also, what do agents do, and how do they make money (from the rake I guess).... Or if there is some posts about that in the thread, which I missed, could you please give me link.

Thanks in advance.

Clubs work with agents indeed. So you need to find a reliable agent who has connections or is able to convert your deposit funds into chips in a specific club. Either your agent or the club admin holds your funds and is able to cash out for you and thereby deducting the payout from your chip balance. Agents usually get a rake % for bringing in players such that it becomes a win for all parties.

My $0.02: great post, +1!

Thanks for the response, man.

Any idea what % of the rake of their downline do the agints take?

Also, if a club is a member of an union, the all the money should somehow go to the union's account, and the union has to cash out the players directly, or pay the club founder to pay out the players. As well as the rake money should be distributed between the clubs proportional of their players' share in the overall rake...
Is that how it works?

For rake cannot give definite answers. Different clubs kick dif numbers back. In general the softer the clubs the less they kick back (need to kick back)

[PHP][/PHP]

As an agent (depending on the trust level with the club owners) they’ll credit you say $1000 of chips. Now you have say 10 people under you. They all want $100. They all pay you $100, you send out the chips. Now you’re in possession of the $1000 and your balance shows zero. You’d then send 1k to the club owner and get more chips to disperse to members when they deposit.

Say player A wants a cashout of $2000, well you only collected 1k so you can’t cover. The owner of the club has to settle with the other owners every week on what club owes what. If club As club won 10k off the other clubs, those clubs need to settle and send money to club owner A, so he can now pay out his guys who won, so he can send $ to the agent to have the agent pay, or they pay themselves.

After update seems like you can no longer play in android simulators, does anyone know how to bypass that?

Hey man, it still works for me. It first gave me a message about unsecure environment but the second time it started. Not sure if you received the same message? I'm using this emulator: http://en.ldmnq.com as a lot of players do here I believe. Or you need to update it within the emulator, did you forget to take that step?

Yeah all good now, i had the same message and it started to work normally on second try.

After recent update it is lagging so much it is almost unplayable on emulator, anyone has same difficulties?

Yup it was quite lagging

is the rakeback on the american clubs the same as the chinese/russian ones?

btw was there any cases of clubs just being shutdown and then the club owners just take all players money?

Oh I’m sure with smaller clubs for sure it has happened

Yes a big union shut down and didn’t pay out. I was told they let a whale/maniac play on credit, he lost 100k and never paid.

It literally happens like once every few months. Lock Poker, FTP, some of the older Italian sites, Full Flush the list is endless. Don't keep life altering money anywhere.

If it was rigged or w/e you would know. People are now importing hands to HEM/PT, if something fishy was going on we would have heard about it.

Some thots:

Rake is high. I saw 3bb get taken off of a 5/10 table, yikes.

The rooms are private, obviously. You need to know someone to get in and there aren't tons of new players constantly coming in. When a room gets found out by regs it is gg pretty quickly. People who know about the juiciest games sure as **** aren't posting them to 2+2.

Bots/collusion. Collusion is going to be more prevalent in PLO, I play NLH. I do suspect a few number of bots going. There is essentially 0 security so you are policing the games yourself.

Was apart of one of the biggest if not the biggest clubs in Australia,live game got raided of the club owner which may have led to them finding out about his pppoker club due to them seizing his laptop,searching banc acc ect since money was found on premises. They also might have knowen about the club before the raid and been apart of an investigation

All his bank accounts where frozen and x amount of cash from his home but he still managed to pay 50% and is still working on paying out the rest so i guess it all depends on the club owner at the end of the day

You meant sites or pppoker clubs?

Both. The agent system has been around long before PPPoker.

has anybody figured out yet what the time frame is to reset the accs that are used on one machine/ip? I have 5 and want to switch to 5 new ones, how would I do this?

If the period is 30 days I could use only 4 for 30 days, then make a new one, use 1 new and 3 old for 30 days, make anew one and so fourth. Lets imagine we would know the time frame, does anybody know if this works?

Yes I know about emulators, but it has a few big disadvantages for me