Regarding the "Ponzi scheme" part of the OP's title:

I am not sure that this is a fair title, at least not at this point, because there is no evidence that this is happening, only evidence that sometimes the agent is refusing to pay and giving perhaps invalid reasons why they are refusing to pay.

It is though fair to say, that if you use an agent, then they are holding all of your funds, you are therefore exposing yourself to that one person, and in most cases that player is a poker player and might be a compulsive gambler or generally bad at managing money and risk.

The same could be said about regulated online poker sites, even though their Ts & Cs state that client money is segregated, you still have exposure to one company. There is even exposure to even stronger (on paper) financial institutions, such as banks, if they do fractional lending using your savings deposits, a lot of borrowers default and there's then a run on the bank from depositors scrambling to withdraw.

The difference obviously with an app agent is that a lot less needs to go wrong and can go wrong a lot faster.

Take a hypothetical situation where poker player Mary Brown's regular stake is $2/$5, she becomes an app agent, builds up a client base and is now sitting on $100,000 of player deposits, which have been converted into play money chips in a clubGG poker club that she owns or is an agent for.

At any given time, Mary is only paying out a small percentage in total of that $100,000, because she has new customers signing up all the time, because she asks some of them to pay the withdrawals of existing customers, and because she is retaining 5% of all amounts withdrawn.

So she may in fact be increasing the $100K week by week.

Things are going amazingly so she decides to play some $25/$50, to buy a new car, speculate on some crypto, maybe play some pit games and do some sports betting.

Things go very badly in the $25/$50, also crypto goes down, and other players, including ones who she is the agent for see this or hear about it. Some of them then start to withdraw most or all of their money from her, she is slow to pay, and there are murmurings between players that she is broke.

There is then a "run on the bank" of Mary.

Things fall apart very quickly, there are now very few new depositors to her because her name as an app agent is now mud.

Everyone wants to withdraw but she only has $25K, not $100K.

So the thread title alleging that it is a Ponzi scheme is not proven, however, entrusting a poker player to be your banker is certainly very risky and even more so when you see them very quickly jumping up the stakes, or posting on Twitter about their crypto investments or trades, or acting not particularly concerned when they drop a big chunk of cheddar in a cash game.

PokerPlayingDunces perhaps you need to learn what is actually "illegal" before throwing that term around.

Banks charge all kinds of bullshit fees to rape their customers but it's not illegal.

Credit cards charge 20% interest yet literally billions use them and happily pay that interest. It baffles me, it's highway robbery, but it's not illegal.

Go to Casino Barcelona or any poker room in Australia and look at their rake structure. It's literally 4x 5x the rake in the states. It's robbery but it's not illegal, it's your choice not to play there but if you don't mind then they're providing a poker game for you that is not really beatable over the long run but it's not illegal.

And to question all vloggers' bankrolls just smacks of jealousy. Besides, who cares where someone at the table got their money from? If we all questioned where people got their money from all the time before they sat down to play then poker will die a very quick death worldwide. Many of the biggest cash games donors in casinos everywhere got their money through crime, that's truly fkn illegal isn't it, so why aren't you demanding background checks on players before they sit down if you're really concerned with ensuring everyone and everything is truly legal?

BTW rampage just won like $550k in a week playing on various streams plus lots of biggish tourney scores this year. You can question if he's just a luckbox but he's definitely got a decent bankroll based just on tourney scores, cash game wins, and youtube income off 160K subscribers..... he definitely isn't broke and relying on ClubGG. Don't like ClubGG? Don't play on it. To spend all your energy speculating on something that law enforcement isn't even interested in shutting down while ALI IMSIROVIC JAKE SCHINDLER AND BRYN KENNEY are still playing on most sites and in the WSOP events.. I mean.... I know which is farrrrr worse. .

And listing guys like Doug Polk as shiny examples of moral behavior is pretty LOL, I mean Doug just played on Hustler after tons of podcasts questioning its security after the J4 hand should tell you where his morals lie... also refuses to answer regarding CoinFlex that he shilled where thousands of ppl got scammed.. plus a high stakes reg on their stream got robbed right outside The Lodge in an inside job and Doug refuses to comment... I don't even dislike Doug at all, but he's not someone whose morals are unquestionable that's for sure.

No idea why this thread isn't locked either, OP got paid and that's that. If rampage has to be dragged through the mud due to association with GG, then why don't we start tearing down every single GG Ambassador who are paid so much more to promote the site, starting with Negreanu? Negreanu even specifically said "More rake is better"

well for one this thread has nothing to do with gg. maybe you should read. its about youtubers making private games and banning winners and charging way too much rake . gg just so happens to run an app but it has nothing to do with anything they are just the tools used

Just curious what rake in states is like, have never played there myself.
Rake in Barcelona is capped at 2bb, which is one of the lowest I have encountered in europe.

663366

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you are not a shill defending the actions of these poker vloggers that are exploiting their fan base, and that these are your genuine thoughts and views.

And I don't disagree with all of your points.

One thing you have wrong is saying that the people in question are GG ambassadors. They are not, they are promoting clubGG (which is categorically a play money app, with some added live tournament benefits if you pay GG a monthly subscription), and they it appears are using the app as a method of creating illegal online raked and juice charging games.

On your other points: The money lenders you refer to are licensed, the casinos you mentioned are licensed, and they are both transparent about what the charges are. You also as a customer have protections in law when you use their services.

I agree that a lot of poker money at the table is dirty money of one sort of another, and accept that that is how it is because it is poker after all, not a Sunday afternoon game of croquet or a flower arranging competition. People are going to get badly hurt financially and often psychologically too and their lives can sometimes be badly damaged or even destroyed by the direct or indirect effects of playing poker.

Perhaps casinos and live streamed poker shows should do a degree of vetting of players. But this is a separate issue to what we are discussing ITT.

We are discussing some poker vloggers, it turns out to be likely a small minority, gaining "dirty money" (through illegal activity) from their own viewers, subscribers and fans, and doing it with a smile on their face, pretending to be a friend to the fan and not stating important risk and legal information to the fans when promoting the app.

Rampage is a good player, possibly very good, and may be heading towards being a great player. But that is not relevant if dirty money gained from his fans helped him in a big way to get there.

I went in hard criticising Doug Polk for his ambassadorship of CoinFlex, in the thread on here about it, spelled out a lot the technical risks CoinFlex were taking as a company (that IMO he should have worked out himself before joining them as an ambassador), and I stated that he has some level of culpability IMO.

I included him in the list of poker vloggers / podcasters / content creators who appear to not be promoting poker apps, to demonstrate that the vast majority of the aforementioned are not exploiting their own fan base (sometimes a very large one, 100K+) to make easy money out of running a poker app club or being an agent for one.

It is highly likely that the reason they are not, is because they know that it is probable that if they did then they might be breaking one, some or all of: Gambling Laws, Wire Act Laws and Money Laundering Laws.

They also know that if they broke any of these laws that it would be the end of their brand, their credibility and would make them look like, or actually be, scammers.

Yes, Doug Polk specifically, did damage his brand with the CoinFlex semi-fiasco and I did call him an idiot, dumb and other similar things for what he did, but my view is that it was nowhere close to being a pre-meditated scam by him, it was just him being stupid as well as inexperienced in some areas of financial markets and their associated risk factors.

If you really ask me, the GG brand has incredibly high rake whether it's any of their skins on the website or ClubGG, I'm quite happy if we all held these ambassadors to account starting from the top with Negreanu all the way down to the ones making referrals like rampage and mariano. All for that. Make sure games at all stakes are beatable and players aren't punished if they win consistently.

Btw you giving me "benefit of the doubt" is pretty LOL considering I'm a 2008 account with no history of controversy here and you're 2022, but I digress. Your point of holding ambassadors to a moral standard is totally fine with me, but in the grand scheme of things any exploitation by rampage pales in comparison to someone like Negreanu who fought for "More rake is better" and is the lead ambassador for GG where games aren't beatable due to high rake pushed by Negreanu or Hellmuth who was sponsored by UltimateBet with super users and won a big pot on screen where Hellmuth held the inferior hand and had the big pot pushed to him. All these guys are still operating at the top of the poker industry and idols to many, along with Ali/Schindler/Bryn, I'm all for cleaning all of them out.

I don’t see it as taking advantage of their fans. Everyone’s so quick to play the victim.

I played because the vloggers make dumb plays and are friendly and I wanted to sit with them and take their moneys.

One of the main reasons I played is bc poker bros is down every Thursday for maintenance so I needed a site to play on Thursday mornings. The traffic is too low anyways so I probably won’t be playing there in the future.

They also offer a ton of freerolls which are actual freerolls bc you don’t even need to deposit to play in them.

I really don’t see this as being anywhere near a scam. Illegal maybe but not some predatory scam on their followers.

I think their intention is to bring poker players together like a meet up game. But since most meet up games are hours if not plane rides away I had no chance to get involved. They understood it was hard to get everyone together so online just makes sense.

I bet some of the vloggers would prefer if no rake was taken so we could just get together and play virtually. The games would be way more lucrative than the rake.

I could be wrong maybe this tiny site is making all the vloggers rich but I just don’t see it. If you divvy up the rake I could see them making peanuts here. There’s also a cost of doing business on these sites having to buy chips and deal with cash outs and chargebacks etc.

I really doubt anyone is making bank on these apps anyways.. and usually the irs isn’t going after them unless they’re making a ton. It’s not worth their time to go after someone making less than 1k a month on these apps.

Maybe JV is making more than that so he could potentially be in a gray area.

$7 per half hour time charge, no rake, for 5/10 and up
Around $5 max per pot for lower games
When they take an extra dollar drop there'd be badbeah jackpot or high hand etc.
Then you earn $1-2 per hour comps for cash game in vegas and most other chain casinos elsewhere.

Agree.. legality doesn’t equal morality...

You could make the claim what Daniel does is way more immoral albeit legal

I agree that GG are not a good site themselves and have banned winning players sometimes who have done nothing wrong, and that they charge above industry standard rates of rake in some games.

I also agree that Rampage and Mariano are in small part ambassadors for GG, purely because some players they bring to clubGG might also pay a subscription to GG, but that doesn't appear to be the main reason why they are bringing players, and as far as I know, they don't have any official arrangement with GG. Although I could be wrong there, perhaps they do. And they may well be affiliates who earn money for downloads of clubGG and for subscription sign ups.

Even if they do, GG clearly state in their clubGG details that it is a play money app.

From the clubGG page: https://www.clubgg.net/poker-prizes

ClubGG is operated by PocketFives LLC.

ClubGG operates within the sweepstakes rules where they are legal.

The Site does not permit members to wager real money and has no ability to accept deposits as it is a "free play" site only. Tournament tickets in members' accounts have no monetary value and cannot be exchanged for anything of value and cannot serve as a medium of exchange. Any and all references in the Site to "pots," "limits", "betting" or the like are solely for instructional or illustrative purposes and do not involve wagering real money.

To open an account and/or participate in any tournament offered on the Site, you must: be a natural person, at least 18 years old, who is assigned to the e-mail address submitted on your account registration form and located in an eligible territory, they can play for and claim prizes. Eligibility to participate for prizes is based on the State or Territory in which you reside. Local Laws determine the guidelines for the sweepstakes eligibility. If a territory does not allow for sweepstakes games, then it is deemed ineligible and users from that territory cannot participate in sweepstakes poker tournaments.

Very good points.

I agree that passing an ethical judgement should be influenced by the amounts of money being made by the vloggers who are doing this
and that if the amounts are very small then one could as you have, describe it just as a fun service, illegal yes, but relatively harmless.

Bit of circumstantial evidence that it might be a lot of money is Mariano with 2500+ subscribers on his clubGG telegram, Wolfgang poker's vlog that I linked earlier ITT had I think 144K views, so these are quite large numbers, even when diluted down into smaller conversion rates into actual, clicks / sign ups / deposits.

Also Wolfgang poker states that the app has low stakes through to high stakes games, so not entirely just "fun", when stakes are high.

Purely on involvement with apps, rampage advertises it in his videos sometimes but not all the time, and doesn't seem to be playing in them. He's also shuttling between streams and tourneys so I think he's probably making off app referrals and not involved in the actual playing against his fans at least not based on evidence.

Mariano goes beyond advertising, nominates specific hours where fans can come play with him on ClubGG, so is he profiteering off his popularity? Perhaps. But ClubGG is offering a space where he can basically host a home game more effectively than in a physical setting, is that immoral? Pokerstars has home games feature too. And the physical home games run by regs in every city also don't want many big winners in the game, no nits, always prefer action players over tags etc. So I dunno where you can draw the line as to what's unethical.

Suited superman is a big time app grinder, literally daily on IG showing himself grinding apps on both phone and ipad while sitting at a casino poker table. But I mean he's doing nothing illegal, he wants you to come play with him, it's up to you if you want to. Of course he does this to make money, but you don't have to join him. Difference between him and rampage/mariano is, he doesn't make videos that show a large amount of laggy hands as to make you think he's a punter worth playing with.

This may all well be true, that one application is so that the vloggers can play in online Meetup games with their fans, and maybe that was their initial and only motivation of setting it up, and it has evolved from there.

Remember though that they are likely earning from all sign ups and play that they bring to the app, not just when they are sitting in the game itself.

I'm talking about what is going on in the present, and their lack of openness to their fans.

Also, circumstantial evidence: Lynne Ji, Mariano and Rampage, all playing high/very high stakes without any obvious poker playing created organic growth in their bankroll up to the size it would need to be to play those stakes.

Collusion is also potentially a big issue, although ITT a few players have stated that they don't think much if any collusion is happening. I am not sure how it would be prevented from happening, would seem very easy to collude on an unregulated app IMO.

The potential "Ponzi factor" I think is big.

Regarding Pokerstars Home Games: if I understand it correctly, you have to have a Pokerstars account to play in them, and they are raked (juice charged) by them in the same way as if you are playing on the Pokestars client in cash games or tournaments that they put on themselves, so Pokerstars Home Games are not really a comparison to clubGG.

When I lived in Tampa Florida the rake was $5 max per hand PLUS a $2 jackpot drop (for high hands and other promotions). In the 2/2 PLO with a $5 rock if you wanted to run it twice they double raked you another $5 so they were taking $12 out of the pot!

In the time-raked games we were paying $8 every dealer down so $16/hr

I'm playing a a membership based poker club now in Texas (The Lodge, partly owned by Doug Polk, Brad Owen and Andrew Neeme) and you can pay a daily, weekly, monthly or yearly membership fee to become a member of the club (I paid $200 for the year-long membership) and then they charge a flat $10/hr seat fee (it can't be rake because of the laws in Texas, kinda a grey area)

Is this for all stakes? like 10/20 25/50? If so, that's pretty good.

when they're agents for these apps charging tons of rake and going from 2/5 nl to huge stakes games in a year it's pretty obvious where the money came from

Can anyone verify, or squash, that Johnny "Vibes" Moreno is the owner of Splash Squad on clubGG? Anyone for example have a screenshot while logged into his Poker Squad private Facebook page that has a signup button or something similar, to Splash Squad.

Or some other solid evidence.

It seems to just be hearsay at this point, that he is the owner.

If he isn't the owner, it may point to Rampage and/or Mariano being the owners.

In this Sept 2021 thread https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...-club-1795611/ someone alleges that Rampage has a Limited Liability Company, Rampage LLC, and that this is where he was asked to send the money to as a deposit to play on an app.

The poster also alleges collusion when playing on the app.

What Is a Limited Liability Company (LLC)? (source: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/llc.asp)

A limited liability company (LLC) is a business structure in the U.S. that protects its owners from personal responsibility for its debts or liabilities. Limited liability companies are hybrid entities that combine the characteristics of a corporation with those of a partnership or sole proprietorship.

While the limited liability feature is similar to that of a corporation, the availability of flow-through taxation to the members of an LLC is a feature of a partnership rather than an LLC.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

The limited liability company (LLC) is a corporate structure that protects its owners from being personally pursued for repayment of the company's debts or liabilities.

Regulation of LLCs varies from state to state.

Any entity or individual can be a member of an LLC with the notable exceptions of banks and insurance companies.

LLCs do not pay taxes on their profits directly.

Their profits and losses are passed through to members, who report them on their individual tax returns.

Tampa would sometimes get a 10/10 with a $25 rock and unlimited restraddles, the time charge was $16/hr unless you were in the private two-table room, then they charged $20/hr

At The Lodge in Texas as far as I'm aware you pay a flat seat/time charge of $10/hr regardless of the game you play.

As a Chicagoan, I'm just jealous you all get to play online.
How I'd love to sit back on a Sunday and just play a $20 huge tourney and relax

The fact they legalized sports gambling, but not online poker in Illinois makes no sense to me
But then again, this is Illinois.
Where we spend billions we dont have
and newspapers call the latest budget that "only" adds a few billion to our debt a "responsible budget"

Cant wait to move out of here once my kids are older

Poker bros and chill?

But which players?

Mariano and rampage ?

Mariano crushes and has an aggressive broll strat.

While rampage has blinked some mtts for scores and also makes 6 figures on YT.

They both might come from money, not sure about this but it’s possible.

They could also sell sell some action I know johnnie vibes bro helps him and he always sells action.

Doesn’t have to be the rake... could be though maybe it really is making these guys rich

Some, or perhaps a lot of those points may be a factor.

*** N.B. Still no evidence, other than hearsay, that Johnnie Vibes is involved with Splash Squad or in any way with any app club.

As I suspected, there is a semi-wall of silence on this whole topic, most likely for the reason that I indicated much earlier ITT, which is that a lot of twoplustwo posters and readers are involved with these poker app clubs, either as owners, agents, or players.

Furthermore, those that are just players are likely to be winning players, and to be colluding too, which is an obvious and unstoppable way of beating a high rake game where others are also likely to be colluding. It just becomes a battle of the colluders. Which team of colluders can collude more efficiently than others, while at the same time mopping up any non colluding players' fish money that might be at the tables. Wouldn't actually surprise me also if many colluders just stay out of each others' way, and divide up the spoils of fish money between them.

So what we have IMO are a lot of illegal games that the poker community doesn't want to challenge, highlight, or really even talk about, because it will hit their bottom line.

The sense I get is that they don't care about it being illegal and while they continue to get away with their cavalier attitude towards its illegality, they will just continue in the same way.

The only time anyone speaks out, is when an agent stiffs them, and then when they get paid, as they often do after outing the agent, there are calls to "shut the thread, he got paid". And those calls to shut the thread are of course so that the illegal activity can slip back under the radar again.

Regarding, PokerEthics' reply about how the players mentioned have jumped from 2/5 to 25/50+ so quickly, (I would suggest as quickly as many of the most talented players in the history of poker), I think the point that some are overlooking, is that it is the massive cash flow (net positive cash position) that app agents are sitting on that would enable an agent who doesn't care to protect clients' money, to suddenly play way higher than their normal stake.

Making a cut of app play rake could also obviously be a lot of money, but an agent doesn't necessarily even need a high volume of play by his/her players, if they have a large number of them at any given time who have money on deposit with them.

Imagine being an app agent for 1500 players and them having an average of $250 each on deposit with you, you have $375,000 in your account.

Can confirm it’s JV’s club. There’s a reason he’s not specifically linking it anywhere and staying to himself. He’s at least being somewhat smart about the entire operation and likely content to have the dough roll in while being low key. Meanwhile Mariano and Rampage are enjoying the spotlight and want to make a name for themselves playing high stakes.

If I remember correctly Jaman Burton also promoted it for a little bit but then stopped. My guess is he realized it wasn’t worth the legal ramifications given his real world profession.

As I said before, Johnnievibes has paid out Rampage hundreds of thousands for the people he’s brought in. The rake the club generates is bigger than most poker rooms around the country.

Taking what you said as correct, Johhny "Vibes" Moreno's private Facebook group, "JV's Poker Squad", has 8.6K members as of today, so if that is a main or primary place where Splash Squad is promoted or listed as an option to join, then we are talking about potentially large numbers.

I'd be interested to know if Pocket Fives, whom GG Poker state operate ClubGG "ClubGG is operated by PocketFives LLC.", are a) aware that the ClubGG play money poker app is being used in contravention of one or more of their key TOS, and b) if they do know, whether they even care?

Similarly, although GG Poker have outsourced the operation of ClubGG to PocketFives, do GG Poker know, or know but not care, how some people are using it as in effect a real money poker app?

It should be mentioned, that not long ago Bryn Kenney, in more than one podcast, alleged, and in some great detail, that he, with GG Poker's full blessing, "bought"/put chips on high stakes GG cash games for a number of high stakes cash game players, while himself handling all of the money transactions to/from players, so that no funds were sent to/from the players and GG.

I believe that the chips were put on the regular, real money, GG Poker site, not on the play money app version.

Nonetheless, if Bryn Kenney's very detailed account of what he was doing is accurate and true, GG were circumventing their own TOS in order to, according to Bryn Kenney, build high stakes games on GG when it was a less mature site (mature in terms of how long it had been established and its then market share), and in the process also according to him, or by implication by him, allowing players to VPN play, which is also against their own TOS. There is also a screenshot on another thread on this forum of some well known high stakes crushers in the chat box, using chat that demonstrated that they were bum hunting "Loose" Leon Tsoukernik, again, against their TOS.

So we potentially have Johhny Moreno (maybe), and certainly various ClubGG owners breaking ClubGGs TOS, Pocket Fives who operate ClubGG either not being aware of this, or being aware but accepting it is happening, for reasons we can only guess at, and GG poker possibly the same as Pocket Fives.

I will add, that I understand the rationale of players playing on these apps in a legal gray area. It could be because they feel that online poker being banned in most US states is in their opinion a bad law / bad legislation, so are taking matters into their own hands.

Similarly, poker club app owners and agents, may feel the same way, that their ability to earn a living from poker has been greatly restricted and damaged for the same reasons above.

Additionally, some players may feel that the ~18 months of restriction on playing live poker (please do not turn this statement into a debate about Covid, it is irrelevant, I am just stating that some players may be on one side of the fence on it), and those players took matters into their own hands by switching their play during the lockdowns to gray area poker apps, or went harder by becoming club owners or agents.

So, the fact that these apps are being used gray area / illegally, makes complete sense, from the point of view of poker players wanting to make a living.

However, is it acceptable when things are tough, or when you feel strongly that a law or a regulation is unjust or wrong, to break rules and break laws?

(It is actually very clever (albeit likely illegal IMO) for club owners to choose ClubGG as the app to use, because by doing so they are piggybacking off the back of GG's strong brand recognition, thus giving the likely appearance/impression to many players that ClubGG played as in effect real money poker, is respectable and legal.)

If one thinks it is acceptable to break a law when you disagree with a law, then where is the line that you would not cross?

Going back to the issue IMO of some poker vloggers sneakily exploiting their viewers / fans, I stand by all of my points on that, because regardless of the rationale of some players "crossing over to the gray side" of poker, these vloggers IMO are using some of their own viewers / fans as innocent pawns.