study more

Lmao that's incredible.
I remember when I tried to play on GG, just quit when I realized how PVI works and saw Negreanu dancing upon the table after losing a +500bb pot.

Agreed for 99% of poker players - most are 20 somethings that live alone so their living expenses are peanuts. The problem with poker is it's a declining market - if winrates either stay stagnant or decline you're hitting a low ceiling relatively quickly along with inflation beating you up. Poker also has very little tax shelter and is labor intensive - not a good long term business.

Yes that's how poker works - you have to be better than your opponents as well as the rake. Just because you play 5/10 or whatever it is doesn't mean you're great at poker either - sad people have egos playing 5/10 lol.

Interesting post and glad to have read it.

I've played on GG since around it's launch from 25nl all the way up to 200nl (currently). I've managed to get this high not from being a crusher at the tables but by losing slowly enough to hit bad beat jackpots lol. This post confirms what I long thought, that the rake was unbeatable. While I agree that this is scandalous I don't think they are necessarily banning all winning players, I just believe they are none. Like I said from 25nl to 200nl I know all the regulars and I think they're are only maybe 4 or 5 others who have gotten to 200nl that I recognize from the lower limits as well as myself. There is only 1 guy playing at 500nl that I recognize the rest are probably people that have won big enough tournaments or just have the cash to deposit.

The problem with those other sites though is even though there is people with better winrates you could never consistently play cash games on them. WPN and Ipoker sites don't have enough of a player base that games don't run at 200nl and above even Pokerstars as I type this probably only has about 20-30 players playing 200nl and above so I wonder when the charts posted show for what year/years these winrates are for? How do people get that much volume in on Ipoker for instance when there is like 20 people playing there at those limits?

Another thing I think about is what is the reason for all this? So for example if you go back 10+ years to the height of the poker boom and online poker. The average player base on a site like pokerstars must of been 100,000+ if not more with all other poker sites enjoying bigger communities also. So if the rake % back then on cash tables is the same as the rake now, where these sites player bases have been halved if not more, why is the industry standard the same. It suggests the reason for this rake % is something other than gaining direct profit from the tables no?

Sites still need to pay for servers, customer support, security staff, client development, marketing etc etc. Where do you suggest that they get that from if not rake, and do you really think that if a site's traffic halves, and then theoretically their revenue halves, that their costs halve as well?

Yeah I understand that but what I mean is that back in the day when there was so much more traffic was the rake back then not being overcharged? Why is the standard charge 4/5% the industry norm.

Another thing is that you would think it would be good for online poker sites in general that people could make a living playing cash tables because it feeds into the idea that its an achievable dream and therefore it would create more traffic in the long run and lead to a healthier poker environment but the evidence that your post presents is that GG don't want this and if anything seem to be actively trying to stop it. Why?

The overall point I'm getting at is if GG now currently enjoys traffic closer to what Pokerstars and the like had years ago could they not operate off a lower rake at the tables. So say they just dropped the number to 3% or something they would create more professionals then more people would be able to look to people and think "oh if that guy is doing it so can I" and therefore grow that aspect of the site.

I don't know the answers I'm just posing questions to see peoples opinions lol.

they did when it was

How is it possible for this site to mine hands from iPoker given that it's supposed to be "Anonymous" tables? i.e. you can't see player's screen names (just Player 1, Player 2 etc..) if you haven't been dealt a hand at that table.

Seems shady to say the least.

I think Full Tilt was $3 cap up to 10/20nl.

So? When they stole the money who cares what the rake was. Their scam was different and much more brutal to the victims.

If there was no black Friday, you have no idea that they wouldn't of fully paid anyone that requested a payout, even though the money wasnt in properly segregated bank accounts.

full tilt was more negligent then full on scammy if they survived their rake would be the norm

Guy asked a question about what rake was back in the day. Follow along.

Actually looking over the site myself and I'm not really too sure how accurate the numbers are. The win/loss doesn't appear to be net won/loss more like accumulative win/losses. Some of the regs I recognize who have like in around 100k loses who I would definitely imagine are not that bad players to have such high numbers. Other 2 winning players i see on the list at 200nl that I play with regulary have 20k winnings and they are still playing at my limit and have not attempted to move to 500nl which is odd.

I can't see my own name so I can't exactly verify how accurate it is. If anyone has paid the sub and wants to check it's Derek245 200nl for the last 6 months and I should know.

My point was when a site keeps your money in their bank account rather than segregated using their rake as an example of what a legitimate site would/could charge as rake is a lie. They could have zero rake as all of your money was in their account already.

And anyone that looks at how much money they had already stolen that thinks if only they had been allowed to continue they would have returned it rather than continue to loot is at best a fool.

Maybe they actually have and realised that they have a higher winrate at 200nl, and you've just not noticed the shots?

No because I checked this. Their total hands played match up between 50nl to 200nl and if you add 500nl it does nothing to their total hands number

The amounts were really small, but I never had a problem withdrawing any money from Full Tilt during those days. And I would guess many, many people here on 2+2 routinely cashed out funds from Full Tilt, including amounts of significant size to pay the bills, buy cool stuff, support families, etc.

When it came to cashouts, Full Tilt operated (incorrectly and illegally so) as if they were a bank. Dip into the player deposits to keep the lights on, they figured, but also maintain enough of that cash on hand to honor any withdrawal requests. This is why the post-Black Friday revelations were so shocking. And to PolarBear's point, it also means that the rake advertised was the rake paid for most people.

highly doubt that gg is doing this, im sure they are banning people using software like rta etc but not based on w/r

Ok where's the evidence that these people are using RTA. You might reply GG is under no obligation to provide any evidence but that just makes it easy for them to ban people for whatever reason

Why wouldnt they ban high W/r think about it they could use the xcuse of players bumhunting to ban people who won too much which is horseshit and we all know it. Poker Sites dont want people to cash out they want repeat depositors with money going back and forth and eventually into the sites hand in the form of rake.

Regardless how GG Poker actually select players to get banned, I find it highly problematic to accept TOS, that prohibit a practice like "bum hunting". Its simply not clearly enough defined, so it basically give the poker site an excuse to kick people out for whichever reason, they decide. Which might be acceptable, if we could be sure to get both our deposit and potential winnings paid out. But as far as I remember, thats not even the case, since the TOS allow GG Poker to randomly keep our money, if they like.

Such TOS are simply not fair, and I think, poker players should be way more critical of them, than has been the case so far. Even if people are supposed to have broken the rules by for instance using RA, confiscating their winnings should be up to the legal system and not a poker site, who then get to keep the money for itself. It sounds great, when a poker site announce, that they closed XXX accounts for cheating and confiscated the funds, but its actually not, if you think a bit deeper about it.

Is there evidence GG are doing the bolded?