People caring about their bottom line. Shocker.


Much easier to arrange a boycott when the community is small that can work together than to try arrange thousands of players with 0 contact. Almost impossible.

They will all be fully supportive of you if you want to arrange a boycott. Shitting on them Is stupid.

The top 20 grinders in terms of volume at GG NL100 averaged a winrate of -2bb/100. Only one of them was a (tiny) winner pre rakeback!

So from a business point of view GG have got the level of rake exactly right because they have created a situation where the highest volume pro grinders are working for them.

If they had sent them an annual New Year's Greetings Card on January 1st this year, it would have said on it:
"Thank you high volume grinder and enclosed is a certificate to say that you earned +2BB/100 hands during 2022 after rake back. Have a great 2023."

It looks like they want to send this same New Year's Greetings Card to the top volume grinders at all stakes, including $25/$50 and higher.

Their philosophy is that you work for them, they don't work for you. It is their web site and their company, not yours.

Yeah I wouldn't care much about players who push volume and play for rb and lbs. You can beat gg low stakes for sure if you accept that you pay a sheet ton of rake. There is no chance to hit even top10 in lbs without playing 10+ hours / day.

then why would you care about bum hunting HS regs crying over a much lower rake than everyone else?

Yes I should care about hs regs that observe the lobbies for 2 hours per day, looking to empty the 2k left on some Asian rec's account 😅😅

There is a thread somewhere on this forum that shows a screenshot of the chat on a GG high stakes table where well known players are clearly bum hunting "Loose" Leon Tsoukernik, the owner of King's Casino. He sat out and they are discussing in the chat whether to carry on playing or to fold to each other until he sits in again, something like that.

Also, some of these players were US players, to it's probable that they were VPNing to circumvent GG's Ts & Cs about players in the USA not being allowed to play.

So I wonder if these players are part of the group of 90+ who are doing this current boycott.

Also, how many of these players are players who Bryn Kenney was previously handling all money transactions for, and then generating the equivalent amount of chips for them to play with,
and sending money (or crypto) back and forth to the players. He made a full confession of this (at least he alleged that this was what he was doing.)

And why is that? What is to stop half a dozen of you from taking your business to Stars (or any other site of your choice) where the rake is lower? Is it as simple as the entire high stakes community has literally analysed the game to death, and nobody can beat the rake without someone bad's own magnetic presence which only appears on GG?

Yes, but if you get leaderboard, BBJ and rb. In term of ev that works out at about 4bbb (i.e. +2bb post rb) if you are raking a decent amount. Also, the average reg tends to be a bit worse due to mass tablers and Asian regs not being as experienced on average. It's also easier to get reg table volume on GG compared to other sites. While 2bb post rb is the average, strong players should be able to win 4bb+

Don't get me wrong, I think these games are way over raked and it should obviously be more reasonable but the rake at high stakes is now basically unbeatable. GG can charge whatever price they want but their customers also have a right to say what they think.

This is what I can’t get my head around with the poker world either haha

It’s like having 2 shops right next to each other.. both are clean, reliable etc

One day the 1 shop ups it’s coke price to $5 a can, but the other shop still charges $1.

So instead of doing what any other person would do, and start shopping at the 2nd shop. They decide to ‘boycott’ the other shop until they lower their prices… we’ll show them!

It just goes against any business logic!

There is close to 0 recs at high stakes on stars. They're fkd by complying to laws etc that gg and Co don't do. (heard they're still publicly traded company but feel that was years ago?). You can't deposit money enough for those stakes. Unless you grind it up and no rec does that. Too many legal hoops to jump through


If absolute 0 recs. Then nobody will battle or try.
Obviously every reg would prefer stars if there was just a similar shop next door.



However if you're playing ssnl or whatever and not doing that. Then you're very silly.

It's very simple. GG have recreational players, Stars do not. Hs players would love to take their action to stars if there were any games to play.

So it is that simple - the cost of bumhunting just went up?

People should learn that when you play on a site ambassadored by Negreanu that more rake is better.

It's baffling how Daniel, who is a strong advocate of openness and transparency, has zero problems of representing a site where you have to count the rake yourself because it's not a shown in hand history. Like there is no good excuse for doing this, except GG trying to hide how big their actual rake is. It's like when Stars stopped showing rake in tournaments with 200+15 and just show $215.

Lol yeh. But not just the cost of bumhunting. Cost of playing poker. Starting tables. Creating games. All of it. Trying to simplify it to 'bumhunting' is stupid.

Nobody table starts just out of fun when they're heavily losing to rake.

Good luck someone losing 40bb/100+ when it's all regs to make someone a winner. U all lose. Then you also all lose when a rec joins? What's the point

But the cheap store has a few cans a day, they run out soon, people fight over them. The other has plenty stock for everyone. That's why they go there if they are thirsty. The most popular sites can make them more expensive.

Well if nobody is starting games on Stars despite them seemingly having less rake because there are "fun players" on GG, what else would you call it? Extreme table selection?

You realize that they’re likely playing volume elsewhere in the meantime, no? lol

Why can’t it be both instead of having to be one or the other.

Lots of very strange logic in this thread so far.
Ofc there is a big difference between low stakes being raked higher than a 5knl game.

lmao/smh

I don't understand why you think professional poker players play poker?

If everyone is losing, nobody plays.

If everyone loses but one guy (say linus) you get battles fora couple of months until everyone quits like they do on stars. There's no recs to supplement the other guys battling in long term. A lot of guys take short term hit losing battling to get seats with recs. Problem is now. Battling and even bumhunting is -eV on gg.

I don't understand why you're saying extreme table selection?

Don't feed the troll. There's a reason someone has 70k posts on a internet forum...

I am saying that if you are playing at stakes where everyone is playing at such a level where you all lose to rake, there are three logical options:

a) play a different game which hasn't been solved to death and there are still edges amongst pros like PLO or whatever, if you're only good at NLHE and suck at poker generally, then too bad
b) swallow your pride, step down levels to where you have worse regs, and beat them cleanly
c) wait for a fish to sit, and hope you beat other bumhunters in a fastest finger first (if you guys even use fingers as opposed to scripts) battle to get seated

lmao

Why would they care about micro stakes rake if they don't play those games?

FWIW, if the micro- or small stake community wants to stage a boycott or whatever, you can obviously post about that on 2+2, too.

I will support the micro stakes boycott.

Ofc you are missing the point though, the reason this boycott has chance of success is because:

- There is a small community, all of whom know each other
- They are all relatively smart
- The rake has been increased so much, the opportunity cost of not playing is very low, so people are more likely to comply even purely in their own interest. You don't cost yourself much by not playing unbeatable games.

At smaller stakes the tragedy of the commons problem becomes much harder, because the games are beatable despite the rake, and people are less educated so they will not realise the games are unbeatable where they are.

Has there been any contact with GG representatives or sponsored pros?