After reading this thread, it's time for us as a community start asking the question:

- 1: Should we trust a Chinese company that offers poker in countries where online poker is strictly prohibited?
- 2: Should we trust a site with many accounts of shady dealings going on? (a simple 2p2 search shows dozens of them)
- 3: Should we trust a company that allow US players to circumvent federal laws and play via VPN by showing just a simple hotel reservation?
- 4: Should we trust a site that allows players to move money with ZERO KYC, by using shady skin/agent schemes for deposits / withdrawals?

They are clearly doing all of this (along with obscene RB deals) to gain market advantage, but how long can it last?

Yes, they have dnegs and Fedor. They have WSOP. But that's not what makes a company reliable. Money buys all that and Full Tilt and AP/UB also had these.

Greedy and naive poker players looking only at EV on large prizepools will ignore alarms like the ones above. The fundamental premise for someone to be a mark is that they want to take advantage.

We might be looking at Absolute Poker / Ultimate Bet 2.0 here, guys.


Watch out.

Don't they close accounts and seize money of winning players? Seems like that should be #1

- 5: Should we trust a site that has DNegs

How is this not #1?

Well they are quite explicit in that they tell you GG poker is not a place to make money. They want it to be a place where Bob the construction worker plays a couple SNGs after a hard day's work. They tell you in very plain language that they are not a site to make a living at.

I think you should trust them to confiscate your money if you prove yourself to be withdrawing more than you deposit. I think you should trust them to make sure you can't win a considerable sum of cash and sustain it for the long run.

I don't think you should trust them to be anything otherwise.

if that's the case they should consider removing the leaderboards.

Their model is so strange. If they ban winning players then over time bad regs become good regs, fish become breakeven, and whales are still whales. Eventually the bad regs that became good regs get banned, new players win a while and it becomes a vicious circle again until most people who play poker are banned.

The GG ecology equilibrium will result in the whole world being banned with one whale standing.

GG doesn't have any SNGs. So clearly they are scammers.

I think it's Israeli, or at least part Israeli owned.

Yes, an Israeli named Hilly Ehrlich who also owned a short lived betting site in the UK called w88. He also owned the midnight gaming sites. All had massive overrounds, and were just a nightmare to deal with in every deparment. They were those sports betting sites that sponsored football clubs and the like, but if you had even the slightest knowledge about winning money sports betting you would avoid like the plague.

The other name you can find is Kim Mansoo, a South Korean.

Hilly Ehrlich also has a history of bleeding whatever he can from his sponsorship deals and then abandoning the companies and starting something new under a new name. You'd imagine these short ventures are profitable little escapades.

Should we trust him? I'd rather trust Amaya and that is ****ing blasphemy.

I certainly would not trust them the same way I trust a reputable gambling business with a proven track record. So far they haven’t done anything to earn any kind of trust.

Recent events make me lean towards not trusting them at all.

No. Banning top winning players mean less money is removed from the eco system.

Ideal for their model is that everyone an even player (without rake) sloshing money back and forth. They just rake funnel those transactions into their pockets.

That’s not how poker actually works though. Look at one of those live streamed 2/5 games in Texas. Everyone is horrible but the top 10% still win heaps. In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king. Removing the 10+ bb/100 winners doesn’t make everyone break even before rake. The 6bb/100 winners just become 10bb/100 winners.

Then how would they know who to ban?

From what I’ve seen of GG poker , banning scummy bum hunters and having a general anti-reg policy ....I’ll be creating an account there soon. Games might actually be fun without all the 20 tabling nits

Isnt at that point BJ more fun than highly raked poker?

No. I don’t even like blackjack personally.
Poker should be played among people who are mostly trying to have fun. That’s when it’s actually an enjoyable game. If 80% of the table are there trying to grind out a living the games become unbearable

I strongly disagree. You are describing roulette with extra steps.

I also think that you are describing an extraordinarily boring game. Have you tried playing poker without a financial incentive? It's ridiculous.

Trying to win is integral part of the game and even recreational players are trying to win.

And fwiw good regs are far from nits and usually are on the other end of the spectrum. Even mid-high stakes live, the rec is usually the one who keeps folding and letting the regs push him around. I assume its different at low stakes, but still.

I keep hearing this but haven’t actually heard from anyone that has actually had this happen. Is there another thread with proof of this?

Just do a search. This has been the pattern for many years.

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...layer-1775624/

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...-wave-1773164/

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...d-40k-1775757/

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...000-a-1771489/

Wow, so it's worse than I thought.

What's Bryn Kenney's exact role? There are many reports of him claiming he has a share / referring to GG as "his" site.

Also, for those who say a private company can ban anyone for winning (hi Bryn!), this is not the case if it's not explicitly written in the TOS, as the TOS also protects the customer. Specially confiscating funds, which is flat out stealing and illegal. GG would have major problems with any serious regulator.

But they are regulated in Curacao, which is one of the worst regulators out there (it is basically owned by whoever pays them for licenses).

That's why GG can continue to use their shady "agent" system, have money being moved without KYC and offering games to countries where online poker is stricly prohibited.

1) he deposited small amount won 3k in few days and was banned for predatory behaviour
2) banned for ai or 3rd party prohibited software playing thousands of spins along with 4 other people from his stable
3,4) multi accounting

I don’t see anywhere banning players for “winning”

Not saying there aren’t any cases out there but I haven’t seen any yet....

This page has some investigation about Hilly Ehrlich (allegedly owner of GGpoker)'s shady background:

https://7500toholte.sbnation.com/201...nge-background

But in fact it would be quite ironic if Bryn were actually one of the owners (considering his multi-accounting background).

This Hilly Ehrlich guys business strategy has always been a kind of pump and dump so far. They pump money into sponsoring a football team, take as much money as they can from customers with unbeatable sports books and horrible casinos, and then close the site. Rinse and repeat.

They spend nothing whatsoever on the brand because that would be counterproductive considering the business is going to be closed when people catch on how bad it is. All the site names generally bare no relation to anything to do with sport but sometimes have a presence in the chinese market. I'm not sure why this is. There are multiple football teams, including in the premier league, who have chinese letters/words on their kit. If you google manbetx and look at images you can see Crystal Palace FC still have manbetx and the chinese writing (which is bigger than the english writing) written on their shirts. Manbetx doesn't even operate in the uk for some time now yet are still sponsoring teams. I'd guess they had to close because of UKGC being onto them but still had time on their sponsorship deals.