I was suspicious before this thread but is anyone else that was following gpl now convinced he pulled a fast one on those gpl grills as rewards he was offering for watching? Pretty much in the same day that viewer on a pts betting heater earned enough for a grill in only two weeks unexpectedly, not only did both grills suddenly sell out before he could get one, but then AD took away all the rewards after to review them. This was during the cash swap loan timeframe and the viewer made it very clear all week in chat he was getting that grill and almost had enough pts, even displaying so in chat.

Obviously this is petty and unproven compared to real issue, and it certainly wasn't a scam unless the rewards were fake in the first place, but likely shows more of his bait and switch salesman side willing to flip on his word when convenient for him. He has the right to change reward offers, but a bit sheisty the way he allegedly did so suddenly to quietly not have to pay out on his mistake of underestimating a pts betting heater or cash shortage.

Grow up

All things considered, I'd still like to watch some of the online portion of GPL and support the players/commentators as long as everyone involved is getting paid and some more quality crumbs of knowledge keep getting dropped by certain world class pros.

However, if GPL is also now view-botting on Twitch I draw the line for my support there as a daily twitch viewer who watches lesser known and hard working quality streamers that have to slowly build their viewership/popularity organically. He could use the Gripsed defense and say someone is capitalizing on the moment to ruin him, but I noticed the botting as well even a couple days before this thread existed. They had around 500 viewers but I went in and the viewer list had maybe 50 names on it. I found it odd but didn't think much more of it because I didn't know this was a view-botting tell until the poster before me mentioned so.

viewbotting is VERY likely based on twinge.tv graphs compared with the early days of GPL on twitch.

From last year:

There was no sign it had started working - so the question was just at what point the money would run out.

FWIW the times they were actually live with matches was legit but these rebroadcast streams are 100% viewbotted. Very lazily at that. There are some programs out there they chat/follow/fill up member list. I guess money must be real tight for AD

I swiftly received a pm from AD explaining the twitch viewership irregularity and I am satisfied with his explanation and do not believe they are viewbotting. Twitch is constantly featuring them and as far as I know this would add viewers to the total that aren't in the chat box viewer list because they are watching on the front page. I kept my original post up so this would make more sense and possibly put this allegation to rest unless something else came up.

+1

http://www.twinge.tv/gpl/streams/#/23091518800

here is the today's stream chart.

im not sure why is it starting with 1000 viewers, could be a glitch, but hell, 1 hour in the broadcast randomly +800 viewer in a 10 minutes time frame doesnt seem right. i can see "hosts" can pump up the viewer counts, but every day near the start of the stream? c'mon man

take a look at Saturday 10:40 AM stream, what the actual **** is that?

on a side note i watch a lot of poker streams and never ever seen anyone hosting GPL, let alone for this many viewers.

The only thing I know about the Internet is what I read on the Internet , but is view bottling regular SEO business practice?

If not, plzexplain how this bad or who it harms?

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/24...ounts-1597255/

pretty big deal

^^

wow. had no idea that stuff was going on, but I now see why one would want to game the twitch stream.

what is Twitch's policy and how do they police it?

I regularly see featured channels on the front page with less than 400 total viewers. I'm not convinced that it has all that much value, and I'd certainly be skeptical that it could account for large/sudden viewership spikes.

@PTLou, Twitch doesn't punish people for doing this, because then you could simply do it to others and get them in trouble. They seem to be more focused on preventative measures.

EDIT: LOL there's a guy on front page right now with 38 viewers

i seriously dont know, they sometimes ban viewbotting streams, sometimes not, even the obvious ones.

banning GPL would be popcorn-worthy.

It seems the only thing Twitch is really policing is porn. They are ignoring spammers that host content that is not their own, like WSOP and Poker Productions content even when they are reported.

Ok to all above, an educational morning for me.

But still confused.

One postulated that viewbotting was scammy and help SEO yourself to more viewers.

Other said it doesn't work that way irl and twitch doesn't even care .

Which one is it?

Viewbotting is marginally effective (It used to be a lot more effective), mainly by making your stream seem more popular than it is. It can also skew ad figures, technically giving the stream more ad views (which increses revenue). However, the ad revenue is usually less than the viewbotting costs to put in.
Viewbotting is against the Twitch Terms of Service, and can be used to ban an account, although that is rarely done (considering it's no longer really effective).

The Twitch community is very anti botting, and this is likely to paint the GPL as a less than trustworthy stream, and will hurt the reputation of Poker on Twitch.

Alex must have hired gripsed.

GPL has had lots of front page time which is why the numbers are inflated. People throw around viewbot way too liberally. They are on their now: https://www.twitch.tv

(Front page means that twitch has a rotating 6 streams that appear to everyone that visits the site. Some of those are paid, some are not. When I used to get some it would equate to gaining around 1500 viewers over that hour. Thats why viewer graphs are off.)

atm i have channels on the main page with 26, 140, 63, 397, 616 viewers, and a GPL replay for nearly 2000 viewers.

i dont buy it. (but who knows, maybe poker became all of a sudden 10 times as popular as League of Legends on twitch.)

Its because GPL is the 'Hero Slot' which means virtually ever person that has the home page open is counted as a viewer. (it's the default video everyone will see that lands on twitch.) For people to see the other streams listed on the front page they have to click their info.

and +700 viewers last 7 mins when they dont even play just Stapes drops wisdom, dont know whats going on.

i see. i guess its country dependent, or some random algorithm, cause i dont have GPL playing on the main page, its some random LoL stream.

lets put it this way, half an hour ago Galfond played Tim0thee for 2000 viewers, which can be reasonable even on a replay, but basicly nothing happened since then and they have 2050 viewers watching Joao Simao and a total random Hong Kong guy playing 20 hands an hour pace.

in the dead time (20-25 mins) Stapes talked about how big the world is and a woman interviewed a guy who barely speaks english and still got 1950 viewcount the whole way. questionable at least.

You can't just say you're going to transfer back and not do it until much later.

That's a loan and if we remember the time value of money and credit risk from FNCE100 then we know that one who does this is stealing from the "creditor" who didn't really intend to lend at all in the first place.