Is GG Really Banning Big Winners? WSOP News, Molly’s Game Stories - DAT Poker Podcast Episode #81

welcome everyone to

episode

81 of the dab

poker

podcast

, it's august 14, 2019. i'm your host, it says right there on the box a schwartz alongside producer extraordinaire roscoe p coltrane well i have some red meat for you guys that It's great, I love when it surprises us with new releases that are current and came out today. That is fantastic. I love it. Mr. Terence Chan Terence. How are you sir? I'm pretty good about three-quarters of the way through this show. I like red meat. Like 100 of this program. I thought that. was that was a little embarrassing that was great uh and in Mexico uh mister daniel gran and daniel how are you the last time we did a

podcast

? oh boy, okay, this is actually this, I just had some wine with dinner, this is number two, so we're not going to go crazy.

I'll probably go off the rails anyway, but I do it sober, so I had a day off. I've been watching hockey with my wife and I saw the bad

news

. I know you. We are all happy with the result for the Vancouver Canucks. I bet St. Louis like an idiot. We are very happy here. As I was saying in our chat, I think this is probably the first five-

game

winning streak in August in the playoffs for the Canucks. uh we're so happy we're excited uh we didn't think we were going to be here the Vegas Gold Knights also sailing yeah they're up by two you know they've won two

game

s I'm so upset I bet on Las Vegas when the series was ridiculously priced, but I didn't bet the sweep and I

really

should have because I

really

feel like you know they're super determined to not lose a single game, you know?

I think that helps Las Vegas more than any other team because in the back to back you know that you can play with Leonard and then with Fleury because both are going to come in, I imagine that in a back to back and eh, but a lot. of teams will be able to do that because they don't have a reliable backup, we don't really have a backup, I mean, Fleury's not the backup, but he's kind of a backup right now, actually, okay, uh, we're. We're going to get into a lot of things today, obviously we've got some, you know, topics related to heads-up challenges and things to get to, but we're also going to talk about some of the world series of

poker

and it's chugging along. along with gigi, he is the host of all the events, now

wsop

.com has held his 31 events in July, so we are now in August and right in the thick of it, so without further ado, why don't we talk quickly about some? of those things terrence you have been playing some of the gg

wsop

s trying to win that i think this you have a double this will be your first bracelet if you win a sacred epic troll you are the guy that saw me finish second uh just thank you thank you uh no i i have been playing this week just uh just because it's been no limit Hold'em heavy and I'm I mean I like I think I'm good and no limit Hold'em. them, but people are so good now, you just look at these super stacked final tables, especially the big buy-in events, and I really have to wonder if I'm plus ev in the field or if I'm just just punting, I'll play some things that are, you know, maybe turbo structures, maybe a little more risky, um, but in terms of gameplay, like a long nolam job in Holdems, I don't even know if I'm the favorite. in one of these four-figure buy-ins, so, come on, I'd rather save, you know your dad, you know you have kids to take care of, I'm just trying to build up my dad's credit for uh, well, there's two more events hold limit, there are two hold limit events that haven't been announced, so maybe I'll get a gg poker online bracelet, we'll see, but there's nothing on the calendar for me this week.

I ask you: when has it ever mattered whether someone has an extra CV when playing in a World Series of Poker event? That's not a thing, it's a bracelet event. What you are looking for is a bracelet. I mean, Karen says like she's not sure. I would be very surprised if you played so badly that you are not a favorite on these courses because I play these courses every day and they are very soft at all times, you are obviously right when you get to the end of the game at the final table. a lot of the grinders, but on the way there you see a lot of really bad plays, like you're not a favorite terrance, oh my god, yeah, I mean that's the thing, I think if you stop the tournament after 18 levels.

Sure you know there's a lot of dead money on the field as it progresses, but the thing is, you're playing your highest stakes against the toughest players and it's not clear where the capital is, where the capital distribution is, well, you too. do that terrence when the average stack is in the neighborhood of 20 to 15 to 25 big blinds, how much better parents do you think the guru of all gurus is than you playing 20 big blinds? slightly more HP in this, but you're not so overpowered that when you get it, if you get it, you can position yourself to make it to the endgame on a regular basis.

I've done it 24 times and now it's crazy. I've just been getting the money and then blaming and blowing up, but you give yourself enough dice to roll like, how much worse can you get than this? That's why gg poker is paying this guy all this money because he's convincing me like me. I'm just like maybe maybe I'll just play every day maybe I'll just play every day for the rest of the series. I can do this, I would say play and then ask you at the end of the tournament, like ask if you feel like you're outmatched, like that's actually a barometer test, like I remember when I played Poker Masters a couple of years ago, Stefan Sondheimer, Corey Alder, all the guys and I think I didn't run very well. but they outplayed me and it was very clear, like you've been playing poker long enough to know the difference when it's like, oh, you know, I ran bad or like you know what they're just better than me and you'll understand.

I'm sorry and I'd be surprised if you played a week in a row with no limit and felt like you were so out of class that you're not, plus you're not, plus it's fair enough, fair enough that that could be the case, I mean . It's easier than ever, I think catching up with people, we talked about this, that there is no limit, it has become more difficult because there is so much information available, but that is information that is available to everyone, so I think that you They know it like I do. I've always been the type of person who works hard and studies the game.

I haven't dedicated time since I had my son and since I know, I focused on mma for a long time, but there is that availability, there is a lot, there is a lot. there's a lot of information out there a lot of things you can do so yeah maybe maybe back in the trenches we'll see you used to fly you used to fly to Las Vegas to play in these. events, now it's come to your house in the middle of nowhere and you still don't bother, it's true, I mean, you know, I used to play, I played heads-up 10k like for a few years in a row and you did well, The thing is that the live world series is very different, although I mean, you know Daniel talks about being soft and sure the world series is definitely softer in gg poker than it would be in like poker stars or something, but you know it's me.

I think you know you would agree that there is nothing smoother than a live world series event. I think I'd have a hard time being negative, Evie, at almost any world series poker event. that like the million dollars a drop and still there's enough businessman in that, it's true, you know, I think it's different when you go, when you fly there, when you fly there live, you also have a lot of people just chasing dreams and and flushing money down the toilet like we got 250 big blinds with top pair, why not? And you just don't see that as much in online play.

Another way to bet on world series poker. the gg poker client is the betting part uh the betting part um that particular member of this podcast might have had a little bit of success this week uh uh rosco, were you playing in events or were you just throwing in hearts here? I came in second place in the 5k six max, like you and Chris Mormon, yeah, yeah Chris, I was actually trying to buy Daniel and I could only buy what was worth five dollars and I kept clicking on it and it wouldn't let me. So I scrolled down the list and thought, "I know he bought some." But I bought more from Sean Buchanan than from Chris Morman.

Chris Morman finished in second place. He was a funny sweat, but yeah, very. easy, you get paid instantly, there's no uh, you know, there's no turning around, you don't have to get an escrow or anything, it's a nice easy way to participate uh daniel, let's talk about this because you're selling some of your stock and You've been tweeting, so for those who don't follow me, I can't imagine there are too many people who watch the show and don't follow you on Twitter, but if they do, they can track you on Twitter. you're tweeting before you post the stock you're willing to sell that day for the tournaments and they've sold out pretty quickly I imagine so, I actually changed the way I'm doing it now because I've been streaming almost every day too , so what I've been doing now is I'm on a five minute delay, so on the stream I let those who are watching and I tell them to listen be ready because in five minutes or whatever it is in real time for them it's a about to be published and then I waited five minutes so they could be ready with my fingers and it sold out in a second and a half.

I'm selling 25 percent with a one percent limit, so it's essentially only 25. People have the opportunity to buy a piece, but it's been a lot of fun because I've been making money off of people, like almost everyone. There's an interesting thing they do with the day two bet because you can buy a piece from someone. the second day when they already have a stack right established, then you have to ask yourself how that right is quantified, for example how much are you paying for it, so the way they do it is called asmu, just a stack profit margin average, so I don't charge a margin, I charge you, you know exactly one, but there's an average profit margin which is essentially whatever your day two stack is, divided by your day one stack, so if you started with 10k and chips and now you're buying a stack, that's it, that's 100k, well you're paying a 10x markup if you do it right, so a lot of times what you might see in that case is that you're very close to the money, so you know the person gets paid, but you still lose a little. kinda true, you lose a little bit because you're in a very good position to make a lot of money and stuff like that, that's how they handle that, other than that, I've been selling it with no margin for each event and that's what I plan to do.

The key when selling pieces is that you have to start the events on time so that they are not available. If someone is going to be late, it just doesn't work. You know that no. Offering a second and third ticket, which is unfortunate because you know it will be great too, but as of now the software only allows you to buy players who have registered on time and in their first point, I must mention it. I have to ask something since you mentioned being on time and that you, Ross and I, when we were waiting for them to come up, were checking the gg calendar for tomorrow to start at 5am for gg poker because it's one o'clock. one of those that are aimed at the Asian time zone, I'm assuming there are a few late check-in times since you've been going to the gym early, how was this an adjustment because we finished last week's program?

They actually cut your costs. you lost your connection while we were talking about sleep and the importance of sleep and I'm 100 with you, it's like the most important thing for you, for your mental prowess, uh, but coming from the world series in Nevada where you were potentially playing until four o'clock the morning, I don't know how late you really were, now you wake up at five, six, seven in the morning, an hour difference, since you're in Mexico, that must have been hard. It depends a little bit on your body and your schedule, it's actually us, I got used to it pretty quickly, so the way things work here where I am is that there is a gym, but due to Covid concerns, you kind of have to select the schedule and The only two slots available for me were 7:15 a.m. to 8:15 or noon to one and I thought that was my normal schedule.

I was going to the gym at noon, but a lot of the tournaments have already started and I felt like I would. I can't do that, so I said, you know what yolo, let's do it and I and I booked the time slot from 7-3, so I'll wake up at 6-30. m., you know, going to the gym four days a week, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. uh and you know that's four days a week outside of that um yeah, I'm playing the Asia tournaments basically on time like tomorrow's event, like you mentioned, starts at 5am. m., for me it starts at 6 a.m. m., um, but I'm probably going to sleep. in a little sleep until 8. um, I have this great woot band that is highly recommended.

I know a lot of people are on bremko using it. I know Matt Berkey, a lot of them, I highly recommend it and it gives you your recovery and your sleep scores and all of that and what you'll notice is amazing. Rory Mcilroy spoke, uh, spokefrom three to one. what it seemsMore or less, my goal or my hope is that when game day comes I can close that gap, so that if I win three to one, I'm making a good bet, so I hope someone decides to bet on me. three to one when I got to work and I've studied enough to feel confident, but it's actually discouraging now that I've accepted it, like I'm stuck, you know, listen, you put your foot in your mouth. say you're going to play you have to play you can't back out I'm not that guy I'm going to do it you know in retrospect I look back and think why did I agree to this but I did it?

I agreed. I'm going to honor the agreement and play the match and I just hope that, from my point of view, it's not too bloody. What day will one hand be dealt? I would say let's say October 14 and a half. so yeah, October 42, that's two months, that's exactly two months, that's beautiful, there you go, okay, I want to quickly move on to a topic that was also on poker Twitter this week and that a lot of people talked about the fact that uh, the winning players were banned from the gg network and had their money confiscated.

I did a little research on this, it's a little hard to tell because of course you know gg isn't going to come out and explain it like that. It happens, this happened on Pokerstars, this happened on other sites where you know that the site has a responsibility to be responsible for what they talk about and you know how to explain why things happen, but they also have a responsibility, of course, to the community. to be honest and upfront about what they're doing so it's a bit of a fine line that sites definitely have to walk and this was a player who went to two plus two and posted you guys remember two plus two it's a website It used to be great in the past, but anyway, now I hate you, maybe people don't, but the damn owner hates you now, right?

I'm just kidding, you're missing a tough time, he's just him. a good man, um, okay, so, some guy went to two plus two and posted and said, hey, uh, I'm a gg poker player and they closed my account and confiscated 180,000 there, um, say some, you already know. Great, long explanation of what happened, but you know, without going over everything, it seems like what happened was he opened a skin and an account on a skin, uh, natural help, I think, a few years ago and they banned it for reasons unknown. They sent us back immediately because of the way they refunded the money.

You know, they said, "Okay, we don't want you here anymore." They sent him his money and he said, "Please don't come back." I guess they said please don't come back if you're banned um however remember it's in a gg skin now this is for those who don't really understand um gg is the hub and they sell masks or they sold masks to other people who could direct traffic to the main network through the skin, you know if it's natural help or another brand, I think they've changed that now, but anyway, he opened an account, they closed it, they gave him his money back, and then I opened accounts on other scans , including Gigi, after being banned.

Now I think he said in the post and didn't really realize that the natural eight was a gg skin and maybe the others weren't when he started playing. gg deposited fifty thousand and raised it to one hundred and eighty thousand. They closed his account and said they were confiscating the money. And then, after some back and forth, they decided they were going to give him back the 50,000 and you know his initial bet. and then I keep the rest and redistribute it to the players I wanted to take out, so you know, I saw some people say that they should give him the full 180,000 and go and tell them to go away and close the account, but then you also have to understand that it becomes problematic for sites to do that because then it's just a free spin for people who are going to cheat the system and come play on the site by cheating and getting all the money that they make if they close their account, so There has to be some repercussions for him, though, you know, there's another one that we talked about earlier, it's a very fine line about, you know, why it was originally banned, etc. and how you handle that. moving forward when you ban a plan and sites running with skins have some difficulties because it's very difficult to track each and every person who signs up for a skin and signs up for gg and signs up for another scan because you know everyone is independent in someone of a certain level with the companies, but it's hard to track now if they should do a better job of trying to figure it out because the guy said he used the same name on natural help in gg in all these places, so there should be a mechanism to stop people who are banned, registering with the same name, information, email addresses and stuff, yes, personally I would say there should be, but again, it's difficult, Gigi blew up from nowhere to a giant site and sorry for going on and on.

I'm just trying to describe it before I tell it to you, but this has been the talk on Twitter this week and I'm wondering if I'm sure Daniel saw Terence. Look at that too, yes, a lot, so Terence, why are you starting? So Daniel can continue after that, sure, there's a lot to unpack here, um, where to start, so overall, it's kind of sparked this larger conversation about the particular practice of you guys know eliminating players.

winners

, which seems to be very much the focus of the debate, so everything you already mentioned, Adam, I think you know I agree, I agree with if a site tells you that. pack your bags, you're not welcome here, you know it, and you go up and check into another skin like you're, I mean, I don't want to say you're asking for it, but it's there, you've got it. to consider that there is a very likely possibility of this happening, I mean, if they tell you that you are not welcome, you are welcome, it happens in a land-based casino, you said don't come back here if they come.

If they come back, they can arrest you. You know that they have no obligation to provide you services. If they don't want you, either because you're a winning player or because you're as uh as the player, uh Tobias. I wrote as if I think he had already sent the email from him that was right here. He says that the email he claims to have received says that he was engaging in predatory behavior, described in rule two of our agreement with whatever, and that it did not satisfy the ecology of poker. requirements that to me sound like he made too much money, I mean it could be that he also got involved in other shady things and you know there's been a lot of discussion about the word bum hunting so I want to make my guess the position It is clear first regarding removing winning players or

banning

winning players, so I think winning players are an important part of the ecosystem.

I mean, I think there's still this aspirational aspect in poker that people can be professionals in poker and people can be winning players and they can win the game and study hard and do all that kind of stuff, so If I had a poker site I wouldn't ban the

winners

, I wouldn't ban the big winners, you can always do that. I know how to do the things that gg got around was just giving more rewards to losing players to donors, even things that stars have been doing, like you can take away rewards from your big winners and then you know, say "okay, well , it's you". you're winning the game, we don't need to give you your commission back and you know all these bonuses, um, that said, it's, you know, it's, no, I wouldn't if I was running the site, I wouldn't. do it, but the fact is they make it very clear that you know this is their policy, right?

You know the CEO said in an interview that this is not the place for you if you want to be a poker pro. Player I don't like, in this one the guy was playing for 18 months before his account started playing for 18 months on his second or third account or whatever before they blocked his funds and said that it was well. See you and by the way, we're going to take your money because that suggests just two things that suggest that, um, they weren't, the security department wasn't doing their job, which, as you pointed out, Adam, is difficult to do between skins. which at the same time I wouldn't expect to be able to register as terence chan on a skin tomorrow and then the third skin the next day and have all these accounts flowing through the space, I would expect security to want to do something about that and then the question arises about kyc and all that kind of stuff because he wasn't, he didn't play under his sister's name or do anything sneaky like that, he just registered as the same guy on all three or they were releasing him freely and which, you know, that's also questionable, so I mean, you know, I don't think either of those are a particularly good look for the site, unfortunately, but in terms of politics, in terms of well, we.

I'm not here to cater to the professionals, I mean, it's not what I would do, but in the end, that's their policy and these are the rules, and if you set foot in their virtual casino, that's how it is, but I think that how much more There are interesting discussions revolving around the sort of idea of ​​game selection and, quote, bum hunting. There's been a lot of talk about that word and how people don't like that word because it's essentially just game selection, pushing the envelope and game selection was always I thought it was a good thing, right, all the poker books that I read growing up they said that you have to practice good game selection and make sure you can beat the game you're in, if you want to be a professional poker player, but in the last 10 years of online poker we've spent a bit of game selection, like saying, oh, you know, I should try to find the best game and I shouldn't play against nine guys who are tougher than me, to this kind of thing where I have seat scripts and so as soon as the fish sits down, nine guys show up and as soon as the fish leaves, nine guys fold up and go, um, and it's like a race to get out of the game and all these things have made online poker out really off-putting to me, even as someone who's made a ton of money playing all my poker over the years and so I understand the decisions gg poker makes in these contexts, even if as a site, I wouldn't.

I did it myself, okay, it's my turn, okay, so there's a lot going on here. Sorry it was long term so that's great, I'm glad you did it because I was actually hoping you would go first anyway. So if you read what The guy said very clearly, he said this. He received an email saying that you are banned from playing on our network. You cannot play on our network if the terms of service say that if you try to play on our network, we will confiscate your funds. that you win or with all your funds in the case, so it is clearly laid out for him what is happening right now, he chooses maybe he knows it by negligence or claiming that he didn't know it was bought, you know he knows how to sign . to another site that was within the same network, this is where there is some responsibility on the part of the person doing this, as if he were excluded from this network.

If he starts planning this network from the beginning, I'm sure he knows what he's doing. that and you're pretty sure you remember that you were banned so that's where you hold the phone hold the phone let me send you an email or something and say um is it cool that I'm playing here before you decide risk fifty? a thousand or a hundred thousand dollars before you get to that stage, you know it would seem to make sense for you to say, am I kosher? What am I doing right, so don't get into the major, he chose not to do that, ultimately, you know, Gigi finally found out he was gambling and they did exactly what their terms of service said, which was confiscate his funds, give him his deposit back for his last deposit or whatever, and then dole out the rest of the funds to everyone else now, when you talk about the side note which is what terence mentioned it's like you know the idea of ​​

banning

winning players and that's not what is happening in gg poker right everyone complains and has complained in poker online for the last five to ten years about vagrant hunters, right, everyone sees this as a problem for the ecosystem.

We don't want people hunting vagrants. Well, there are certain win rates that are unattainable unless you use extreme forms of bun hunting and buttoning up as if it were the practice. Let's say we're playing, you know, three to four hands and then the fish folds and I hit you with the butt, I never hit you with the button every time, Terence, so we play one hand where I get the button and then that's it. You know. like we quit or something, so there is clear predatory behavior and it seems to me that a lot of people want to know what the exact rules are around this, you know in terms of what can constitute bomb hunting and what I don't think for the most part ?

If you have to ask, you know you're probably faced with that and one of the reasons I think it's kind of vague or left in the eye of the beholder as far as the company is concerned is because when you set guidelinesspecifics, people will find angles to just brush them without going over that line, so first of all, no tournament player is getting banned like all the top tournament pros. The world is playing on gg like everyone.they are playing there, there is no risk or problem of that, now you know the problems that they are talking about for years related to vip cash games and you know a specific type of clientele that It was, just, you know, these certain players were, you know.

According to the site, I'm engaging in predatory behavior, which essentially means that you know, like hunting bums, it's not a practice to just go, man, that guy's good, get rid of him, right? We have the world series of poker, we have all these tournaments going on like I do. said that all the best players in the world that you know are playing on them, so for this case specifically, there are two seconds, you know, two separate arguments like, okay, I should have been banned, but the mistake or the misconception when you start to see headlines it's like If I win money, will they confiscate it because I'm a winning player?

No, that's not what happened if you cheat, collude, use bots, or get banned from the site for any reason and then try. you know, set up another one, you know, set up another account, play that way, your funds will be confiscated because like taran said and also adam said, there has to be repercussions otherwise you know those people can free roll and say, Well, why not, I'll just start. another account and go from there, so there have to be very different repercussions and you know the CEO said very clearly that it is not our policy to make things as easy as possible for professional players to win the maximum amount of money with our Ya you know the most valuable players or the vips, like there are a lot of professional poker players on gg and they are welcome, but again we are not going to close ourselves.

You know, shower them with extra gifts and tell them thank you so much for coming, like let me. give yourself an extra of this or that or make things easier and if you are one of those people who constantly hunt buns and you know predatory behavior, which is essentially this, you know that the live one sits, you sit with him immediately in the second. he quits, you quit if you're doing that, you're bum hunting if you're not willing to play another 15 minutes or whatever, you know, that's what bothers me, but that's what bum hunting is. Karen said game selection is important, so before. you sit in the game you say okay, well, I don't know, this game may be too difficult for me, I want to sit, then you see that the game is good, you see that you are playing it well, but when that player quits, you are playing because if you fold the hand after that, as far as I'm concerned that's what bum hunting is, you have to give a little to do a little well and like I said there are certain win rates that are simply unattainable without that. all the sites know it, not just you know gg, we all know who is engaging in this predatory behavior, the difference is that Gigi has the real balls to do something about this clear online poker problem.

Everyone wants to see missing homeless hunters like us. We don't like the practice. Nobody likes it except the hobo hunter. Nobody wants people to do this. You know, with the threat of saying: listen. If you engage in extreme predatory behavior, you run the risk of not being allowed to play anymore. on our network they won't confiscate your funds, that doesn't happen unless we ban you and then you say yolo, I'm going to open your account and try to bypass the band and then I'll play again. Well, then, in that case, the terms of service are pretty clear, so there's not much to debate as to whether they handled it exactly within what the tltos guidelines said.

Yeah, I guess my question would be sorry to jump quickly. My question would be um, you know, and I think we've pointed that out. I mean, you're dropping 50,000 on one aspect. You know, you should probably do some research to see if you've been banned or what it looked like. I understand it and I agree with it. I'm just wondering what the site's responsibility is to have protocols in place to stop people because you know he registered under his name and sent a wire presumably to deposit 50,000 and if he loses the 50,000. You know, we never hear from him again. , right, he already deposits more and he loses more, whatever it is.

So is there accountability on the site to be able to stop those guys before you know it and I understand that you shouldn't, they shouldn't be. make it totally okay with that, but is there a process that should be put in place to prevent that from happening absolutely and, in fact, absolutely? The statement that gg posted today, I don't know if you saw it, specifically said that We're going to work towards it and like you said, you know Gigi has grown exponentially and there are so many different masks and so many different ways that people can like her being part of the network that was a difficult task to capture the people who like them instantly.

Well, that's something we're going to work on to make sure that when people do this, but I highly recommend that if you're a player, before you decide to play, if you've already been banned, you just send an email and say. Guys, is it okay if he had taken that one step? You know the sense of personal responsibility and you say okay, maybe I should be careful about this. They know he got away with it for a while. losing, but here's the thing and Terence, I don't know if you remember this from the star days or whatever, but usually what happens with sites is when there's a big win or someone wins big, that's when they usually properly examines an account, so in Gordon's case okay or whatever, if he was just playing one and two dollars and he was doing it, you know, from any VPN or he probably would never have noticed, but now he's winning like seven hundred a thousand dollars and they are going well. let's do an investigation, let's make sure it was him, let's make sure he was where he said he was supposed to be, all that kind of stuff, so similarly, now you know he makes a lot of money and all of a sudden you know they check the check.

To make sure because that's what security should do, we have to make sure that this guy has multiple accounts. You know, if he's doing something wrong and that's when you get attention, usually if a guy is losing, like you don't care about the guy cheating. right, if a guy has lost like 50 60 000 you're not thinking right, this guy is clearly in cahoots so it gets attention, it's not a free spin in the sense that people think, oh, they just wait for the type, how you think they are. We're just lurking and saying ooh, let's wait until this guy starts winning like this.

It's absolutely stupid to think that that happens not just on gg but on any of the sites, so I don't think there's any evidence of any of the sites we do, sometimes it seems that way because when a big score happens is when it's called the attention on that account, you know, they dig a little deeper and say, oh, this guy got banned in 2016. Yeah, so you're right. I think that's the way most security sites will work: they'll verify the cash withdrawal, you know, they'll make sure everything is kosher and that's the triggering event, that being said, I mean, I think there are ways to proactively prevent someone from being banned, I mean.

I don't know if this guy went out and bought a new computer and changed his IP address and did all this stuff, but the fact that he used the exact same name and with the same passport information and didn't catch him for 18 months, you know, they say which is definitely a missed step and I think gg admitted that I read the statement they saw, I think they missed it, but it's a clinical misstep and that's what it is. it looks bad on the site, but I want to go back to the kind of idea of ​​hunting bums because you know, I think you've got it right if you don't, you don't want to say well, this x is a bum hunt and y is not a bum hunt because they will walk as close to the y line while still staying on the x side of x and that just makes it a shitty experience for everyone um olivier bouquet actually had a fantastic tweet storm about this today talking about this and a lot of behaviors and he's a high stakes heads-up guy, so if anyone knows, he knows and you know, he talked about the exact same things you talked about about buttoning up, leaving immediately, joining immediately when the fish strikes and he's not there. willing to continue the game.

You know, he said it was kind of like that old saying about pornography, like you know it when you see it, you might not be able to define it, but you know it when you see it, um, but in terms of winning player position, I mean . It seems like this is where a lot of the confusion lies, you know if this guy wasn't, if this guy was a model citizen and you know he played the game, even after he was gone, you know you played someone else. . half an hour all this kind of stuff, but he turned out to be an excellent player and a big winner in the games he played or so, take a different hypothetical player who is just a grinder, he is just absolutely beastly and can take on all comers and he can win every game, but he has a win rate, I mean, it's not out of the ordinary, it's not like a possible microphone or Russ Hamilton's win rate, but it's like he's the best and he's the goat.

That's a player Gigi is happy to have and will continue to serve or they won't do it right, so like I said, it's not just based on how skilled you are. Having said that when it comes to tournaments you're like I'm not. I think you will ever see a time where a player will be banned from playing in tournaments. Having said that, there are VIP cash games that are sort of invite-only or whatever, so it depends on which VIP games you know specifically. It's up to the players who play them in terms of who they want to play with, as far as just banning a guy because he's good.

I think about four years ago when the sites first started, it was actually a case with about five different people. They'd get an email and say, listen, man, you're fantastic, you're really good at poker and you know we can't handle you on the other side because you're killing it like you're killing our games. Well, that happened, I would say literally four to five players and at that time people were saying, "Okay, whatever you know, for three four years, I haven't seen anything like that, so the only thing or the only thing that would happen." take you down that path of saying that, you know, this player may not be around anymore, but it's if he's practicing predatory behavior, which is bomb hunting, constantly buttoning up and things like that, um, I forgot what I was going to say also . to that, uh, but yeah, so no, like if he's winning alone, they won't ban you, but if you're playing, if you're in the streets, you know, and you're playing against three four. other good players and you're better than them, come in man, crush those guys, they won't ban you for that, they'll ban you if the live one sits down, you feel good as soon as he sits down as soon as he does.

Leave it, you quit, I mean, this is like you said, Olivia said it best, like you know, when you see it, man, like no, if you're asking the question like, am I hunting bums?, you probably know what you're doing. doing. is aligned with bomb hunting, so even in the private app games that I've been playing, you know, from time to time with some of the guys we have some kind of unspoken rules, it's not firm, but it's okay, when this guy quit guys we can We don't just ruin the game like six players go to nil because he quits, we at least have to play for about 30 more minutes so when we do we're all essentially in agreement and in some cases we go from more cb to negative. e o to go from neutral v o to waste time, but we do it to improve the game, so if you are one of those people who makes a lot of money playing online poker or poker in general, think about this, no No I want to give that up, right?

You want to play in these games, so in some cases think about what I can contribute to this ecology, maybe I can be the guy who starts the game with two other pros for 30 minutes before the guy start. there, at least it looks like we're not playing just because he's playing, but ultimately everyone knows, when they see him, they know what bum hunting is and if you plan on doing that in gg, you run the risk of not being interested anymore. accept. on the site and that's, as far as I'm concerned, that's bold because we've been talking about this problem in online poker for 10 years, well, it's a problem, what can we do about it?

Yes, if you do, see you, period, yes. Okay, I'm glad I'm over that, we'll see what else comes of this. Sorry I used to have such hard buttons in lemon. Hold them like, what would that be like when he played head-to-head? Women cling to PokerStars because they don't have any. At head-to-head tables people would just like to push their button and leave me all day.no problem, let's sit for three hours and you can beat the old games limit on most sites basically, but that's it. "it's not the same as it is today i think it takes i don't know if you could take the average person and turning her into a winner would take a long time I don't know daniel what do you think so it's an interesting question of course and you know what you really want to break down is like professional, like what, so professional, high stakes tournament player. , professional, you know, one, two, cash game player, um, if we look at some evidence, um, you know uh, the book that was just, you know, published by Maria um, you know, Eric Seidel.

She basically ran it for a year and you know, she won a tournament and did pretty well. I think, let's say, for example, making forty thousand dollars a year Playing live cash, obviously, we can't now because of the. Covid, which I think is suitable for a smart person with an above average IQ within six to nine months, you know, constant hard work to beat like a two to five cash game in the aria or whatever . I think that would probably be enough time again depending on the person and how dedicated they are to the study, but I think it would be over in that short period.

It's funny that I mention that video because on my YouTube channel, you know, recommendations come up and I randomly saw Charlie Carroll with another guy who told me I was teaching him poker or something, so I saw some reference to that, but uh. Yeah, I don't know, I guess I think again that some people no matter how long they just won't be able to do it, but if I took someone off the street who had above average intelligence, I would say six to nine months I was able to convert them maybe. not the best player in the world, but competent and then a winning player in two five oh, Molly's game, well, I mean, the closest I got to Molly's game was when I was married, before that was uh Toby. mcguire invited me to his house for his birthday and I remember bringing him a set of wpt chips and it was like for his birthday and he was really getting into poker at the time and of course his wife gave him black bottom jack chips. like leo dicaprio got him chips like it was like putting him in there with the others right they're like stacks so it was a fun game there were like two.

I remember I got to play with Leonardo Dicaprio for the first time, you know? in that game and he was drinking having fun and it was the night that Spider-Man premiered at the box office and the phone was ringing like every 20 minutes. Leo was there because Titanic was the highest-grossing movie of all time and it was like Spider-Man was getting closer and closer and you could see that they were friends, but there was definitely a rivalry right where it was okay and then Spider-Man finally He overcame the cross in the process. And I remember Leo at one point lost two kings in a place where, like an ace on the turn, this is a guy who has infinite amounts of money, we're not playing that high stakes, he probably lost like three thousand. we walked into the front yard and we heard a bottle break because he hit it and he was absolutely furious and we were like yeah, now your net worth is only like, you know, 900 million 864 thousand or something like that, but it was just that he had that competitive spirit. him, you know, but it was an interesting night for me.

I lost in the game. I was playing blind. I didn't want to go in there. I didn't look at my cards until the turn didn't work. I lost like 20,000 on the game, but it was definitely a lot of fun, I got to know them a little bit, but other than that, I never played, I was never a charlatan, you know, I really wasn't, I never could have been, you know, because I had the chance. opportunity to do that in that Hollywood life and it just wasn't for me because I'm not very good at it and I don't feel comfortable doing it, so you know that was my only foray into that kind of thing. world and then didn't, Toby probably wouldn't want big winners eventually and later, so it's not like you missed a big opportunity.

I played with Toby in another private game at the Bellagio and won a big amount. against him, I wasn't happy, it was like someone had raised and called, I had called five seven of spades, he raised big again from the small blind and led h34, so I have the five seven right, so I have the double channel, the two of the six and Of course, I think the six and we're playing five hundred thousand deep each, so on the turns of six we enter the turn, he has pocket aces, so he kind of feels it for, you know, 350,400, it was like almost a million dollars. pot, you know you didn't run it twice, that seems like a good sweat if I do, if I'm all in for half a million million with a straight against the set, I think it's funny because I bought into that game.

He was really sick, I bought him for 50k and won once. I was like, oh, well, Kenny Tran invited me to the game because they needed a guy and they wanted to play with me or whatever, but he didn't have any money. So, well, Kenny, I need some money, I don't know, cash to go here. I'll give you 50. Okay, I'll give you about 50. And then all of a sudden my 50 looks like. like 500 I'm thinking wow and I mean, I remember Toby was like, you know, because he's a competitive guy too, like he clearly felt like he wasn't mad at me, but you know what I mean, like he felt like Like ah.

This guy is right, so he makes a lot of money or at least he did at the time, as you saw in the movie. You know, you know, you know he's always in a good place, but that pot definitely, you know, definitely surprised them, so, another one. The Adam podcast got me excited about edge betting a while ago. They did a two-part

episode

with this guy named Houston Chris. Does that sound familiar? Yeah, so he wrote a book about Molly's game as the actual telling of the story who knows if what he says is true, but he spent two hours with them and it's, yeah, the interesting lesson, it sure is good.

I heard a lot of first-hand

stories

from Dan Bilzerian's game, the game where the banker from Detroit heard he had lost, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars in the game, there are some great first-hand

stories

from that Hopefully the person decides to tell some of those stories one day, but um Okay, that's it for this week's show, thanks to so many things we ran again, and we got a couple of voicemails, so It was good and let's go everyone, thank you, thank you, see you. next week