Poker Orifice said:
Battle Royal... is that poker? Never tried it. It must be profitable though or else you wouldn't be playing it (or slayerv1fan/Josh Hoesel < former SnG pro, former Spins pro).
I only started playing on GG Poker less than 2 month ago, and I have only played around 140 of these Battle Royal games, so I have no idea, what my long term winrate would be. I do however think, the rake is extremely high and with the added lottery element from the bounties I assume, that grinders rely heavily on money from a leaderboard and/or rakeback to make a profit. I dont know, how this works, because its not offered here in Sweden due to our regulations.
I get 20% rakeback from a first deposit bonus, and I kind of dought, this is enough to overcome the 8% rake in the long run. I mainly played them, because its the only SnG, that GG Poker offer, other than Spins, and I wanted to give it a try. Until the recent software update I also could not play more than 2 tables without the poker client becoming extremely laggy. Which made it very unattractive for me to play MTTs or cash games on the site. But with Battle Royal 2-tabling is acceptable due to the fast Rush phase.
I dont think, I will be playing them much going forward though. It makes more sense for me to contend for the SnG leaderboard on ACR Poker, and I have pretty good results in 32-man SnGs on PokerStars, so it also makes more sense for me to continue playing a game, I know, I am doing well in. The only real advantage of the Battle Royal game is, that activity is so high, so you never need to wait more than a few minutes to get 2 tables going.
Poker Orifice said:
Most sites have moved towards higher variance, 'less poker' type games because this is what A LOT of the recreational gumbies want to play. No doubt they're not as outclassed in these games (or at least they are probably thinking this way).
Sure and GG Poker have taken it further than almost any other site by not even offering people the choise of less
gambling oriented traditional SnGs. But Mystery Bounties are popular. On Stars Mystery Bounty MTTs attract larger fields than similar PKOs, which again attract larger fields then similar traditional MTTs. The "Big" is now among the smaller field MTTs, that run on Stars, which I guess is kind of funny
Poker Orifice said:
I don't think GG turns people into gamblers. That'd be like saying Molson breweries &/or Budweiser turns people into alcoholics. Doesn't work that way (imo and the vast majority of the world's scientific community).
It might be an exaggeration to say, that GG Poker turn people into gamblers. But everything about the site is designed to enhance gambling addiction. And this is not just my opinion. This is something, that several professional poker players have said. Expect of course those, who work as shills for GG Poker.
Poker Orifice said:
I fail to see how a river card rolling off with a delay would make anyone focus more on results vs. decisions. Does it do that to you?
I am already an experienced poker player, so for me its just an annoyance, especially because it slow down the game. But the topic of this thread is, that OP feel, the variance on GG Poker is "crazier" than on other sites. And unless you think, GG Poker is rigged (which I dont), then there must be some other reason for this feeling.
And the slow river card reveal might be one of those reasons, since its whole purpose is to create a larger emotional reaction, when the river card change the winner. This might especially be the case, if OP play games like the Battle Royal or Spins, because there are many hands, that are all-in preflop in these hyper turbo formats. Whereas if you play cash games and to some extend MTTs, there are far less hands, where stacks go in before the river. And most people play Battle Royal and Spins on GG Poker, if nothing else to use the free daily tickets, they hand out for them.
Poker Orifice said:
I think how they got so big was on a number of factors. It'd take too long to explain it
Yes I agree, that there are multible reasons for their success. But being succesfull does not mean, that everything you do, is good for the public. And I think, there is good reason to be critical of several things, that GG Poker do. Not allowing players an easy way to track their results in different games, not allowing players to withdraw their own money due to an undefined "sufficient gameplay requirement", threatening to ban cash players for "bum hunting", even though they have now introduced random seating in cash games and so on and so forth.
