The Pokerfuse Podcast comes to you live from sunny Barcelona, Spain where Nick and Mike talk about the return of the PokerStars Players NL Hold’em Championship in 2020.

The highly successful PSPC is coming back in 2020 and the guys discuss what information they have about the tournament and Platinum Passes. They also compare the original that took place in The Bahamas in January with the newly announced event that takes place next August.

The beginning of the fall online poker tournament series is upon us and the guys talk about what the top operators are offering and the massive prize pools that are being guaranteed.

GGNetwork has a new feature that provides players with custom bet sizing options at the table. Find out all the details and what this means for online poker.

Chapters

Full Transcript

Mike Gentile: Hello and welcome everybody to the Pokerfuse Podcast. It’s August 28, 2019. This is episode number 25. I’m your host Mike Gentile along with my co-host Nick Jones.

Coming up on the podcast today, PokerStars has announced the return of the PokerStars’ Players No Limit Hold’em Championship with a new location for 2020.

The Fall online poker tournament schedules are out and the online poker companies are putting on a packed schedule of events.

GGNetwork has introduced a new feature called Smart Betting that uses Artificial Intelligence to assist players with their bet size.

PokerStars Player Championship Returns in 2020

Nick: For the first time the Pokerfuse Podcast coming to you live from Barcelona. Me and Mike recording this in person, not from the floors of the prestigious casino of Barcelona, not from the lovely Hotel Arts, but from my second-floor hotel room, which we deem as perhaps the quietest place we could find to record this.

Mike: Yes, it’s a bit challenging to get a quiet area in a casino or even in a hotel outside the hotel room, but I think we’re going to do okay.

Nick: We apologize if the quality is not quite up to scratch, but hopefully you can hear us fine. We were here to see the big announcement from yesterday, which PokerStars is bringing back the PSPC, the PokerStars player No Limit Hold’em Championship, in August 2020. It’ll be 20 months after the last one, this time to be held in Barcelona, rather than the Caribbean.

Mike: Yes, that will be a big change, moving from the Caribbean to Europe. How do you think the players are going to react to that?

Nick: It’ll be very interesting to see. I think it makes a lot of sense for a lot of reasons to move it. I think the Atlantis Resort, nice as it is, a lot of players maybe have become a little tired from visiting there. I think strategically, Spain makes a lot of sense. Barcelona is a fantastic city, great food, great climate. So, there’s a lot of positives to it. Also, I think it does, perhaps, miss out on some of the glamour for a Platinum Pass hope to visit tropical paradise of the Caribbean. It doesn’t quite have that cache, but it has other things. For a city place, it’s hard to think of somewhere better.

Mike: The tournament had a different time of year this time, as well. So, we don’t have the break after the holiday season that it did when it was down in the Caribbean. Instead, we have a, perhaps, celebration of the end of summer.

Nick: It was interesting how they announced the details. Yesterday there was the big reveal that this was coming back. They were hosting during the EPT main event, which was day one yesterday.

They put a pause to have an announcement Ramon Colillas, the winner of January PSPC was up there to announce that he was going to return in August 2020, and at the first Platinum Pass these tickets worth $30,000. The first one was going to be given away to the person who wins an ongoing formation they were running all day called Chase your Dreams where there were five finalists, who’d been picked to come to play in this celebrity tournament. The heads up player was going to walk away with the Platinum Pass. This was announced and the heads up game commenced on the feature table and on livestream.

Mike: Back to conclusion, it turned out that there was another surprise.

Nick: Yes. Shock twist they decided to give Platinum Passes to all five of the finalists who turned up. It was genuinely was a really pretty cool moment. I don’t think any of the finalists were expecting it. I think it worked very well from a PR standpoint. I think the livestream would have been really cool to watch. There were lots of happy faces and a lot of the high fives and glitter cannon and all that. I think from that perspective, it worked really, really well, and certainly, it kicks off the year-long Platinum Pass process, kicks it off with a bang.

Mike: I thought they wove together the Chasing your Dreams promotion, which is what the event was that was taking place here in Barcelona with the theme of Chasing your Dreams for the PSPC. I thought they did a really good job with that. They surprised me a bit. After we did find out that the PSPC was coming back, I suspected that maybe not only the winner would get a Platinum Pass, but also his opponent would too as the runner-up. I didn’t expect that they would give all five, but I guess in hindsight, that was a pretty easy call.

Nick: Honestly, in hindsight, being in this promotion was called Chase your Dreams. Following your dreams has been a huge part of the marketing drive ever since Ramon came on as an ambassador. In retrospect, it’s a fairly obvious play, but it worked out really, really well. We certainly suspected that there was going to be a PSPC announcement, and dropped a few hints here and there, but that was, that was a cool surprise for everybody. What’s interesting is that, in many respects, they were very coordinated, perhaps the best I’ve seen from PokerStars in a long time, in no information up until this point, and somebody really quite fortunate to glimpse that this was coming.

I think most people were really quite surprised. Then when they announced it, there was a very good coordinated publication of information globally across all their sites. We’re talking even in on the PokerStars India site, the PokerStars New Jersey site. All the European sites went live with these landing pages, the PokerStars the live website, it’s got lots of details about what— Not a lot of details, some details about the event that’s going to be taking place in a year’s time. Even in the casino itself, we all came out of the room, and all of a sudden, there’s all these PSPC displays out, video displays that are being coordinated nicely. That was really cool, but then once that died down, we realized that there was lots of information that they haven’t talked about at all, and we still don’t know.

Mike: I understand that they want to trickle that information out. Some of it may not yet be determined. Some of it, they’re just looking to maximize the impact that it could have on its own instead of releasing everything at once, but there are some key details that I think I would like to know as a fan.

Nick: I think the big two numbers from the last time they announced it that they announced right at the front, and this was the big draw, where they were going to be giving away over 300 of these Platinum Passes which were valued at $30,000, and they were adding $1 million to the first-place prize. Instantly, the big thing was, we’re creating this super high roller tournament, and we’re adding $10 million. There’s none of that this time. None of that has been announced. Either they are deciding to announce that later on, announce some of these details later on, or they won’t, and it’s just going to be a tournament where they will be giving away some Platinum Passes, and they’re not going to specify how much to walk back from— Because the difficulty is once you focused on numbers, the only way you can really go is they can’t go, “This time, we’re going to give away 200 Platinum P asses.” Everyone’s just like, “That’s rubbish. That’s only $7 million, or whatever.” Maybe they want to walk back from it. It’ll be interesting to see.

I certainly got the impression that— This reveal yesterday, I think was very good. I think it worked much better than when I think when Daniel Negreanu gave away the first Platinum Pass was in Prague like December 2017 I think, just over a year before. There was so much information, how much they 're worth. He gave away Platinum Pass to the bubble boy of the EPT Prague Main Event. It just got the vibe that there was no one really knew what was going on. Both on the casino floor and people watching on the livestream because it’s so much information to take in.

They may purely just be thinking, “Let’s focus on not the numbers, the branding, Chase your Dream.” They have this great video, Ramon here, chased his dream, it’s has transformed his life and he was a Platinum Pass winner, which is obviously a huge marketing win he’s now an ambassador. He’s a great ambassador in a key market. They want to focus on that, not the perhaps what would appeal more to the pros, which is the numbers or a guarantee or something like that. Maybe it comes later, then maybe they have decided that they’re not going to be talking in that way.

Mike: I saw over on the PokerStars blog, I believe it is where they have the PSPC 2020 section, that they have a running tally of how many Platinum Passes they’re giving away and maybe there’s plans for them to promote that specific piece, to get a buzz created around, “How many are there going to be? How many are there now?”

Nick: Yes. That’s very cool. They’ve got this big world map where you can see the different countries, the people who’ve received Platinum Passes, there’s a big countdown to when it starts, how much is being given away. Again, the coordination here is much better than I think anything that we’ve been from PokerStars in a while. That’s very cool. I think the first one was a big success in many ways. It was the largest ever tournament outside the WSOP in Triton. It made some really good stories that certainly deserved to penetrate outside of the poker world and into the mainstream.

I think they’re going to be armed with a lot more data and a lot more knowledge about what worked and what didn’t from the livestream, from the branding. I remember the first time around the branding was very much a celebration of poker and kind of this is PokerStars’ way to give back to the community. I think they realized that there’ve been some missteps particularly with their live branding that they wanted to address head-on with this big, splashy event. There’s none of that now. This is very much about this kind of Chase you Dreams style of things. They’ve switched up the branding pretty significantly and definitely the message yesterday was very different from the message two years ago, a year ago.

Mike: They’re looking at this event as something that transcends poker. They’re really trying to hit at what makes people take what excites them in their life, even with the Chase your Dream promotion. Part of the application process was, “Tell us your story.” They’re looking to find people’s stories. I think that that will then appeal to a lot of recreational players, to a wider audience, and perhaps make it even more of a success.

Nick: Yes. There are some details that we do know. We can through very briefly. This will be a €22,500— I said that poorly. €22,500 buy-in tournament, which does equate to $25,000 right now. A Platinum Pass will include six nights stay in a hotel, flights transference some expense. These packages are worth €26,466, which also converts to $30,000. Those facts are the same, except that they decided to denominate it in the currency of the target country. The next giveaway that they’re going to do— They’ve just given away five Platinum Passes.

The next one I think is either running from this week or next week, very soon, is Mystery Chests. It’s linked to stars rewards. You can earn this special Mystery Chest if you win any hand at a cash game with eight-five, which was Ramon’s winning PSPC hand. If you get that, you win a chest. This chest you open up and it could have a Platinum Pass in it. They will 10 in total given away, five in the international market, five in the French and Spanish market. These chests, they don’t have a Platinum Pass in, they will have tickets to start your journey. If you find the right term for it, to Mega Path. It’s their branding for a steps-based satellite system, and you can start at those steps. You win 50 cents or $2 tickets.

We know all that is lined up, and that’s going to be the next thing. I would expect the WCOOP will probably have a few Platinum Passes for the leaderboard winner, the main event winner, and that will be in a few weeks time.

Mike: It should. When it comes to measuring the success of this new PSPC, how do you think that PokerStars is going to look at it and how do you think the industry as a whole is going to look at it? Last time we had just over a thousand entrants. It was the biggest one ever. Could this even still be a success if the numbers fall short of that if we get 900 runners for this one and it’s not the biggest ever?

Nick: I would imagine this is probably the biggest conversation that PokerStars had and one of the main arguments not to run a PSPC. I think they genuinely debated it for quite a while. It’s exactly that, what happens if that happens? Will people just say it’s a flop, with a prize of just 25 million? It’s obviously something that operators worry about all the time. The topline figures will always say they’re good to look at, we absolutely look at them. We like putting the graphs together but, underneath those data points, it’s always going to be describing how much— We don’t know how much was given away. You can give away Platinum Passes to make sure you get people in seats. You can have really aggressive satellite systems, you can change your spin and goes to be giving away tickets. There’s loads of things to kind of juice the numbers, so you can’t just look at something as a success or failure based on these toplining figures. With that said, I definitely think it’s something that PokerStars thought about.

My first impression is again because yesterday they didn’t talk about numbers, maybe they want to move away from that. I guess, being in Barcelona, that’s a bigger draw, it’s a lot less costly for the pros to go to. I think last time it was about one-third, two-third mix of Platinum Pass people and direct buying off satellite winners. I would think because it’s Barcelona— I mean you see the thousands of people just here playing now, it’s a normal EPT event. Yes, it’s a 25K buy-in, but it’s easier for a lot of people to get to and cheaper to stay It’s going to be a 17 or 19-day festival and interestingly, one thing they’ve changed is the PSPC is going to be sandwiched in between the other events, rather than— Was it right at the end of the PCA last time?

Mike: It was at the beginning. The PCA came afterwards.

Nick: Right at the beginning. This time it’s stuck in the middle, so they’re going to have the six-day EPT National, the three-day Super High Roller, which you’ve just had, then the five-day PSPC, and only on the final day of that, does the main event start for a week. I think they’re clearly looking at getting people out here for the entire time and for them, if you’re a Grinder, that’s just one event of many that you’re going to be participating in. I think it does attract— I’m not going to be able to remember the names, but two big footballers from this country. I wasn’t aware of this, but come and play EPT events, I’m not sure, PokerStars doesn’t make a huge deal about it. I think they almost come of their own accord and they come and play the 25K. Both of them final-tabled it this year, one of them got to heads-up. It’s an event that just draws people because it’s Barcelona, because it’s accessible, because it’s an amazing city. So that is going to help the numbers regardless of how much PokerStars chooses to pump into it.

Mike: So how then do think, if not numbers, if not the number of entries, if not the prize pool, then how do we look at this to determine, or how does PokerStars look at it to determine if they should do it again?

Nick: Yes, it’s a good question. We asked PokerStars execs after the PSPC finished and during it, “What numbers are important? Can you justify how much you’re looking to bring back to online?”, and I think they very much looked at is as like, “We’re not just going to just be getting back that 10 million that we pumped into it but as a branding exercise it was very successful and as long as we can get it signed off, we’d love to keep doing this because I think it is a way that the entire company can get behind a fantastic idea.”

Mike: I think last year, part of what they said they were trying to do was grow the game of poker overall so not just their company’s portion of that but poker as a game.

Nick: Yes, and it’s their best chance of the year to get these stories in the mainstream and they couldn’t have wanted more from the PSPC. They had, as you mentioned, Platinum Pass person who won it with loads of great stories coming out. We’re only going back five months. It feels like a lifetime ago but we had the guy who got his thing through the Christmas present.

Mike: Oh, right, yes. Joe Ingram had tied his going to the PSPC to if they gave this guy a Platinum Pass.

Nick: Yes, I think the early stuff did really, really well. This Platinum Pass system is just so conducive to loads of great stories that stretches over a year and then you’ve got the tournament itself, which was a huge success, loads of great stories there and a really, really good buzz in the Caribbean which I’m sure they will have again amongst the media, amongst the staff. Just talking to the staff afterwards and reading Twitter, they seemed genuinely excited about it. It’s something they can all get behind, giving away Platinum Passes.

We saw it on stage yesterday, these are people, this is huge life-changing stuff, they’re going to be playing in a 25K event, a chance of winning multi-million dollars, didn’t expect it. It’s not all just smoke, it is life-changing stuff for a lot of people. That really comes across, they have a huge opportunity to get that to come across, so I think that’s what they’re going to be looking for. They’re looking for coverage outside the normal places you’d expect it, headlines that you not normally wouldn’t expect, great stories being generated for a period of over a year.

Mike: Yes, I think it’s going to be more qualitative than quantitative when looking to judge the success but all signs so far are pointing to it being a good start and a great event and we’re looking forward to how it plays out over the coming year.

Fall Online Poker Tournament Series Overview

Mike: With the end of summer, comes the start of the fall season, which has traditionally been a very busy time for Online Poker Tournament Series and this year is no different. We’ve had schedules released by PokerStars for the World Championship of Online Poker, we’ve had GGNetwork release their schedule for their fall, Big Fall Tournament Series and we’ve also seen partyPoker release their schedule. Nick, what are some of the topline figures from the schedules that have been released?

Nick: One questioning here is going to be the biggest month that we’ve had in online poker, if you just signed up the topline figures, it’s going to blow previous springs and autumns out of the water. WCOOP is going to be $75 million guaranteed, which is interestingly, that’s a huge number, it is 5 million more than the 70 million last year.

Mike: That’s been a trend, hasn’t it? The 5 million bump?

Nick: Yes, the underworld, what we’ve normally seen as a 5 million bump every WCOOP or SCOOP and so if anything like if you will be skeptical of it or critical of it is that it’s actually the same as what we had in SCOOP last so they decided not to bump it. It’s a little surprising just because they absolutely could, last SCOOP, they paid out over $100 million for the first time ever, last the WCOOP prior to that. A year ago, it was like a million short of 100 million, so 75 million is not close to what they’ve done the last few years in actual payouts. They’ve also expanded the schedule quite a lot, the last two years, they’ve had a low tier. There was actually the scope to go larger, they opted not to but it’s still a huge amount of money.

Mike: Sounds like they might be managing expectations.

Nick: Yes, kind of going back to our last segment, they still talk about these topline figures and we’re going to keep on talking about them. There’s a scope also that they might bump it up as we get closer. With SCOOP, it was 70 and they took it to 75. I think I’m getting my numbers right, there’s a chance it was 75 to 80, but I think it was 70 to 75 and they added in a lot of events for some of the novelty formats. There’s still scope for that to happen with WCOOP, maybe with Swap Hold’em. We talked about last week, maybe with some of their other games that we think they’re calling more from now, we might see that come out.

That’s WCOOP starts sometime soon, it’s definitely still the biggest in the calendar. September the fifth it starts. That’s this coming Sunday and that’s really going to kick things off. Interestingly though, there is another operator that’s pretty close on its heels in terms of pounds. Would you like to guess who that is, Mike?

Mike: Yes, I would like to guess and I think the common guess might be PartyPoker, but I’m going to go with GGNetwork.

Nick: It is, it is GGNetwork, I’m thinking maybe you saw that.

Mike: I didn’t.

Nick: Okay. I mean, this is pretty staggering to the point I don’t quite understand it, but GGNetwork they’ve only been around a few years are absolutely growing. The last series they had was, let me get this right $10 million, which at the time we called pretty audacious for such a new operator. This upcoming series it’s going to be $50 million guaranteed. After PokerStars, WCOOP and SCOOP, I think it will be the next largest Online Tournament Series ever. PartyPoker had a $60 million Powerfest last year. It’s then Good Game series fall 2019, 482 events, the average guarantee is-

Mike: How many events?

Nick: 482, but still, the average guarantee is over $100,000 per event. It’s not like it’s just completely flooded with lots of events. They’ve done this because there were just many high roll er tournaments. I’m seeing if I could find some data here but it’s one of the most expensive tournament series we’ve ever seen. We’d have a fantastic article penned by anuj upon Poker Industry PRO where he’s done a comparison of GGS3 to WCOOP 2019. The average buy-in at WCOOP is just under $1,000. At GGS it’s over $3,000. They have relying on a huge spread of high volume, high buying players to fill the seats. I don’t really know where these players are coming from or why GGS have them all but then we have it.

Mike: Well, GG network is primarily Asia-focused, correct? Those markets are not typically on our radar when it comes to online poker. It’s quite possible that they— That online poker attracts a different type of customer in that part of the world and maybe there’re customers with bigger bankrolls.

Nick: Here is some other just unbelievable numbers. Over 50% of all their events have 1K buy-ins or higher. WCOOP has 1 125K super high roller on their WCOOP schedule. Goodgame Series 3 has 14 and they have 67 10K buy-in events.

Mike: Are they running a proportionate number of satellites in conjunction with these events as well? Are they giving the small bankroll grinders an opportunity to win their way into these events?

Nick: Well, I presume they’ve got the standard but I don’t know if there’s been a special growth. I know that they’ve only just announced the schedule and it starts on September 8. It’s not like they’ve been ramping up to this for months and months. Unless they’ve had some kind of system where you just win. You win tournament dollars that that can be used something. Certainly, I haven’t heard anything of that regard.

I also know they don’t currently have a Spin & Go, sorry, a lottery Sit and Go type product. They did, took it down and we think they might be relaunching it. That’s a very common way that you satellite these days. You have these special editions ones and I know they don’t have that.

Mike: It’s pretty aggressive, ambitious.

Nick: That is Good Game network ahead of PartyPoker who will be running KO series. They’ve only just released these details and they still have not released the schedule. We don’t know— We know that it’s $30 million guaranteed which is around the part that they’ve had their last three or four really really big tournament series. It starts on the eighth of September, so we are 10 days away and we still don’t have a schedule. It’s not quite sure the hold up is there. They will be— I mean just those three combined I think will probably make it the busiest month, the biggest September we’ve ever had.

On top of that we’ve got all the other operators MTN has already run there as we expect Unibet to do one that we haven’t had the details for that yet. Winamax has got the largest ever €14 million and all the European operators – PokerStars has got a galactic series in Europe that’s 15 million numbers, numbers, numbers, numbers. They’re all massive. The India market we just put up a great article looking at all the ones in India. New operators and old have got big series there so-

Mike: It feels like every year we’re saying, “the biggest ever, the biggest ever.” At some point, I think that has to level off.

Nick: It’s obviously against the backdrop of a fairly stagnant online poker industry where we’re seeing some growth out of emerging markets like Asia, fractionally out of India but even then it’s really much like the US. It’s small gains and difficulty in the established regulated markets. I think we’re passed the real surge in growth in the Spanish-French market. Italy is still segregated, Netherlands is problematic, Swedish new regulated market is expensive. These are all fairly established problems and Russia is still causing trouble for certain operators.

I think its operators doing a much better job of running comprehensive satellites, running good schedules and having more confidence they’ll fill seats. I think it is them understand ing their customers better running knock out tournaments have been hugely successful and players really like that. It turns out players love re-entering tournaments. So we are now offering that rage and just better skill at structuring these tournaments and-

Mike: If you look ahead to the next year, I would think that we could have at least one and potentially as many as three online poker series running perhaps in the United States. We’ll have Pennsylvania with one perhaps as many as three online poker rooms at that point and the ability to combine them with New Jersey would be the key point there. Legislatively, that may not happen that soon but that is a way that the operators can continue to grow.

Nick: I mean it’d be a fantastic series. We certainly saw when the New Jersey market opens some really aggressive schedules coming out of— We have this really interesting one-upmanship between.

Nick: win Goodgame- not Goodgame series, Golden State Super Series-

Mike: Yes.

Nick: – all the Gs and Ss

Mike: [laughs]

Nick: from PartyPoker network which is one of the smaller of the three major networks there going up against initially

Mike: PokerStars.

Nick: – yes, it was PokerStars where WSOP took more of a backseat initially. That went on for a few years tit for tat going one up on their schedules for the biggest in the state thing. I’m going to guess the operators have learned that was fairly costly competition and we might not see that much in Pennsylvania. Yes, it’s only another new market. I agree.

I think we’re going to have to see this leveling out at some point but we know the PokerStars are still got growth because they still always do 25% over. We’re going to see that growth and continue to grow 5, 10 million in a series for sure. Who knows what’s going to happen with this Goodgame Series?

Mike: Yes. That’ll be a key as to what it’s going to look next year. If they are successful then we might continue to see growth for some time. If on the other hand, they’re not if they fallway short it could be a big step backward as far as topline numbers go.

Nick: Yes. What we’re going to look at we haven’t quite crunched all the numbers but we’re looking at $200 million in guaranteed prize pools over the period of September across all markets. Even if operators were making an average of just 5% on that, that’s a $10 million- [crosstalk] rake they’ll be taking. Yes, that is September if you play online poker make sure you quit your job and [crosstaalk] Definitely don’t do that and play responsibly but you probably want to put aside some weekends to grind.

GGNetwork Unveils Smart Bet Sizing

Having started this podcast I’m worrying this is just going to be PokerStars, PokerStars, PokerStars. It’s time now it’s going to be also as much about GG network because the last feature here we really wanted to just touch on briefly is not only do they run ridiculously large tournament schedules but Good Game Network are very quick to roll out really interesting unique features that we don’t see anywhere else. This week was no exception with a new feature that’s coming to their mobile find I think next week called Smart Betting.

Mike: Smart Betting has— I can see why it would be appealing to players. I can see why it would be something the operator would want to offer players because it makes the game easier. I think some of the concerns are wheres i the line between coaching or providing advice and providing the ability along just to make those bets.

Nick: Before we get into that we probably should just explain to our listeners exactly how Smart Betting works.

Mike: Okay.

Nick: Normally, particularly mobile operators will have preset buttons for what they suggest you should bet when you’re facing action and No Limit Hold’em game.

Mike: Is it really a suggestion now or it’s-

Nick: Yes. So they will have preset buttons that normally 50%, 75% or full pack.

Mike: Sure.

Nick: Or maybe suggestions is too strong a word but they’ve preset buttons. I remember when they first came out even regs thought oh, you shouldn’t have that you going to get too many casual players betting the right amount because half pop full pop that’s a fairly common bet sizing. I think that’s pretty standard and is required in mobile because you can’t have users typing in numbers or even using a slider is really tricky. It’s a requisite.

Some of those have gone the next step which is allowing players to customize these buttons. PokerStars has a fairly complex system where you can say okay, pre-flop on what my bet buttons to be two blind, three blinds or 4.5. Then post-flop I wanted to be 75% of the pot and 150 % of the pot . Operators have that but no one’s done what Good Game Network with Smart Betting is talking about.

Mike: Right. What are they using to dole out this advice?

Nick: Yes. These buttons are going to be customized on a per play basis. They are using apparently machine learning algorithms to look at what you’ve bet in the past at different games and it will then suggest how much you went bet to these three suggestions based on your previous betting. You can hit the refresh button and get three more. Yes, this is going to be different on an individual level.

Mike: It is based on your own pattern-

Nick: Yes.

Mike: – not what the machine has observed your opponent’s-

Nick: Correct. This is important. When I first heard about this I was just you can’t do this. This is like the operator telling you how to play, it’s like giving end game advice but the more I thought about it more, the more I looked into it. I think the key points are the advice it gives you is not based on your opponents, it’s not based on your stack size, it’s not based on your card so it’s not going like, “Oh, this is a great spot to over bet shove the river.” It’s just going like, okay, you in the past playing these stakes frequently bets third pot on the flop. So here’s a 33% button.

Mike: Oh wow, so it doesn’t provide any, well I wouldn’t say any, but it doesn’t provide much advice at all. It’s totally-

Nick: Presumably, being that it’s based on your own play, it’ll start with defaults that say 50, 75 and 100 or an any when you then start using the sliders. Next time you actually go, okay, I don’t want him, I want 60% maybe then next time it gives you, okay, 60% is your button. Now when you think about it like that, it seems a great idea.

Mike: I agree. When you first read about it and when you first hear about it, it definitely sounds like there is some form of advice, but now it sounds like it’s just, “Hey, you’ve chosen this before, why not choose this again?”

Nick: This is a string of features from a Good Game over the last year. They do have an integration HUD called Smart HUD. They have a built-in staking platform so you can stake other people in tournaments. They’ve recently launched and I think we talked on this podcast, a bubble protection feature. They already have all-in insurance, something that PokerStars has done something similar with all-in cash out. We talked about that last week. I mean they have an incredible development team to get this stuff out the door so quickly and really, really interesting product.

They have like full built-in like mini-games, but not just like a little card matchy thing like full computer games. They have this fishing game, which is like this amazing interactive arcade game built into the client where you can bet on how many fish you can catch or shoot you out of the water of stuff. I mean, really cool stuff that they’re doing obviously helps that they’re still growing and upstart and can try these things and move quickly but I think they are really moving the industry forward in some of their products innovation.

Mike: Wow. I look forward to seeing some more product innovation coming from them in the very near future. I’m sure they will not be quiet for the rest of the year and that we’ll see some more out of them. It 'll be interesting to see how they compete and how they push the competition to perhaps change the paths that they were on previously.

Outro

Mike: Well, that wraps it up for the week. Thank you, everyone, for tuning in. As a reminder, please give us a like and a subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. You can also follow us on Twitter. Nick is @pokerprojones. I am @spookybugs and we’ll see you next week.