I dought, the government of india is more religious or fanatic than many other governments. Lets not forget, that since 2011 online gambling has also been illegal in most US states, so its not like, this is only about India. To be fair its also up to governments to regulate a lot of the stuff pointed out by OP. GG Poker has a license to operate in germany, so the german government can demand, that they follow certain responsible gaming policies.
It would probably not be realistic to ban the slow river reveals or the music or anything else related to the playing experience. But they could ban everything, that is designed to make people log on more frequently and play more like daily freebees, challenges, leaderboards and so on and so forth. In fact sweden has already done this, but apparently the german government is more focused on tax collection.
That scammy, un-ehtical site somehow managed to host the wsop online Main Event, with a $5,000 buy-in, 5,961 entries, exceeding it's guaranteed prizepool of $25 Million.
There's currently 15 players left and they will play down to the final table this evening and then re-start it tomorrow morning with Phil Helmuth joining the commentary on Youtube.
A couple of the more well-known players who are still in this include BenCB (Benjamin Rolle, the guy who runs 'Raise Your Edge' training site), Simon Mattsson (C Darwin), and Adrian Mateos.
1st pays $3.9 million
2nd pays $3 million
and all places above 6th win over $1 million each.
Sure wish I was playing (I would've played this if it had been on a different site... but this one is just too untrustworthy, scammy, and unethical for me.)
Adrian Mateos is no longer in it. Just went out in 16th.
My guess for his sudden departure... he did a Google search on last break and learned some stuff about the GG site he wasn't aware of and just shipped it in from utg with 72o, and threw up a 'Fk It!' emoji.
C Darwin just lost a flip and is down to just 13,000 chips (with blinds currently at 500k/1 mill). Gonna be a difficult spot to come back from.
fwiw, AQ < 99 and the river card was a 'slow reveal'. I wonder how much that bothered Simon?
EDIT: Start of an epic comeback!!! Simon Mattsson just tripled up! He is now sitting on 1/10th of a bb! LFG!!!
The biggest online poker series in the WORLD, held by the biggest live tournament poker business (WSOP) is currently playing it's final table at GGPoker.
Today there is also a $25k Super HiRoller buyin tourney, and a $10,300 (Day 1C) being played.
When I first tried GGPoker about two years ago, and even more as I continued using it, I had this continuous realization of just how cynical a company can be. Like, I knew that all poker sites try to maximize profit, but the utter lack of shame and willingness to play dirty to drive engagement was genuinely impressive. I knew that this probably meant the level of play was pretty low, so ironically the presentation is actually a reason to stay on the platform (softer field than PokerStars), but I immediately understood what I was looking it.
However... when I make the occasional comments in this forum about how GGPoker is obviously horrible, I usually get surprised responses. It seems like most people have no idea what I'm even talking about. Like, why would I call them shameless/unethical? What's worse about GGPOker than any other site? And I don't think people are being deliberately obtuse when they say this, so I thought I'd make a thread explaining it.
In a nutshell, the reason for the title is this: we know a lot from psychology about how the appeal of gambling (and gambling addiction in the extreme) works, and GGPoker is deliberately designed to maxmize gambling addiction in its users. Nothing about its weird and complex reward system is an accident; all of it has been delibaretely optimized, from someone who is evidently familiar with the research on gambling, to exploit people's desire in the most cynical way possible. And the sheer scale of it is just breathtaking. Other sites may have one or two quirks that go in this direction -- e.g., PokerStars made a step toward delibrate exploitation when they changed their reward system from a flat payout (each star = 1ct) to a randomized, chest-based system. But on GGPoker, it's literally everywhere.
So what are those psychological principles that GGPoker is exploiting? Well, here's Claude summarizing them. (Claude is a Large Language Model, essentially a competitor to ChatGPT, you can use it here.) Note that I didn't ask it to apply this to GGPoker, I just asked it how casinos design slot machines, which is the stereotypical invention that drives people with gambling addiction into ruin. It just naturally applies to GGPoker because their entire site is designed like a huge slot machine:
Prim: Describe the basic principles behind the allure of gambling and how they influence the design principles of slot machines (from the perspective of the casino).
Claude: Casinos design slot machines to leverage several powerful psychological principles that make gambling compelling:
The Variable Ratio Reinforcement Schedule
The most fundamental principle is unpredictable, intermittent rewards. Slot machines don't pay out on a fixed schedule - you never know if the next spin will win. This variable ratio schedule creates the strongest behavioral conditioning, far more addictive than predictable rewards. Players keep pulling because the next spin could always be "the one."
Near-Miss Engineering
Modern slots are carefully programmed to show "near misses" - where symbols almost line up for a big win. These near-misses trigger similar brain activity to actual wins, maintaining excitement and the feeling that victory is just within reach. The reels might show two jackpot symbols with the third just one position off, creating the illusion that you were "so close."
The Illusion of Control
Despite being games of pure chance, slots incorporate elements that make players feel they have influence:
Buttons to stop the reels (which don't actually affect predetermined outcomes)
Choices between different games or bonus rounds
Adjustable bet sizes and number of lines played
These features create a false sense that skill or strategy matters, when outcomes are actually determined by random number generators the moment you press "spin."
Sensory Immersion and Flow States
Casinos design machines to create a hypnotic "machine zone" where players lose track of time and outside concerns. This involves:
Comfortable ergonomics that allow hours of continuous play
Smooth, rapid gameplay with minimal interruption
Enveloping sound designs with celebratory music for wins
Visual effects that make small wins feel significant
Curved screens that create a cocoon-like feeling
Loss Disguised as Wins
Modern multi-line slots often celebrate "wins" that are actually net losses. If you bet $3 across multiple lines and win $1, the machine still plays victory sounds and animations. This tricks the brain into feeling rewarded even while losing money, maintaining the dopamine response that drives continued play.
The Cashless Illusion
Converting money to credits creates psychological distance from real value. Betting "100 credits" feels less significant than betting $100, even when they're equivalent. Digital displays and card-based systems further abstract the relationship with actual money, reducing the psychological pain of losses.
Incremental Commitment
Slots are designed for low minimum bets, making initial engagement feel low-risk. But rapid play means these small bets accumulate quickly. The "foot in the door" principle means once someone starts playing, they're more likely to continue and escalate their betting.
The Availability Heuristic
Casinos ensure big wins are highly visible and memorable - flashing lights, loud celebrations, prominent placement of progressive jackpot displays. This makes jackpots seem more common than they are, as players overestimate probabilities based on these salient examples while the countless losses remain invisible.
These principles work together to create what researchers call a "behavioral addiction" - the compulsion comes not from a substance but from the carefully engineered experience itself. The casino's goal is to maximize "time on device," knowing that the mathematical edge ensures profitability over time. Every design element, from the angle of the seat to the frequency of small wins, is optimized through extensive testing to keep players engaged as long as possible.
Understanding these mechanisms can help people make more informed decisions about gambling, recognizing that the feeling of being "due for a win" or "on a hot streak" are illusions created by design, not genuine patterns in random events.
If you're familiar with GGPoker at all you probably don't need further explanation for how this applies to their platform, but ehh I want to make sure everyone gets it, so I'll spell out anyway. So here's all the ways they're doing this:
Variable Ratio Schedule: yup, literally everything about their reward system is designed to be random and variable, rather than steady and predictable
Near-Miss Engineering: yup, and in more ways than you think. Not only do they make every River feel like a near miss by opening the card slowly, they also allow you to view the cards that could have come after folding, and their Flipout tournaments are delibaretly designed to make you feel like you could have won a lot more (because their payouts start at 0, then increase, then actually stays quite shallow for a while, so you really don't win much more by going further, and then steeply increases near the very end where you almost never get). And you constantly see how other people are winning huge.
Illusion of Control: yup, lots of control, all the stupid games that you can't beat like all-in or fold still have choice, even the reward system leaves you with choice
Sensory Immersion: yup, in almost every way
Smooth, Rapid Gameplay: yup, client is very smooth
Enveloping sound designs with celebratory music for wins: literally yes (they're so shameless, even now I'm just in awe reflecting on it)
Visual effects that make small wins feel significant: yup, that's there
Curved screens/comfortable ergonomics: n/a since you play at home; the interface looks really nice I guess. If they could do this more, I'm sure they would, too.
Loss Disguised as Wins: yup, that's there, you get big flashy victory animations for minor wins all the time. Also the PokerCraft thing literally shows you your results without rake, tricking you into thinking you win.
Incremental Commitment/Foot-in-the-door Effect: yup, also there, and again in more ways than you think. E.g., their reward system actually incentivizes playing new formats; you temporarily get more fish buffet points if you try something new.
The Availability Heuristic (making big wins visibe): absolutely there; they rub your face into other people's big wins all the time, and you can't turn it off
If I were going through this text with marker highlighting everything that applies, I'd just color the entire text. They're that shameless. And somewhow even this doesn't quite capture the extent to which they play dirty. At least in casinos, it's common knowledge how much a slot machine pays out in expectation. GGPoker refuses to even tell you how their reward system works. At least in casinos, they don't lie to you about future progress. GGPoker literally had their honeymoon system where they offer to 250$ for completion if you complete one task every day for I think a month, and then they make each task take 10-30 minutes only to bury one near the end that is essentially unbeatable, ensuring that you can't win unless you get extremely lucky. They literally have no shame.
Does this mean you shouldn't play on the site? No. I mean you probably shouldn't because their rake is super high. But as I said in the beginning, the presentation is proabbly a reason to play because it will disproportionately attract gamblers rather than poker players; it encourages all of the wrong ways to thinik about the game, so it attracs all of the people who don't know how to play.
So yeah, you can use the site if you want. I did. But err yeah you might wanna know what you're dealing with.
And again, you may say something like "well all companies try to maximize profit" but this is literally not true as demonstrated by literally ever other poker site refusing to go this low. They're trying to maximize profit to an extent, but they have some scruples, and they fall short of blatantly trying to fuel your addiction. GGPoker does not.
So yeah, if you are a poker player, the rake is hard to beat, but you can play on the site for practice against weak players. If you have a gambling problem though, stay as far away from the site as possible; it's trying to drive you into ruin.
Look, I put in $20 and recently withdrew $38 and $26, and I had a bad run on spins, 0.25 tournaments, I got tired of playing and being near the square and I feel like I lose more playing them than playing spin. The freerolls are good (cardschat, some other communities like pecera, or streamers) AT LEAST THEY LET YOU WITHDRAW the money, there are other applications that don't. I don't play GG poker enough to confirm what you say, but they let me withdraw money without a problem and I think that if you take advantage of the daily reward you can make a small profit in the long term, and take advantage of the freerolls. I would like someone to specify if they made bankroll to play tournaments and made progress or a sudden fall (this happens, that's why you have to have the backbone to play several tournaments) but one thing is that things go badly for one and another for everyone equally (several should give their opinion to know). You also have to be grateful that they pay you BADBEAT and other things.
I've tilted on GG Poker, but I've won more than I've lost. Sometimes I start thinking, and that's how the client works. When you're down, you're down, and when you're on a bad streak, you're down. But withdrawals are never a problem. If anyone plays another poker App they recommend and thinks it's better, please let me know. I have a pokerstars account, but I haven't played much lately. I have an acquaintance who plays Winamax and did well. Does anyone here know about it?
You’re not wrong that GGPoker leans hard into psychological tricks, randomized rewards, near-miss drama, and flashy nonsense do scream slot machine vibes. But they are not uniquely evil. Every poker site’s chasing profits. GGPoker’s just louder about it. You can still play the soft field and dodge the addiction traps. Calling them the most unethical might be to much, because all of the other sites play dirty in their own way.
Look, I put in $20 and recently withdrew $38 and $26, and I had a bad run on spins, 0.25 tournaments, I got tired of playing and being near the square and I feel like I lose more playing them than playing spin. The freerolls are good (cardschat, some other communities like pecera, or streamers) AT LEAST THEY LET YOU WITHDRAW the money, there are other applications that don't. I don't play GG poker enough to confirm what you say, but they let me withdraw money without a problem and I think that if you take advantage of the daily reward you can make a small profit in the long term, and take advantage of the freerolls. I would like someone to specify if they made bankroll to play tournaments and made progress or a sudden fall (this happens, that's why you have to have the backbone to play several tournaments) but one thing is that things go badly for one and another for everyone equally (several should give their opinion to know). You also have to be grateful that they pay you BADBEAT and other things.
A moderator changed my original title for this thread into the ultra cringe title it has now. I don't know why. The original title specified "the most unethical non-scam poker site ever created" to address this objection. If a site doesn't let you withdraw money, it's just a scam, and I agree that makes it worse
A moderator changed my original title for this thread into the ultra cringe title it has now. I don't know why. The original title specified "the most unethical non-scam poker site ever created" to address this objection. If a site doesn't let you withdraw money, it's just a scam, and I agree that makes it worse
But GG let's you withdraw money... There are always some incidents on any site where a withdrawal doesn't work and in 9/10 cases it's the player's thought
Multi accounting, previous VPN use etc...
PS: i think cringe is the worst word Gen Z ever created xD this generation sucks 😆
Besides all the mechanics they use to reel people in, the 'wheel' of chance being one of the worst on the Spin & Go's, where you see jackpot besides the 2x multiplier. This is making it appear they have a simular chance, while in reality the jackpot is 1 in 3,33 million and the 2x almost 1 in 2.
I must say their gambling addiction policy is pretty good. I once spoke to a representative about restrictions on my account and they really asked a lot of questions to be sure poker/gambling was not effecting my life in a negative way.
Besides all the mechanics they use to reel people in, the 'wheel' of chance being one of the worst on the Spin & Go's, where you see jackpot besides the 2x multiplier. This is making it appear they have a simular chance, while in reality the jackpot is 1 in 3,33 million and the 2x almost 1 in 2.
I forgot about this when I wrote the OP, but agreed, the wheel is one of the most blatantly misleading things they have. They take a graphic that looks like a physical thing which has a certain way it works (probability proportional to surface area) but then use it as only a dummy graphic and compute the probability independently in a way that's widely different.
A moderator changed my original title for this thread into the ultra cringe title it has now. I don't know why. The original title specified "the most unethical non-scam poker site ever created" to address this objection. If a site doesn't let you withdraw money, it's just a scam, and I agree that makes it worse
Oh, well, everyone can have an opinion .
As I posted in this thread, I am positive about GG, for me they are a reliable service provider.
But it does not change the fact, the intention of this thread was deeper than it looks now, it was about gambling addiction and tricks used to take advantage of addicted people and so on...
Oh, well, everyone can have an opinion .
As I posted in this thread, I am positive about GG, for me they are a reliable service provider.
But it does not change the fact, the intention of this thread was deeper than it looks now, it was about gambling addiction and tricks used to take advantage of addicted people and so on...
Sure everyone is entitled to their own opinion and that is okay but for me these "tricks" are the same like simple tv commercials are trying to "trick" you to buy their products by saying how great they are
Sure everyone is entitled to their own opinion and that is okay but for me these "tricks" are the same like simple tv commercials are trying to "trick" you to buy their products by saying how great they are
I agree. But manipulation and commercial of any other goods is a bit different than commercial addicting stuff, like hazard, alcohol, cigarettes...
I also posted that I do not think GG should be blamed as being worse site than others just because of they are just doing it better than others
That was more or less what the discussion here was about. With the current title it just look like a 1001st complaint about "scammy rigged site"
Agreed it is different. Commercials for addictive substances like cigarettes but it's the same mechanism.
Also gambling ads are forbidden in TV where I live ( ironically not for alcohol)
Not only that but it's also emotionally manipulative (they added a loaded term with "shameful", whereas I chose the more technical-sounding "unethical") and it's downright poorly written. It's commonly understood that a statement in the headline of an article, post, or thread represents the author's views; I'd never add "I believe" into a thread title. It makes me sound like a teenager with a hot take.
(I would've played this if it had been on a different site... but this one is just too untrustworthy, scammy, and unethical for me.)
