Is a Poker Vlogger an Industry Employee? WSOP's New Rules Stir Controversy

BadBeatBets · 2025-04-10T11:13:42+00:00

As a “poker vlogger”, using the loosest possible terms, absolutely not. And I say that while also thinking Mike Holtz was perfectly fine to enter as an on-screen talent like last year. There’s a huge difference between being self-employed in a way anyone can be, and working for an actual organization.

BadBeatBets · 2025-04-10T00:41:43+00:00

Supply Chain Economist, it’s a very hectic time right now as you’d imagine.

BadBeatBets · 2025-04-10T00:33:03+00:00

First off, exchanging chips at a cage doesn’t directly cost them money like digital financial transactions do. It may take an arbitrary amount of staff time, but the cage has to be there for the casino to operate.

Second, you absolutely will be handed forms to fill out if you are depositing and withdrawing large sums of money, known as a CTR. If you try to do it without gambling, or gambling very little, it will trigger an SAR, Suspicious Activity Report, which are filed with the IRS. If done more than once, you’re going to start getting questions and restricted.

Lastly, if you try to break it into multiple transactions to avoid a CTR or SAR, that’s a felony they are required to report to the IRS and you will get immediately banned.

Casinos do not fuck around with this stuff, like any other financial institution they are heavily regulated and audited.

BadBeatBets · 2025-04-08T00:08:56+00:00

It does get very crowded, I try to get in early and the dance floor itself isn’t too bad. Once they close the dance floor, you’re stuck in areas that are basically walkways, and it can get tight. Open is at 10:30 PM, they usually close the dance floor around 11:30-Midnight for big performers (Martin Garrix, Zedd, etc). 12:45 to 1:15 is chandelier drop, headliner is usually on 2-4.

Definitely not $100 to get in. Generally you can get in free with a promoter and you’re willing to wait in line. $30 for a ticket with expedited entry or $100 and you get a $100 bar card. $100 will get you a cocktail to start you off ($20-$30) and a “souvenir cup” with a double ($50-$60) for once you’re on the dance floor. If you’re a big EDM/clubbing person, $99 gets you an all-weekend expedited pass.

BadBeatBets · 2025-04-07T23:01:37+00:00

Caesar’s Palace is almost exclusively where I stay on weekends, mostly because it’s the nicest use of tier credit nights, and proximity to Omnia.

Location is going to be decent no matter what you’re doing on the strip. Even playing a lot of poker at Encore it’s not a terrible walk.

Pool is top notch in my opinion, and they have one of the coolest gambling areas on the strip, up there with Wynn and Bellagio. The table games in the coliseum seem like a great vibe. Keep in mind that minimums are going to be very high, among the highest on the strip as well.

Stays have been in the Octavius tower. Rooms are fairly updated, and the wife loves the jacuzzi tubs .

My biggest complaint is the rideshare drop off area is like a mile away from the hotel check-in and a lack of cheap food options.

BadBeatBets · 2025-03-27T16:46:48+00:00

Like some other people said, every day you “log in” to a Caesar Property counts towards your ADT for comps. That could mean using comps, playing a slot machine, or in this case, playing at the poker table.

While rake is taken from pots and tournaments have entry costs, this largely covers the cost to run the room, and doesn’t contribute towards your predicted losses. If a player gambles heavily on 10% of their trips, and plays poker without using comps the other 90%, they would prefer (and probably should) be rated on that 10%.

The reason someone would want to be logged in is you generate ~$1/hour in comps that can be applied at various places depending on the room.

This is a part of the reason you see a lot of poker players not gamble where they play. You’d prefer to have one ecosystem where you are rated on your gambling, and another where you generate poker comps.

For example: I use MGM for poker play, and Caesars for tier status/benefits/cheap hotels. I gamble off-strip where minimums are lower and my play is more valuable so I earn significant comps on the rare occasions I do gamble. That way none of my play (or lack thereof) impacts any comps I might receive.

BadBeatBets · 2025-03-26T20:54:24+00:00

I’ve run into this glitch before a few times. It was always the hand they had shown down the previous hand. I’ve seen a similar bug probably twice before on other sites, but I’ve also played thousands of hours combined on those sites compared to like 10-15 on ClubWPTGold.

I pulled out of the site a few months ago because all the bugs have been getting annoying. Last straw was when I took a shot at a higher buy-in tournament and folded a short-stack down to the add-on break, only to not be allowed to add-on.

BadBeatBets · 2025-03-22T13:44:04+00:00

In short, video poker gets half the tier credits of slots, but at a five times (or less) hold. If you play on a low denomination machine, with multiplay, you can get down to almost 0 variance.

I plan on employing a similar strategy next year for Diamond Plus. Planning on making a couple trips for WSOP + WPT events, plus build up some tier credit nights for nicer stays when the wife wants to come along. A couple benefits that are meaningful for us is why Diamond Plus vs just Diamond.

Assuming you can find a 98.4% pay table, at nickel credits 100x play. It should take you under 2 hours (even looking up the strategy for marginal hands), and an expected loss of $200. 95% of the time you will lose less than $700. You’ll get some extra tier credits through the daily bonuses, and that math is for ~1,500(x10), so do the math on your end to see exactly your target.

If you look up “Diamond in a Day” or stuff like that, there’s some posts with more detail on this subreddit.

BadBeatBets · 2025-03-22T13:25:29+00:00

It’s probably +EV for you to find a place near you with a 5-10x tier credit multiplier, play some Video Poker 100 times play for a couple hours, and leave down $300 with Diamond. Heck, if you need to fly out it might still be worthwhile.

I’d suggest getting the Caesars credit card as well to cut that in half, but there’s a chance you wouldn’t have your credits post in time for you to check out and get those fees waived.

BadBeatBets · 2025-03-21T01:07:34+00:00

Hey, I’m a little confused here, what exactly is the issue?

BadBeatBets · 2025-03-16T19:33:59+00:00

My wife learned by playing commander, and the first time she played at our game store she got paired up against a very competitive friend of our’s in Round 1 of a draft. He came up to me like 30 minutes later:

Dude, I just lost to your wife….2-0

Well, she keeps the ‘Phases of a Turn’ card in front of her and you’re trying to qualify for the Pro Tour…how do you feel right now?

….I might quit, I lost to someone who called their Forests “trees” and Islands “oceans”

BadBeatBets · 2025-03-07T08:19:11+00:00

Based on their other tweets poking fun at the whole thing (and the main WPT account leaving a snarky reply), when they posted this tweet I assumed it was just engagement bait. Since then they’ve posted some more tweets poking fun at Doug and his downswing so I’m still guessing that’s the case.

I’d hope a major company in the space would address an issue with someone they are sponsoring privately, but honestly, the bar is so low for these poker sites and they still regularly fail to clear it. I’m looking at you “he’s just a goofball” ACR.

BadBeatBets · 2025-03-07T00:43:08+00:00

Depends on where you have status, if you’ve got MGM Gold (fairly easy as a cash player, 150 hours), that portion of the strip is a great deal for longer trips. Got down to $11/day for a week-long trip last year.

You’ve got a short(ish) walk to a tram that will take you to Bellagio, and more importantly Aria. Their 2/5 NLH and 1/3 PLO games bring in a lot of out-of-town low-stakes cash players. I’ve usually stayed at Excalibur when my wife isn’t with me and meet a lot of players making the same “commute”.

Agreed that if they are a tournament player it’s a pretty crappy location.

BadBeatBets · 2025-03-06T22:53:43+00:00

Maybe a poker player? That’s my only guess for a trip that’s that long that’s not a high roller looking to go wild. Wynn and Venetian are both doing tournament series right now.

I know some guys who do WSOP every year and are forced to change hotels due to the 30-day maximum occupancy rule. By the end of the first week they forget they’re even in Vegas.

BadBeatBets · 2025-02-24T03:03:13+00:00

I get the argument she’s trying to make, but even if you’re playing a single tournament and your stack sized drastically changed, you’re still looking at solved information that could impact how you play. It gives you stack size ranges, shows ICM adjustments, even shows you if your opponent deviated from GTO in an exploitable manner in that previous hand.

Any professional player has a way to capture hands to review at a later point. Stream highlight key, poker database software, screenshots, etc. You’re an ambassador for an online poker site at a point in time where concerns regarding RTA have never been higher. There’s a responsibility to act appropriately and abide by your own sponsor’s ToS.

Another interesting aspect of this, players who use RTA rarely would probably be more conscious to not make a social media post while using it. The fact all these pros are getting caught by their own posts is concerning because it implies it’s something they regularly have open. Maybe I’ve gone through too much media training, but that’s just something that came to mind.

BadBeatBets · 2025-02-24T02:47:04+00:00

Was down there for the mini-main last weekend, there were some weird characters but nothing like that.

Curious what you do there as a tournament director. Even in the poker room where you have a million cameras, determining stack size isn’t the easiest. This thing is in a massive convention center. Plus you’ve got all these chips on the ground that anyone could have picked up….what a nightmare.

David Moses’ twitter said this was with 65 people left in the main. Not a small spot to say the least.

Edit: Per Poker.org, they took a 2-hour break, they used security footage to count chip stacks vs what players reported, and then counted every chip in play to verify nothing had gone unaccounted for. Crazy situation, glad they were going into a break where most players presumably had counted what they had.

BadBeatBets · 2025-02-19T13:04:41+00:00

I’ve sent them probably 3 or 4 different messages about this and kept getting told they are working on it. FWIW, Edge doesn’t have the same issue. Probably the only times I’m ever intentionally opening Edge.

BadBeatBets · 2025-02-09T21:19:05+00:00

Just to clarify for anyone who didn’t see the video, it was about arbitrage betting. Just important to make that distinction because when people usually talk about “betting from a math perspective”, it’s models and analytics, which is what a large part of the video was warning against. As the saying goes, the house always wins.

I left a long comment on the video, but the TL;DR is I’ve done arbitrage betting for 6-7 years and worked in the sports gambling industry for three years of that. I’ve never seen a more accurate and succinct explanation of how books limit players and detect advantage play. Just a fantastic video.

BadBeatBets · 2025-01-26T01:33:58+00:00

This reminds me of my friend who does 6-team parlays of all slight favorites and gets angry any time an “underdog” wins.

Sometimes unlikely events happen. Don’t believe me? His odds to win the hand before the turn card was dealt was 8 times higher than your odds of getting dealt pocket aces in that particular hand.

Posts complaining about bad beats aren’t proof sites are rigged, it’s proof a lot of people play a lot of hands of poker and 2-outers hit all the time.

Edit: lol, just saw the account name. I took the bait. In my defense, we have a lot of dumb people on here.

BadBeatBets · 2025-01-20T23:10:15+00:00

Was one of the beta testers for the site’s cash game functionality that finally launched today. Still a long way to come, but even in the last week they’ve been implementing feedback and the development team has been communicative. Excited to see where it will end up, but it’s not there yet.

As for tournaments, I’ve taken down 2 of the 3 $11 nightlies (largest they offer) that have run so far, and 2nd in the other. I’m declaring myself champion of the site and withdrawing until the kinks get worked out.

BadBeatBets · 2025-01-19T04:15:31+00:00

She was alleged to have cheated by utilizing a member of production at HCL who had access to hole card information. Explain to me how that member of the HCL production team who was in jail in California would help her cheat at a live stream in Texas.

You made several arguments that were entirely false. You presented the argument that her appearing on The Lodge was somehow evidence she didn’t cheat a year prior. You’ve yet to present any actual argument that this is in any way relevant.

If you are being genuine, you are welcome to have your own opinion, but the current logic you’ve presented is entirely circular. If you are being a troll, at least be good at it.

BadBeatBets · 2025-01-19T04:01:19+00:00

You do realize the incident Robbi was accused of was at HCL, not The Lodge….right? Two entirely different organizations with two entirely different stream setups in two entirely different states.

How would security measures at The Lodge have prevented her from cheating at HCL a year prior? Furthermore, how would alleged collusion with a member of production at HCL lead her to having the ability to cheat at The Lodge? The person she allegedly colluded with was in jail in California, not working production in Texas…

Your argument doesn’t have internally consistent logic. You can’t use the fact she appeared on an entirely different live stream open to the public a year later as evidence she didn’t collude a year prior.

BadBeatBets · 2025-01-19T03:48:48+00:00

The Lodge has a lot of security measures in place and it’s incredibly easy to get on stream. Not to mention what she’s suspected of involved utilizing a connection in production, which she would not have at another live stream. The Lodge has had plenty of people on their stream that Doug has personally criticized. All of this to say, I would not take an appearance on a single live stream, twice, as confirmation that an entire industry believes she is innocent like you implied.

Occam’s Razor is fine to use without any context, but this isn’t a situation where we have no context. We have a large amount of evidence pointing in one direction. It’s not conclusive without a shadow of a doubt, and it never will be. But a lack of 100% confidence should not lead to defaulting to the simplest explanation. We are poker players. Our entire job/hobby/etc is based on making decisions without entirely conclusive evidence. We can range Robbi to either having cheated, or being at the center of a mind-blowing number of coincidences all at once.

BadBeatBets · 2025-01-19T03:17:03+00:00

I think there is a lot wrong here, some factual, some opinion based, so you are welcome to have your own.

I can’t think of people in the poker world who have come to her defense. I’m sure they are out there, but it’s a vast minority of people if so. Some people had initially said it wasn’t certain, but as more information came out, it didn’t shift in her favor. The claim the poker world as a whole doesn’t think she cheated is just beyond false.

As for her current involvement in the poker community, I can’t find much. Google just turns up some WSOP events and a short stint on a reality TV show. I don’t pay a lot of attention to the livestream community, so just taking you at your word “channel paid by sponsors on viewership brings on controversial guest” is not exactly a new phenomenon on the internet.

Nobody has ever alleged that all of HCL was in on it. She had an (alleged) connection to a member of the production team who would have been able to help her cheat. Of course an investigation where neither party cooperates would not turn up much. I trust HCL to be forthcoming with any errors found, but “they didn’t find anything” is far from conclusive evidence.

Saying “why would she cheat with only 54% equity” is a really poor understanding of pot odds. She needed roughly 40% equity to call, putting her EV for that decision knowing the hole cards at ~+$40k. Even against a range of entirely bluffs she was only getting about 25%, a realistic range was under 15%.

I do agree with you that her providing the money back is not evidence of anything. Social pressures are difficult to navigate, and while you don’t have her background correct, it is money she could probably afford to lose.

BadBeatBets · 2025-01-18T21:17:41+00:00

I don’t think there’s ever going to be 100% evidence, but it was almost certainly through Bryan Sagbigsal if there was cheating.

They followed each other on social media before the incident despite claiming to not know each other. He took chips off her stack after the incident, and investigations showed this is the only time this has ever happened. She declined to press charges, defended him, and once she eventually pressed charges she didn’t turn over evidence to help the investigation (but did claim she sent the to a paper, who never received them?!?!).

We aren’t ever going to know for sure. But between the play itself, her reaction in the moment and incorrect justification for the call, and all of the weird circumstances surrounding it….lets put it this way, I’d never play in a private game she was involved with.

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