Patrick Leonard is a successful professional poker player, WSOP bracelet winner and ambassador for CoinPoker. He has picked up major wins both live and online, where he has 10 WCOOP and 8 SCOOP titles, among many other accolades. This week, Pads reflects on a trip to the NAPT, and the different approaches PokerStars and GGPoker are taking towards big names and big players…
Back in Vegas! Last time out I was travelling from a really fun PokerStars event in Cyprus to Las Vegas to play the North American Poker Tour (NAPT).
NAPT is held in Resorts World, which I found incredible. It’s such a nice casino – lots of food options, close to the strip but not on it, close enough to bounce between there and Wynn. It seems like the perfect place to host a tournament series.
The poker room was incredible, and the games, as usual in Vegas, were incredible. Although the NAPT has the same structure as an EPT, it has a very different feeling; with 35 people left in the Main Event, I looked over, and there wasn't a single person on the entire rail sweating – no cameras, no reporters really, no excitement. I would walk between the tables, and there just seemed to be no excitement; it felt very strange.
In the end, a good friend Nick Marchington won it! So, I’m really happy for him. One of my biggest surprises was seeing Jason Koon there. I don't think he's ever missed a Triton, so I found it weird, but I didn't want to ask any questions. The next day, he was announced as the newest PokerStars Pro and it all made sense!
The NAPT returned to Resorts World in Las Vegas.What a difference nine years makes
That same day I got one of those weird Facebook memories and it reminded me I did a podcast with Joe Ingram. I used to work as a consultant for basically all the poker sites, and we spoke about the industry and how PokerStars were f**king up.
At the time, they had basically zero Team Pros, and most of their marketing money went to Neymar and Ronaldo. Events lost their touch and soul as you wouldn't have ambassadors at your table or at the players’ party, etc. They even rebranded away from EPT and it just had a feeling that they didn't like pros and didn't see them as important.
I spoke about this a lot over the next couple of years. Fast-forward nine years, and their Team Pro squad isn't full of rich Brazilian soccer players, but instead it’s Jason Koon, Sam Grafton, Lex, Fintan, Spraggy, Tonka, Maria, and Barny f**king Boatman!
All of the events feel very friendly and warm, SCOOP and WCOOP remain fixtures in every serious pro’s diary and, although there is a lot of trouble with regulations and countries wanting to segregate, it feels like they are trying their best. And when you feel like a site is doing that, it makes you want to support them back, so I'll continue to do that!
Jason Koon addresses the crowd at his Team Pro announcement. 
High stakes poker at GG goes ‘invite-only’
On a similar note, GGPoker announced and acted this week to make their high-stakes games ‘exclusive’. You need to be invited (by ElkY I think?) or basically seen to be not a ‘good pro’, and then you have access to the best games in the world.
This got a LOT of backlash. ‘F*ck GG’ I read in every Discord server this week, but I don't think they are doing much wrong.
They have always shown that they are a business that is driven by high rake and low win rates, and they put a lot of money back into keeping the VIPs happy. I think people just look at the surface and think this is the business, but what happens behind the scenes in the online casino is the telling part.
Imagine these 2 scenarios:
- A VIP plays 500 hands vs. five pros and loses $100,000. The average rake per hand will be $2-ish, and they will VPIP and see a flop maybe 30% of the time. So 150-ish hands and $2 a time, they will make $300 when the VIP dusts their bankroll.
- A VIP plays 500 hands of blackjack and does in the $100K. All this money goes to the site.
The difference is absolutely gigantic, so it makes sense that they would want to protect their VIPs and instead of putting them into the sea with the sharks, protect them and either let them play against each other or force no games to run and to divert to casino.
This isn't scummy, this isn't ‘against’ the pros, it's just good business, in my opinion. High-stakes games on a site have a purpose, especially when there is a battle for market share. It brings eyes and ears to your site, but GG has such a monumental market share at the moment that extra marketing at the massive cost of their best customers becoming pretty mediocre customers is a pretty big trade-off.
As I wrote on X, see below, ‘GG have to weigh up marketing via high-stakes games vs. protecting VIPs who can lose more in higher EV (for GG) games. CoinPoker for example, have more value in marketing via high-stakes battles.’
There’s a very interesting few months coming up…
You can follow Pads on X and Instagram, or find him on the tables at CoinPoker.
