Berkey Falls Off High Horse by allowing shilling of Draftkings Casino App Affiliate Code on Only Friends Podcast

People are going to gamble -EV pit games, video poker, slots, etc. But a brick & mortar casino has many safeguards & benefits that an online casino doesn’t. When you lose, which you will do very often, you can expect some comps. You have the social experience, nice rooms, meals, maybe a pool, beautiful women, free drinks, etc. When you lose your ass on online casinos, regulated or offshore, you have pornhub & uber eats for the pain… I guess. Unless you have an edge or are very disciplined bonus hunting, online casinos are a one way ticket to Brokesville.

Matt Berkey’s Only Friends podcast has been around I think close to a year now. Berkey has lately been in a feud with Nick Vertucci. I don’t want to rehash it because is been covered to death. But let’s say Berkey was very concerned about protecting the players on the streams. But what about your viewers Matt? Many whom are young and naive. Does their money matter? Isn’t one of the essential points of your podcast to educate young aspiring poker players? If so, sending them into an online pit (of hell) doesn’t seem to be on brand.

Landon Tice, part of the Only Friends crew, got a lot of shit because he comically clearly copied & pasted a tweet about the slots on Ignition months ago. We sort of give him a pass because of his youth. Imho, just because Draftkings is regulated doesn’t make this any better. Here is the affiliate link & pinned comment from yesterday’s podcast…



Conrad Simpson (seems like a great dude) does the read 5:50. Maybe it was meant to be that he could barely get through it. Looks like Matt doesn’t appear on the show despite being advertised to do so. Look, I like these people, this doesn’t change my opinion of them. The books are buying up everyone and that why we are getting shitty odds, shitty service & just a worse product in general.

Above the Felt may be the one’s driving Berkey to go below the belt here in a attempt to gain more revenue. This isn’t like Ploppy Ass Pat McAfee’s 60 Million Deal with Fanduel, it seems like just your standard affiliate deal. I want to give Berkey a chance to make this right.

My major problem is this is “Draft Kings Casino App”, and we all know the point of that free $50 is to get someone playing, steam them up real nice and hopefully they tilt their tits off & lose their ass. Maybe try to change it to a $50 sports betting credit or DFS credit. But imho you can’t be sending your viewers straight to the online casino and keep the moral high ground.

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Originally Posted by JeffDime

People are going to gamble -EV pit games, video poker, slots, etc. But a brick & mortar casino has many safeguards & benefits that an online casinos doesn’t. When you lose, which you will do very often, you can expect some comps. You have the social experience, nice rooms, meals, maybe a pool, beautiful women, free drinks, etc. When you lose your ass on online casinos, regulated or offshore, you have pornhub & uber eats I guess. Unless you have an edge or are very disciplined bonus hunting, online casinos are a one way ticket to Brokevile.

Matt Berkey’s Only Friends podcast has been around I think close to a year now. Berkey has lately been in a feud with Nick Vertucci. I don’t want to rehash it because is been covered to death. But let’s say Berkey was very concerned about protecting the players on the streams. But what about your viewers Matt? Many whom are young and naive. Does their money matter? Isn’t one of the essential points of your podcast to educate young aspiring poker players? If so, sending them into an online pit (of hell) doesn’t seem to be on brand.

Landon Tice, part of the Only Friends crew, got a lot of shit because he comically clearly copied & pasted a tweet about the slots on Ignition months ago. We sort of give him a pass because of his youth. Imho, just because Draftkings is regulated doesn’t make this any better. Here is the affiliate link & pinned comment from yesterday’s podcast…



Conrad Simpson does the read 5:50. Maybe it was meant to be that he could barely get through it. Looks like Matt doesn’t appear on the show despite being advertised to do so. Look, I like these people, this doesn’t change my opinion of them. The books are buying up everyone and that why we are getting shitty odds, shitty service & just a worse product in general.

Above the Felt may be the one’s driving Berkey to go below the belt here in a attempt to gain more revenue. This isn’t like Ploppy Ass Pat McAfee’s 60 Million Deal with Fanduel, it seems like just your standard affiliate deal. I want to give Berkey a chance to make this right.

My major problem is this is “Draft Kings Casino App”, and we all know the point of that free $50 is to get someone playing and hopefully tilt their tits off & lose their ass. Maybe try to change it to a $50 sports betting credit or DFS credit. But imho you can’t be sending your viewers straight to the online casino and keep the moral high ground.

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When you lose your ass on online casinos, regulated or offshore, you have pornhub & uber eats I guess.

Modern day poetry here; well played.

My plan was to do content on the legal books and the nonsense going on with them. Bought the equipment but got the Covid. Was feeling better, but woke up today with no voice. So it will probably have to wait for the New Year. My hope is Berkey corrects this through his representation at Below the Belt…sorry Above the Felt.

Just can’t have a guy who sells expensive poker training and is at the same time sending viewers to the online pits. Criticizing stream houses for not protecting player’s money & showing disregard for his viewers money. I like Matt and I hope he fixes this tout suite.

I have no bias here against anyone. Except the legal Sportsbooks, which are getting away with fucking murder. I take absolutely no enjoyment criticizing Berkey & Only Friends. But I had to do so. I feel strongly on this topic. Berkey should be telling his viewers to snuff out all the leaks if they want to make a living (or supplemental income) playing poker, not sending them to the slaughter. $50 bucks may be a little taste. But we all know what it’s designed to do.

If he is going to respond I’m getting right in front of this. To say it’s only $50 bucks is not a defense. It’s not the amount that’s important. It’s where the people are being sent & what Draftkings hopes happens to them there that is the issue. I tell everyone I know who is betting sports on these apps to stay out of the casinos. Even when they give you “free money” you have to be a fucking gymnast to meet the rollover requirements in most instances. If you can’t stay out, then opt out. Matt should be saying the same.

He will respond to this criticism once he consults his thesaurus.

FTR I was vigorously defending Berkey last week regarding Nick Verctucci & Mikki’s petty attack on Berkey during Nick’s podcast. See post #276 https://pokerfraudalert.com/forum/sh...scammer/page14.

Couldn’t of been more on Berkey’s side. Even saying I was genuinely angered when I heard this portion of Nick’s podcast and I full heartedly believe Berkey is a good person. That hasn’t changed at all. I’ve screwed up many times in my life and surely will continue to do so.

In my opinion, Berkey advertising DraftKings' "online casino" isn't as bad as Landon advertising the Ignition slots because unregulated casinos are 10000x worse than regulated ones. At least regulated ones (probably) won't straight up cheat you. Unregulated ones do whatever the fuck they want, with zero consequence, and zero transparency.

I also approached Berkey privately when Ignition wouldn't pay that girl Mandi (the one I had on my show recently), and told him that this would look bad for Landon, even though it wasn't directly his fault. In fact, she was playing the exact slots he advertised! To Berkey's credit, he told me that he would discuss the whole thing on his show "in the next few days" if it didn't get resolved. This never came to pass because Ignition abruptly paid her after my tweet about it went viral, and got 300k+ views in 1 day.

I do agree that Berkey should re-think his choices here, though. While DraftKings is regulated, it's not a good idea to push -EV casino games onto his audience, since Matt runs a coaching service and he's trying to teach you how to not lose money gambling. So as Jeff said, this runs counter to that mission.

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Originally Posted by Dan Druff

In my opinion, Berkey advertising DraftKings' "online casino" isn't as bad as Landon advertising the Ignition slots because unregulated casinos are 10000x worse than regulated ones. At least regulated ones (probably) won't straight up cheat you. Unregulated ones do whatever the fuck they want, with zero consequence, and zero transparency.

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It depends on the casino. Some sites have their own proprietary slots and they don't disclose their RTP. But most sites don't create their own slots. They use slots from slot providers like No Limit City, Hacksaw Gaming, Pragmatic Play, Quickspin, Play N Go and many others.

These slot providers host the games on their own servers not the servers run by an online casino. And the RTP is listed in the payout information screen for each slot. Draft Kings is using the same slot providers that Stake (an unregulated sites) uses. Stake sets all of their slots at the highest RTP available. I doubt Draft Kings does that.

I am expert on -EV online casino slot play. Been playing daily for many many years. Including today.

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Originally Posted by Small_Banana

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Originally Posted by Dan Druff

In my opinion, Berkey advertising DraftKings' "online casino" isn't as bad as Landon advertising the Ignition slots because unregulated casinos are 10000x worse than regulated ones. At least regulated ones (probably) won't straight up cheat you. Unregulated ones do whatever the fuck they want, with zero consequence, and zero transparency.

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It depends on the casino. Some sites have their own proprietary slots and they don't disclose their RTP. But most sites don't create their own slots. They use slots from slot providers like No Limit City, Hacksaw Gaming, Pragmatic Play, Quickspin, Play N Go and many others.

These slot providers host the games on their own servers not the servers run by an online casino. And the RTP is listed in the payout information screen for each slot. Draft Kings is using the same slot providers that Stake (an unregulated sites) uses. Stake sets all of their slots at the highest RTP available. I doubt Draft Kings does that.

I am expert on -EV online casino slot play. Been playing daily for many many years. Including today.

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Can't speak to slots, but I can tell you that, at least as of mid-October of this year, DraftKings had tons of 99%+ video poker on their online platform in a regulated online casino state I happened to be travelling through. Even the "carnival" VP like Ultimate X was set to the highest paytable IGT offers.

Caesars online paytables on the other hand mirrored their shitty brick & mortar offerings.

At scale, I think Berkey’s actions are above board. He’s not trying to turn his plethora of 19 yo viewers into giga-whales.

I doubt this is what he was thinking when they ran that ad, but I’d recommend all aspiring professional gamblers/poker players spend as much time pursuing the non-strategic aspects of poker and gambling as much as they look at PIO or monker or make notes on opponents’ leaks. Since it isn’t 2006, money from the felt is MUCH harder to come by. So create content, coach, run games, be a hot chick, book sports, app stuff, collect bad debt, find sports accounts for sharps, be an affiliate, schmooze with game runners and stream owners - whatever it takes to put food on the table if it’s not unethical. I’m not trying to make those things sound like anything other than the schemes they are, intentionally. But without the side hustles, what are the chances someone coming in fresh, playing professionally beginning right now, has even the slightest chance to make it? Somewhere around the odds of a HS ball player getting a D1 scholarship? Lower?

Being a professional gambler isn’t dead, but unless one is already well established in poker, it’s too much to expect to make a career out of grinding cash games or tourneys, live or online, as the only source of gambling-related income. Maybe it’s my libertarian leanings or my lack of poker prowess which shapes my POV, but if anything, Berkey might be inadvertently teaching all those many thousands of fresh early 20s aspiring pros that you’d better have some side hustles to offset the times you get cheated, scammed, shorted, robbed, angled. As well as the actual downswings on the felt. Almost forgot about those, what with all the other challenges a professional gambler faces these days.

4 G Birds to start.

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Originally Posted by JeffDime

4 G Birds to start.

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Maybe they had money on FTX?? Wow 4 bands is a helluva price to pay for NLHE strategy/S4Y meet and greet. Personally, I’ll be spending my money on the Bobby Schmurda meet and greet and concert on 1/15, but to each his own

Looks like it's a 4-day "academy" where people are basically spending $1k/day (and you have to buy all 4 days) to have some kind of intense NLH course taught by Berkey and his fellow coaches.

I'm surprised that there is still enough demand for such a thing, since we are almost 15 years removed from the main poker boom, but I guess there are enough dudes who want to improve their poker game who otherwise are successful at their careers.

Berkey's definitely been good at monetizing Solve For Why. The dude does work pretty hard, though, I'll give him that. He does that Only Friends show like 5 days per week, and seems to put a substantial amount of effort into each one. That's on top of whatever coaching stuff and actual poker play he's doing.

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Originally Posted by Dan Druff

Berkey's definitely been good at monetizing Solve For Why. The dude does work pretty hard, though, I'll give him that. He does that Only Friends show like 5 days per week, and seems to put a substantial amount of effort into each one. That's on top of whatever coaching stuff and actual poker play he's doing.

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I give Berkey credit for sure. It’s been a long slog for him to get to where he is at. I mean it in the best way, he’s not a natural like Polk was. He really had to grind at the content game hard. He can be a bit tedious to listen to at time. Even some of these podcasts, they would bore a nerd to tears. If I got to hear another conversation of GTO vs Exploit my head may explode. But he keeps putting them out and God bless. I did enjoy the back and forth with him and Christian Soto. I guess Soto lives out east now so he can’t be on the show as a regular.

Also, Above the Felt has certainly delivered. Not to say they didn’t earn the spots anyways but Jamie Kerstetter is high up with the WPT and MGM. Elias & Berkey have sponsorships with MGM. This Draftkings thing only lasted a week and I think it was basically just an affiliate link. I have just seen too many talented poker players lose it all in the pit. Maybe that is less of a concern nowadays with more of these GTO wizards coming into the game, as opposed to the boom where you saw a lot of people who just liked to gamble in general move over to poker.

The Academy is fucking expensive. Let’s be honest, in four days you can’t retain 4K of knowledge. But just being around their studio & out of your comfort zone gives these guys confidence. They certainly will have to study a lot on their own time to get their 4K worth.

Quick story….a few years ago I was playing 1/2 NL at Planet Hollywood. I sparked up a conversation with a guy probably in his mid 50s. Could tell he was successful. But a humble and nice guy. He said he just picked up poker in the last year. But I noticed he was super confident. Like almost winking at me that he was going to get all the money from this drunk guy. You know what… he did. He stacked the guy with top pair Jack kicker. 10 J….Jack high flop. Somehow got the guy to put in 300+ with god knows what.

He told me he was doing training at Solve 4 Why. I asked him if he didn’t mind telling me how much he was in for. He said…6K and he was about to go put another 4k. I was in fucking shock. But just said that’s awesome man. 10 g birds. God bless Berkey. He was the most confident 1/2 novice I ever played with. So I guess he did get what he paid for.