Yes it was regarding EndtheFed and HigherHighs.
They both advertise tournaments and so on all the time in the chat, not even playing them themselves (only register seconds before late reg is closed). Which normal player does that?
Is it normal to write "tournament this and that starts in 10 minutes", and posting this stuff like every 15 minutes? EndtheFed does exactly that but still him and swc claim they have no relationship whatsoever. You believe that?
Once he even offered a bubble insurance for players that register before the tournament starts, "out of his own pocket" he claimed. I asked him why he would do that and the reply was "I want a nice tournament to run". Now guess what, he was online the whole time promoting tournaments but didnt even register for the mentioned tournament. Makes a lot of sense.
Honestly this doesn't make me think he's an employee. I used to think they were more, much before that, for many of the same reasons you mentioned. It used to piss me off seeing them late reg and build a decent stack or just flip and bust. The more I saw ETF at the tables though the less I though they were an employee. One big reason is that Bubble protection is cheap, especially when it was only being offered in the Thursday Double from what I caught. Why have your "secret employee" offer it in the chat, and not just make it part of the tournament or site rules.
Personally, I've also found entering most SWC tournaments on max Late. Reg isn't the disadvantage it usually is with small fields and still usually having 20BB+, you often still have 20 BB+ and a lot of the players have pretty easy tendencies to pick up on if you play with them enough. Not the best strategy but still reasonable.
It is not that I dislike the fact that obvious employees play at the site ( although I thinks its concerning ) but that they are affiliated and both sites claim they arent.
Both members also had green chat, no normal player can have green chat. SWC replied to the green chat thing something like "maybe they used green chat before it got deleted in an update and so they kept it" . HH admited he got the green chat from swc directly and hours after I mentioned endthefed's green chat in the thread he changed it.
Yeah the handling of HH and their Mod abilities, whatever the extent wound up being was shitty to say the least. HH, got the color when they became a Moderator it seems, and not going to lie could have been a legitimate software oversight when bestowing whatever privilege they were given. Prior to this it seemed they just reported a ton of stuff, and acted as an employee, essentially working to ingratiate themselves and maybe earn a role in the organization. So I don't know when it was official or not that they got Chat Mod priveleges, over just reporting people. It also seems different than a secret employee and anything nefarious at least to me. Did I read right earlier in the thread it was announced they were removed as a Chat Moderator as well??
Also I'll mention the chat color at least seems possible, but I don't know enough about their software/client upgrades and when Green color was removed as an option. Goin with this forum as an example, I can't use an animated GIF as my Avatar, but there are several on forum who still have them because they had it before the change went into place.
By the way, trust me I made my concerns clear, it just got deleted by swc.
Also, I never cared about the chat, I couldn't care less about it to be honest. I had a lot of players muted as I was sick of reading begging and other bs in the chat or at the table.
Regardless to me none of this stuff really screams secret employees at least not long-term, maybe in the case of HH another example of a poor effort communicating changes... I really don't know. You mentioned something about HH, having something to do with Tournament planning, do you know the extent? I saw they have a password protected player freeroll with some ticket entries to some upcoming series events. It's labeled an HH event, and sort of reinforced a theory I've had brewing.
I read somewhere that they have both been long time players on SWC, is there a chance they just have a fat BTC bankroll from their early days when BTC mooned. Given what I've seen on this forum from people, performing moderator/admin tasks, with the hope they get tapped to take on a real role for the forum. That or the people who do freeroll giveaways ranging .01 to .2 BTC, open to almost everyone on forum. These types of individuals will often do things out of their own time and pocket to make the place they enjoy hanging out, more enjoyable and/or inviting to others.
I could just be ridiculously naive, but it just seems reasonable that there are more options out there than secret employees playing. From a companies perspective when they answer once I understand not repeating themselves. It was stupid to erase the original Q&A, and locking the thread. Sadly it's not surprising, they probably assume they get a better community engagement through social media than the forum, and decided it's no longer worth discussing here.
Regardless there is no way to prove it all one way or another. I can't see SWC being able to provide a statement that doesn't admit to the accusations, being accepted as a response by anyone who believes there was wrongdoing. Myself, I wasn't affected by anything that gave me the impression there was wrongdoing, and still feel as comfortable as one can playing online Poker and will continue to play there. Don't get me wrong there was some incompetence along the way, but hardly enough to even remotely warrant a boycott.
yeah, i hear ya. one thing to note is that BBJ tables are where all the action is on SwC, more often than not. also, it's not just the player that gets the bad beat who gets paid out---so does the hand winner + everyone else dealt into the hand. this dynamic tends to make the BBJ tables even juicier, so the jackpot isn't the only reason to play them.
Not going to lie so pissed with myself. I easily should have been sitting at that table lol. The last few months my boy has been a shit sleeper lol, so I often have to chill upstairs to make sure he stays in his room/bed and goes to sleep. Took this time to play a bunch of 25/50 in hopes of spiking the BBj or at least being at the table. For whatever reason, I consciously decided to take the night off lol. Don't think I've played a cash game since.