Heh I always knew that there was more of a story with TwiceT leaving especially given that he still do the videos for pokerstrategy competitor and he was very deticated for the English community. Same for Gerv but it seems that they weren't pissed enough on Pokerstrategy as Veriz is (cause maybe they didn't get equally fucked)
Veriz words pretty much confirm it. Based on all what have happened for pokerstrategy lately it really doesn't look good.
Typical example how bigger companies treat their employees as only numbers and put way too little effort to keep team togheter who seems to work well and costumers like and are used to.
All about saving bucks, cutting promos using cheap tricks like that Partypoker 27% promo instead Full Tilt when players got de-tracked etc..
Would love seeing vidos from Veriz as there is hardly anything new to look for.. Most vids are well outdated as games have changed and based on Veriz hardworking volume in hand judging i am sure we missed nice volume of new videos!
I will take Veriz place, I do not post hand evaluations, so the numbers will always be less than 10, so that is easy to never get wrong.
I also dont want anything, so thats always promised secured.
Anything poker related, i will just ask someone else anyway before giving an answer, so you get pro feedback.
I don't even want a pay.
I ask for one thing, and one thing only.. To invite me to all parties, and to have an upfront payment of $100,000.
Thanks.
he guys, further quotes please put a spoiler around veriz message :-)
I'll still stick to "we do not discuss about persons, just about our offer"-method, as I do not think personal relations have to be discussed in a public forum.
I appreciate that veriz wanted to show us his side of the story and have to deviate a bit from the "not discuss about persons" to show a bit our side of the story. I promise I won't go too much into detail.
The hand evaluation forum works in the following way: handjudges see an unresponded thread, respond to it and have an extra button "mark as judged". Furthermore users can reopen a thread with "ask the judge" again and the handjudge can reevaluate.
To the benefit of the coach we do not count only the pure amounts of hands the coach posted in but all the posts that meant a reevalution, too. On the other side you could simply say 'SvenBe, why don't you count just posts?'. Three things influence us here: Handjudges can post their own hands for discussion and we do not want to say "please do not do so because it would count for your payment". The second thing is that we have a very old system which basically makes us using our statistic that counts the pure 'evaluations' since there is no "# of posts of x in forum y"-stats. I am sure you guys know that we have a new system in development, so no new stats will be added to the old one. I am sure (my guesstimation) that >200 handjudges in all communities work by this way, we never had any problem with this way of counting the hands that have been evaluated - we even give the extra evaluations for follow up questions on top. Last but not least - we pay for a service for a member, which might or might not involve 2nd and 3rd questions - just a factor of mixed calculations, for both us and the coaches. I know this is debatable, just wanted to give our reason for counting a certain way - we treat hand evaluations as hands evaluated, not as pure posts made.
As said before, I do not want to mess the situation more up, there have surely been made mistakes on our side,too - i.e. moving the coaching sessions to another time. However I believe overall we did had a awesome relationship for most of the time, otherwise veriz would not have come to Gibraltar to stay here for the next couple of months.
In a private note, I'll hope we'll be able to have a beer with each other in the Celebrities Bar on the weekends without making this a private issue, do we?
Thx for giving us your version of the story veriz, hopefully we can still stay in touch with you.
I really wished you would stay, I guess thats a selfish thing, but I really feel you could have tought me so much still.
I have such a long way to go in my poker carrier, and I owe everything to you in sense of me still playing.
If it hadn't been for you I wouldn't be playing poker, I would have in other words given up. I still have a few issues with my fear of playing, but I'm still playing tho not as much as I should. Might be because there is no veriz evaluating once hands 
I for one am gonna stay in touch with you great/wise coach, you will always be my favorite!
btw... Sikac I hope you have calmed down a bit, I kinda thought the thread was getting derailed, and seeing someone like you ranting like you did, made me a bit sad, hoped you could have done it a bit more diplomaticly, however I understand your anger, but feel that maybe it was a bit to drasticly, your an awesome hand evaluator aswell, sad to see you not judgeing my hands anymore.
PS gonna really miss the beginners coaching with veriz, your an awesome inspiration, GL to you, and all the others here.
Best regards
Mikkel
Originally posted by RobertDaPro
Typical example how bigger companies treat their employees as only numbers and put way too little effort to keep team together who seems to work well and costumers like and are used to.All about saving bucks, cutting promos using cheap tricks like that Partypoker 27% promo instead Full Tilt when players got de-tracked etc..
Would love seeing vidos from Veriz as there is hardly anything new to look for.. Most vids are well outdated as games have changed and based on Veriz hardworking volume in hand judging i am sure we missed nice volume of new videos!
Hey Robert,
Sad to see you think like this. You spoke about the games changing and their not being current content? If you check the no limit section you will see recent videos by oblioo, James keys, Internet and others who are not only good coaches but crushers of no limit and know exactly how poker will be in 2013. Furthermore there is a project currently being done in-house that revolves around game plans in 2013 and is set to be 10/10 modern day strategy.
Couple this with our new team (Check the evaluations page, I'm sure you will not be disappointed) and I think you should have absolutely no problems at all with learning about how games will be developing into 2013.
As far as your qualms go regarding promotions, I don't agree that Pokerstrategy.com are trying to do cut backs or save bucks. The 'party 27%' was an alternative for our players and one of the biggest promotions of all time. We launched the new gemstone promotions and we even have a department working on a daily basis to make sure that Pokerstrategy.com members are not left shortchanged. I would say at the very minimum that Pokerstrategy.com's promotions are extremely competitive.
@francezek the reasons behind Gerv, veriz and TwiceT leaving are all different and individual cases. We can't legally go into deep discussions on these things due to contracts and I assume this is the same for themselves. Pokerstrategy.com continues to offer more videos than any other training site in all game types and is doing everything in its power to ensure the quality is immensely high. If you disagree, I'm more than happy to disuss it with you on a case by case basis outside the forum (so you can be as vocal as you want) and hopefully ease your concerns or listen to your feedback and improve.
@veriz I actually agree with lots of your posts and again thank you very much for your work with pokerstrategy.com. There are of course things we will disagree with and things I don't believe are true, but I of course don't and cannot go into very personal and private matters for obvious legal reasons. If you see a main reason of the 'all star' team then I think you will understand what I mean.
As far as veriz leaving, I want to make it as clear as possible that when veriz spoke to one of my colleagues last Friday that the door will never be shut, we gratefully respect and are grateful for his work and that I sincerely hope one day in the not so distant future we are able to reopen the working relationship.
#stillafan
Edit: posting from phone apologies for slight typos
Wtf PS srsly?
Answering so politics style and brushing people's eyes with promises for the future.
I hope veriz will find a new job pretty soon and will keep on coaching us.
Originally posted by orient33
Wtf PS srsly?
Answering so politics style and brushing people's eyes with promises for the future.
I hope veriz will find a new job pretty soon and will keep on coaching us.
Hey orient33.
Whilst it is not intended to be politically styled, I do pride myself on trying to keep composed an explain as much as possible without breaching any legal or moral boundaries.
As far as speaking about the future two of the things a cool promotion (HU championship) a new team (keyser, emmanuel and myself) have been instantly installed so I would like to think that future promises would not be seen as false promises but exciting promises.
I too hope that veriz finds whatever it is that makes him happiest and im sure that from what I know about him that he will be extremely successful in whatever he chooses to do. As I previously mentioned the door is not closed and not will it ever be.
Pleno...you do a great job representing pokerstrategy and I'm a big fan of yours(even read about you in "poker player" magazine today!!) But if you guys need help crushing social media issues let me know 
got linked her, first time ever, and i have not followed any of the discussions or know any of the facts so i wont reply to any personal posts, but im a freelance handjudge since some months in the dutch part and would like to express my point of view.
Being a handjudge IS a difficult job. You can be a greath player but be the worst handjudge there is, if you give the wrong, to less, to much info. We have a very small part of the forum. hardly over 10 hands / day, so i can't compare, but i know every single person who posts in the handjudge and i follow there blogs, there session reviews during coachings etc, so i know who i am replying too.
obviously in sng, some hands are just plain math and some hands are very interesting. some players only know to look 10 degrees around them, and its not worth helping them to look in the other 350 degress directions. they will be lost in translation. I reply to hands posted differently for every posters, just because thats the only way to give the posters what they need. its not about how good i am, its about giving the right information to the right problem and the person. there's no point in discussion future equity to someone who who limps with 5big blinds. I find it very important to know posters leaks and weaknesses, and use there own hands to resolve them, rather then post if the hand was wel or bad played and what was the max EV line. This makes handjudging a harder job they what i may look to the outside (players, PS, etc). stupid quote, but "give a poor man a fish and he has food for one day, teach him to fish and he'll never be hungry again".
some hands are so terrible, that you could write 10 pages of concepts, but thats not what the poster is in need of and thats not our job. article and video sections are there for something. sometimes i just post 1 line, , because there's nothing to talk about, and sometimes i write over 2 pages. considering 2 pages equal to a one line , is kinda harsh, when you translate that into $$$. for my own part, it doesnt matter. I'm doing this for frree, in stead of posting/reviewing in there blogs, I now ask them to post it in the handjudgings so it can be viewed by more persons.
Don't underestimate the job of a handjudge, and scherish them. It's true that making one video gives u God status for many posters, but personally i think it's easyer then being a good handjudge, because your audiance is not 200 different people, where u can just explain any concept u feel like, but your audiance is one person, with his own specific needs. I'm sad to see a fellow handjudge part, no matter what the reason is. and if i see his postcount, you're like the gothfather of handjudgings and they should go to that extra mile, because anybody doing handjudgings correctly and so many... deserves it.
regards.
(ps its very late, so sorry i did't take time to copy paste it in a auto corrector to remove all my errors. )
ps: almost forgot my point maybe devide handjudgings in more smaller parts where there HJ is very active, so that the quality if the judgings goes up, and the workload for the handjudges go down. I personally dont think handjudges do there work just because of the $. most can probably earn as much just by playing, its more a worl of love, that shouldnt be exploited to the breakpoint. So maby splitting of big portions up in smaller, will be +ev for all (ps= quality, HJ= interesting discussions, posters= more personal feedback rather then a standardised answer)
Originally posted by SvenBe
Spoiler
The hand evaluation forum works in the following way: handjudges see an unresponded thread, respond to it and have an extra button "mark as judged". Furthermore users can reopen a thread with "ask the judge" again and the handjudge can reevaluate. To the benefit of the coach we do not count only the pure amounts of hands the coach posted in but all the posts that meant a reevalution, too. On the other side you could simply say 'SvenBe, why don't you count just posts?'. Three things influence us here: Handjudges can post their own hands for discussion and we do not want to say "please do not do so because it would count for your payment". The second thing is that we have a very old system which basically makes us using our statistic that counts the pure 'evaluations' since there is no "# of posts of x in forum y"-stats. I am sure you guys know that we have a new system in development, so no new stats will be added to the old one. I am sure (my guesstimation) that >200 handjudges in all communities work by this way, we never had any problem with this way of counting the hands that have been evaluated - we even give the extra evaluations for follow up questions on top. Last but not least - we pay for a service for a member, which might or might not involve 2nd and 3rd questions - just a factor of mixed calculations, for both us and the coaches. I know this is debatable, just wanted to give our reason for counting a certain way - we treat hand evaluations as hands evaluated, not as pure posts made.
Sorry, I am quite lost here. I have some questions, but mainly because I just did not understand the quoted text and, of course, due to my inquisitive nature.
First, about the threads that the coaches create themselves, e.g. their own hands posted for evaluation. I searched for threads created by Veriz and in the last two years he did not post a single hand for evaluation himself. I do understand that your idea expressed is applied in general, i.e. other coaches do post their own hands for evaluation. However, do I get this right that the “two counter systems” that Veriz referred to are “threads created by judges at HE forum” and “responded to threads by judges at HE forum”? If so, then this is a very easy case: the latter should basically be equal to the amount of Veriz’s posts, and the former equal to 0?
Second, do I get it right that your old system just counts the initial response and excludes responses for follow up questions? If that is the case, how do you trace the follow up responses then?
Last, not paying for follow up questions here is out of the question, if you are paying for an initial response in the first place. The reverse scenario is equal to saying that “we pay you for responding once but if a community member has some extra questions regarding the hand or your response, you do not need to answer”. Even more, a judge is equally involved in providing an initial response and replying to follow up questions. Otherwise, the entire hand evaluation becomes obsolete.
In a way, Veriz revolutionized the hand evaluation forum. Before him, the HE forum activity was marginal in comparison to today’s traffic. This is due to the fact that Veriz was very quick to respond to every new thread and provided a very satisfying evaluation. In return, community members started posting more hands because they knew they were getting the best HE service. So, the more work Veriz did, the more work he was going to get. Also, PS benefited from this as well.
In my humble opinion, the entire hand counting matter is due to the fact that, unfortunately, PS did not resolve the issues stemming from the dynamic changes that were the result of Veriz’s activity in time. These issues also provide us a hint that they are unique to Veriz’s case. The fact that PS has more than 200 hand judges who get paid by the same principle must include the notion of that maybe only 1% of that population gets close to 50% of the monthly work volume Veriz did (i.e. counting their hands requires less math). In the end, I hope that these issues will get resolved in a near future. After all, this is just a minor technical matter, right?
P.S. Bonus: Veriz getting his hand evaluated at NL10 from Kaitz – even the legends have simple beginnings.
Hi faronel,
I am sorry that I can not go into full detail - I made my post to tackle the allegations, with all respect it was not to discuss the way how we decide that we negotiate and pay freelancers.
Again: we are paying for the service of evaluation hands, in 99.9% of cases without any trouble by counting the hands that have been checked + the follow up questions being marked by the user and answered by the coach again, too. This has worked and still works with >200 handjudges that together with our voluntary experts cover 100% of the traffic now and 95% when veriz was still in charge.
We are convinced that we pay at or over industry standards & believe in fair payments as a foundation to a good relationship with our freelancers.
Originally posted by Resilence
Sorry, I am quite lost here. I have some questions, but mainly because I just did not understand the quoted text and, of course, due to my inquisitive nature.
First, about the threads that the coaches create themselves, e.g. their own hands posted for evaluation. I searched for threads created by Veriz and in the last two years he did not post a single hand for evaluation himself. I do understand that your idea expressed is applied in general, i.e. other coaches do post their own hands for evaluation. However, do I get this right that the “two counter systems” that Veriz referred to are “threads created by judges at HE forum” and “responded to threads by judges at HE forum”? If so, then this is a very easy case: the latter should basically be equal to the amount of Veriz’s posts, and the former equal to 0?
Second, do I get it right that your old system just counts the initial response and excludes responses for follow up questions? If that is the case, how do you trace the follow up responses then?
Last, not paying for follow up questions here is out of the question, if you are paying for an initial response in the first place. The reverse scenario is equal to saying that “we pay you for responding once but if a community member has some extra questions regarding the hand or your response, you do not need to answer”. Even more, a judge is equally involved in providing an initial response and replying to follow up questions. Otherwise, the entire hand evaluation becomes obsolete.In a way, Veriz revolutionized the hand evaluation forum. Before him, the HE forum activity was marginal in comparison to today’s traffic. This is due to the fact that Veriz was very quick to respond to every new thread and provided a very satisfying evaluation. In return, community members started posting more hands because they knew they were getting the best HE service. So, the more work Veriz did, the more work he was going to get. Also, PS benefited from this as well.
In my humble opinion, the entire hand counting matter is due to the fact that, unfortunately, PS did not resolve the issues stemming from the dynamic changes that were the result of Veriz’s activity in time. These issues also provide us a hint that they are unique to Veriz’s case. The fact that PS has more than 200 hand judges who get paid by the same principle must include the notion of that maybe only 1% of that population gets close to 50% of the monthly work volume Veriz did (i.e. counting their hands requires less math). In the end, I hope that these issues will get resolved in a near future. After all, this is just a minor technical matter, right?P.S. Bonus: Veriz getting his hand evaluated at NL10 from Kaitz – even the legends have simple beginnings.
Originally posted by Resilence
Thx for giving us your version of the story veriz, hopefully we can still stay in touch with you.
I really wished you would stay, I guess thats a selfish thing, but I really feel you could have tought me so much still.
I have such a long way to go in my poker carrier, and I owe everything to you in sense of me still playing.
If it hadn't been for you I wouldn't be playing poker, I would have in other words given up. I still have a few issues with my fear of playing, but I'm still playing tho not as much as I should. Might be because there is no veriz evaluating once handsI for one am gonna stay in touch with you great/wise coach, you will always be my favorite!
btw... Sikac I hope you have calmed down a bit, I kinda thought the thread was getting derailed, and seeing someone like you ranting like you did, made me a bit sad, hoped you could have done it a bit more diplomaticly, however I understand your anger, but feel that maybe it was a bit to drasticly, your an awesome hand evaluator aswell, sad to see you not judgeing my hands anymore.
PS gonna really miss the beginners coaching with veriz, your an awesome inspiration, GL to you, and all the others here.
Best regards
Mikkel
First of all I have to say both great posts. That s the way it actually has to be done. ♦
About me Resilence,yeah, I agree that I have a lack of diplomacy and was I harsh and for that I do wanna apologize. I think now I reacted this way simply because it has crushed my plans, my believes and overall it is huge disappointment. But I can say sorry for the whole things I meant there. I dont regret what I said, I regret the way. I mean it is not like now, after 5 days, I have changed my mind and opinions about PS. What I wrote there I also believe, think or feel.Even my opinion about press releases ♦
I was happy to help you out during the time I worked as a vol. hand judge.And if you do have any questions or whatever you can also contact me;). Just keep up the good work and learn from what PS has to offer you.
Originally posted by Farmarchist
Thanks for sharing your story veriz. I think PS need to apologize for this and maybe give him another opportunity? I mean, the guy has been so friendly to everyone, came to Gibraltar and then he got this in return? This seems like injustice.
Exactly, because of this I need to detrack my account. I simply feel the moral duty, as a friend and as a student to no give this support here. Veriz helped me whenever I was in trouble poker or life wise and simply cant stand the feeling of the part my rake moving to PS after I know who they treated him. I simply can t.
But still doesnt mean that I do not wish the best for the community. Good luck to you all guys and thanks Veriz for the time and effort you put in while you worked here.
Hey Sikac, Resilence
I am glad that you are happy to receive Veriz side of the story. Like I have previously said we are unable to "put our side across" because of obvious legal reasons that say you cannot discuss private matters like this.
We will now discuss this internally speaking to all the right people and report back here APPROPRIATELY and within our legal boundaries. We do not and will not resort to a slanging match on the forum, especially with somebody that we recognize has been super influential in getting the hand evaluation boards to a certain point.
We now think that the strategy boards need to go in a slightly different direction and from the first few days of the new team I am very happy with the way things are looking.
If anybody has any personal cases, grievances or troubles then my contact details are in my signature and I will be happy to discuss any matters there.
@roopopper for sure! We're always looking to improve on the social media side of things and will put it in my to-do's to get in touch with you in the next week over Skype. Thanks for the nice words also.
@Sikac We are still speaking internally about your case
@Farmachist - We didn't take the decision easily or make it overnight, as you know we can't go deeper into reasons why but as I have mentioned several times in the thread the door is never closed.
Originally posted by Imimba1
Veriz, reach your goals man!
Was an honor learning from you.
Hi all,
Veriz and I have just spoken for the best part of one hour, honestly and passionately. I think we are on a much clearer page and I think we will both make a post in the thread tomorrow.
Have a good evening.
Originally posted by pleno1
Hi all,Veriz and I have just spoken for the best part of one hour, honestly and passionately. I think we are on a much clearer page and I think we will both make a post in the thread tomorrow.
Have a good evening.
I'm really looking forward to seeing both of these posts!
thanks for the post veriz.
really sad about the way you were treated..
which shows moniezz >> staff >> players...
Originally posted by satishvasoya
thanks for the post veriz.
really sad about the way you were treated..
which shows moniezz >> staff >> players...
Hey,
I've been very patient in the thread thus far but I really dislike these posts. Lets look at some facts.
Previously, we had Veriz and Veriz only working as a machine, doing a very good job with the coverage.
We now have:
Emanuelc16
Pleno1
ImfromSweden
Keyser1
MBML
getdotacom
So we have gone from one guy that was doing really a lot of comments but unable to spark discussion because of time constraints due to the massive workload pressure he had, we now have 6 guys who are doing extremely in depth discussions and provoking larger threads.
Please see here - >
NL25: K9s FD vs strong cBetting range
NL25: QT bad line
I picked two threads to show that Veriz had provoked discussion here but in the old model he would not have been able to do the replies Emanuel did because of pure time constraints.
So lets look at your argument of saving "moniezzz" we went from previously having a lot of one post replies that were good and left people feeling satisfactory. Everything was fine and we only paid one guy.
We now have 6 guys playing high limits that are commenting on hands together and really getting some amazing discussion, without going into detail, if Emanuel/IFS/Myself all comment in one thread you can imagine that its going to be more expensive for PokerStrategy.com than if we had more evaluation forums that had lots of thread -> answer -> end. So I'm sorry but I have to politely dismiss your argument and please check out the boards. We are here to improve the quality of the boards and provide a better service for our members, instead of saying "pokerstrategy.com only bothered about money" show me concrete examples and challenge me, saying broad statements that are extremely vague just encourages hate and its totally unfair on the guys who are trying to make a difference here.
Regarding Veriz personal case we have mentioned on numerous occasions our thanks for his service and spoke about how we will make another post this afternoon. I will spend my days and nights replying to constructive posts, but these vague statements that often provide un-necessary and un-warranted hate are unfair on all of us who are really trying to make this a good place for you.
