That's oversimplifying it. For one, we don't know if Phil knows business or not, but we can be very certain that a project of that magnitude and financial commitment involves a decent amount of people who do know business very well.

There are very knowledgeable people in the industry who think there's a mid to long term future for online poker and others who think there isn't one. The first group of people 'won' at GVC/partypoker, the second group 'won' at TSG. That doesn't mean everybody at Party thinks there is a future nor does everybody at Stars think there isn't one.

Time will tell which side got it right.

You're right, everything they do does indeed make perfect business sense.

That doesn't mean poker players shouldn't demonize them for it. They turned a legitimate poker site into poker-themed casino games that are unbeatable rake-traps.

The issue is they are still marketing it as poker and selling "the dream" of being able to run it up, which is just no longer a possibility in the majority of their game formats. There's clearly a market for these "fun" type of games, but call it what it is, and not poker. They're obviously making more by catering to these people instead of to the poker environment as a whole (and pro's as well).

That being said, I do think the vast majority of poker players anger towards poker stars is rooted in self interest rather than logic. Pokerstars doesn't owe anybody anything, they're here to make money and it sucks that their interests don't align with mine -- but it is what it is.

It will always be a possibility in every single game format to run it up. You may have to go on an extreme heater for a prolonged period of time, but technically it's always possible. Even if it is only a 0.00000000001% likelihood, it is still possible.

So their advertising of selling "the dream" is factually correct and that's all that matters. Sure, it doesn't tell the full story, but since when does any advertising tell the full story?

Very interested to see what rake structure and rewards system Phil Galfond comes up with. Next big problem I see is attracting fish to the pool.

1000% agree, no site should allow more than 6 cash tables, 24 MTTs I'm ok with.

Congrats on the progress Gandolf, unfortunately I'm an American and can't play, but having someone like yourself push the other sites to do better is a win win for the entire poker world.

Galfond VS Kanye for President 2020!

If sites didn't allow more than 6 tables, people would've played 6 at Stars, 6 at FTP, 6 at UB, and 6 at Party.

Theoretically, it's possible to deny playing privileges if too many tables of other sites are detected on the computer, and also prohibit virtual machines. That would reduce the number of mass multitablers, as they'd then have to play on multiple devices like in the case of Chinese pseudo-play-money apps.

Furthermore, it's even somewhat possible to detect multitabling on other devices, by asking anyone who uses the timebank too often to submit a video of their play like Stars ask suspected botters, and deny playing privileges altogether (without confiscating the BR) if the user is found playing too many tables on other devices and/or the data from the submitted video deviates too much from their normal playing habits.

looks great phil!

Pretty sad that in the wake of what is great news that average 2p2er has to try and sound like a jackass genius or shower the announcement in salt.

Phil is a very smart man and won't be gunning at this lightly, lets stay positive.

Right on!

I have no issue with that, I have an issue with the same 3 nit rb grinders on 24 tables of 1 limit on 1 site making the games miserable. WPN is a perfect example of this, most of their games are awful. Between the same 2-3 Eastern Euro/Russian "regs" being on all of the tables and the scriptors it's impossible to even switch tables a lot of times for better games. I exclusively start games and sit out when these guys come because it's the only way I can get decent games without luckboxing one, but that makes it hard to get any volume in sometimes.

+1.

Are all poker forums as negative as Twoplustwo?

Many forums on the internet are hostile, but equally many forums are friendly. It's down to the type of characters who use the forum and the way it's modded. Poker players in particular grow a sense of bitterness, frustration and anger from the game of poker, which feeds into their posts on forums.

Most people are rightly negative about this though. The site will be full of regs. No one who actually wants to make money from poker would ever play there.

Will be interesting to hear about the innovations that are coming with it. I'm looking forward to the site getting up and running

It's just a handful of people, but they are indeed very vocal which makes it seem that way.

If no one who actually wants to make money would ever play there, then it sounds like a great place to play if you want to make money.

I don't think you need to go too far. Put a 15sec decision + 15 second timebank which only reloads every once in a while. This forces player to take decisions mostly faster than 15 seconds which means they will fold their 74o faster which means fishes don't have to wait forever to gamble. If the guy has other sites open he is at risk of timing out good hands. Also ban seating scripts / folding scripts / raising scripts so they actually have to take decisions every 15 seconds on every tables.

Pretty much the same design that Ongame was doing. The interface was so fast you couldn't mass table effectively. At the same time the average player was much worse than stars or tilt. I'm sure fishes there had fun 1 tabling though.

Only if you find a way to attract people to build a decent liquidity. If those who play for money don’t come, that means attracting those who are not familiar with PG or RIO
Not an easy game.

What I mean by that is there won't be enough recs to balance out the regs. It will mostly be angry regs who want to "teach Pokerstars a lesson" playing on the site, passing money between each other.

Any other insights Nostradamus?

Right haha. If only Phil was as smart as the random posters in NVG. I bet he hasn't even considered a way to get recs to sign up, such an idiot for trying to do something good for online poker let's keep ****ting all over his site before we play a single hand!

Poker is a declining market dude. You're also competing with all the established well-recognised brands like PokerStars, Party and 888. The only people who've heard of runitonce are people who take their poker game very seriously. Not enough fish will join this site for it to be sustainable in the long run.

Poker is not a declining market, online poker is a declining market, most of which is do to governments and ****ty sites. A good site that can more resemble the growing market of live poker has a lot of room to grow. Also, you don't seem to be factoring in the fact that the USA is getting closer and closer to poker being legal, which makes brand recognition pretty meaningless considering the vast majority of poker players in the USA haven't played online since BF.

You also seem to think someone dumping millions of dollars into something isn't smart enough to have already came up with a plan to not light said money on fire. But hey, I like posting opinions based on absolutely nothing on the internet sometimes too!!!

Edit: Oh, and you also don't seem to realize you don't have to be as big as Stars to have a fantastic site that prints you money and has a good balance of regs/recs. Obviously at first it won't be that great, that's common sense.

How do you figure that live poker is a growing market, or that online poker is close to being legalized in the US?

Drug cartels also makes 100% sense from a buisness perspective.