As of now, the initial launch will only consist of Omaha and Holdem (not sure in what formats).

To say I was disappointed when I heard this would be an understatement. After watching RIO Elite mixed game vids, I quit my job and uprooted my family from a nice suburb in the US to a tacky 2 bedroom flat in Warsaw, Poland strictly to play mix games on RIO, once it came out.

I'm not sure what we are going to do now. My wife doesn't enjoy the bland food here and my son is having a tough time learning the local language. It might be time to swallow my pride, admit to my wife that I've made a mistake, and ask my mom if we can move back into her basement (it's an in-law so we have our own entrance).

I try to look on the bright side. The people here are nice and there are some beautiful parts of the country worth checking out. Happy Independence day to everybody around the world!

Wow what a terrible situation kappa

LOL Macau

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Having exhausted accounts (and closed/banned) on virtually every poker site running (bar the super shady and pitiful traffic sites) I am eagerly awaiting this site opening. Despite being a losing fish of 10 years the site appeals to me, while I may have more insight to the world of poker than most losing fish (I doubt most fish at my local cardroom would know who Phil Galfond is) I think if the site is good enough then word of mouth should be enough to get people interested.

From my viewpoint what would make it successful is...

* BIG GTD payout tournaments with good satellite structure, not sure how they can offer this without losing a shed load on overlay though.
* Overlay .... this always gets people to a site
* No BS when it comes to deposits/withdrawals. Depositing should be easy using debit card, Pay Pal even. Withdraws that are paid out same day would particularly appeal to me. If that's not possible, they need to not offer reverse withdraw (or at least give you the option to lock a withdraw). As a losing player, if I score, I need that money, and I will keep coming back if I know I can have the money in my bank in a few hours after hitting withdraw. Some casinos are very good at this now. I have given up on many poker sites that allow me to reverse withdraw big tournament wins only for me to lose it taking a shot. If you want fish, make it fish friendly.
* Not forcing users to give up their privacy to have their faces scanned and stored by AI for identity purposes.
* Give bustos a way back into the game. Nothing is more annoying than having 99c in an account when you have no money to deposit and can't do anything with it. In the good old days I could still play tournaments for as little as 10c, could buy in to cash games for 40c, or in the case of poker stars, instead of stupid pirate treasure chests, I had points which I could use to play SNG satellites, then I could unreg from the tourney and use the T$ to play more SNG's and turn that into some money. Many times on stars and FTP I used to turn nothing into $200 and cash out right when I was broke. Occasionally I would sit with the 200 and go broke with my aces against AJ 2 hands in. Obv they figure the pros are more deserving of it. But when Im stuck with 99c in an account and can't do anything with it till I can next deposit, I'm likely to deposit elsewhere.

I've got bad news for you. There won't be any tournaments at the beginning which I think is a huge mistake. But I'm sure they have invested a lot of money so far, so they have to start making some money back.

The fact that Galfond also mentioned that people didn't completelly understand what Negreanu said, that higher rake could be better for recreational players, also doesn't bode well. Like every nonpro is completelly clueless and there aren't many different kinds of players. Big losers, small losers, small winners. Higher rake just means players will win less on average. The big winner/shark at the table on small stakes is the rake, not the "pros".

Another thing that Phil mentioned was that he was going to combat bumhunting, and anonymous screennames was a solution for that. But then other option there will be no table selection, and it will be random seating. So it means bumhunting wouldn't be a option, this is just so they control the information and people don't know how many botters/cheaters are on the tables, and can't control how much winners there really are and if the rake is beatable and by how much at low stakes, etc. Another inconsistency was that not having unique screennames wouldn't permit people to gain advantage with multiaccounting, which he may have suffered at high stakes. But the high stakes will have fixed screennames, contrary to small stakes, so it defeats one of the purposes. It just means that anonymous will just be so they control the ecosystem, so players have a harder time to know what's going on. Now some people that have sick winrates at Ignition will come here and say that anonymous is great, but not everyone have access juicy american pplayerpool like you guys.

Another factor that makes me suspect this won't be a big success is the promotion of the site. If it's near the opening this summer, their publicity is lacking in a awful way. The presence on social media is beyond weak. I see that they're starting posting some videos on youtube, but really it's too little and too late. They shoud have had a major presence in all social media, promoting tournaments, posting live or recorded cash games on youtube for example with known players, a big presence on twitch, etc. Many things they could have done if the launch of the site is near.

This will be somewhat of a bust; they had a golden opportunity with the changes Amaya made on stars and the bad press they received, but they couldn't get the timing right and the development was slow. Plus the fact that they're going more on the Ignition/Unibet route instead of the old stars/ftp won't excite many people. When people see that the cash games are probably filled by regs from rio and 2+2 at the beginning, it will slowly stagnate and not gain momentum, also taking into account that there won't be MTTs at the start.

I'm out.

I play nothing but online MTTs, around 400 a year. That's all right, I've been thinking about mixing in some live tournaments later this year.

Don't think it's open to US players anyway. Could be wrong but I thought that was the case.

Not open to US players.

That being the case, I'm surprised that it is generating so much discussion in this thread, considering what must be a pretty high percentage of US players on these forums.

If you just play online MTTs maybe you hadn't heard, but Phil Galfond is kinda a big deal.

I know who the three Phils are and each is, in his own way, a big deal. That doesn't mean that I have any interest in someone building a site that doesn't have tournaments and on which Americans can't play. Have fun drooling over what you can't have. I don't see the point.

i guess that explains over 2500 posts about a DIY blog with 3 entries in 2 years, thanks for clearing that up

No problem. In addition to his blog he also used to be the lead instructor at Bluefire Poker so a lot of people remember him from there.

So... Coming soon?..

It is still summer in Europe and in the USA for a while, and it is summer in Australia in December, so there is time. It wasn't specified in the update which part of the world summer was referring to.

It is the kind of seasoned strategy a man like Phil Galfond uses.

That's why he is up $20M in poker and we are all down 20 dollars each.

This would be the dumbest marketing strategy in history because it pisses everyone off.
I am pissed off for sure. It isn't much summer left and since he needs some marketing run up before the site is launching, I think they will hardly be ready until the end of august, if the announcement doesn't come in a few days.

That dude had so much exposure during the WSOP and pretty much didn't promote the site at all.

And, exactly, why? What does he owe you and what have you 'lost' from the site not being operational yet?

It's pretty obvious why people are annoyed with this. He first announced it in 2016. For early 2017. Since then it's always waiting in anticipation -> hearing no news -> be disappointed because it doesn't launch. Then there is another vague announcement and the cycle repeats itself.

Consider that a pro poker player with limited business experience tries something completely out of his business expertise (a poker site), and is optimistic about deadlines, but doesn't realize all the hurdles he has to surpass to make the site perfect such as technical, financial, security, and legal issues, and it's unlikely to ever be "on time."

I'd rather it comes out pristine than with huge bugs.

Although i has always been on Phils side i am getting annoyed at the 2 months waiting time with no update even though he stated he will post more often after posting the 3rd update. All the updates came with about 3 weeks between each update.

Now there has been 8 weeks with no update and his reasoning is that he is playing poker at WSOP and has a lot on his plate. Here i am thinking what could be more important the a pokersite that your company is launching and i guessing have invested a lot of money in.

Now i dont know the role he has at RIOpoker, but i would expect it being a smaller one at this time or that he has not much to do given that he his launching a site this summer and he thinks that playing poker is more important. Also it is more important to put out a few RIOpoker training videos than writing and update for people following the site launch. At least give someone else the task of writing the updates, just tell them what you want to announce to the public with each update and then proof read it and put it online... Not that hard.

Anyway i am still hopeful this will finally be a success but i got to be honest that after following this since it was first announced i am getting annoyed.

iirc Phil announced the launch of version 1 for end of July. might be wrong though

This thread presents NVG's version of Waiting For Godot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_Godot

IF he plans on making instant money from this site he is going to lose....

Chap needs to invest big money to getting player pools before he can even think of making profit....

Adding guarantees that result in overlays will bring players...

No MTTS is ridiculous...

Do you have any proof for this?

Just interested to know if this figure is true (not calling you a liar, you're probably right). He's up $6.6 million on Full Tilt and $1.45 million on Pokerstars according to highstakesdb. But didn't 90% of those winnings come from Guy Laliberte?

I don't know how much he made in games below $25/$50 or tournaments. Do you think it's $12 million?


As for the site, I think they will start to include tournaments when traffic increases, otherwise they will have huge overlays and lose money. If they don't include tournaments full stop, that's a pretty big mistake, because casual players from tournaments come over to cash games. Without tournaments, all you will have are reg-filled cash games.

Lmao at people being genuinely annoyed