Fortunate for Stars that they have Spins, MTTs, SnGs, Casino and other products that likely make many times more than the cash game segment, for which they are still quite the leader.

Kind of cute to still see people saying things like "in 3 years this site will take over" in a thread that's well over 2 years old that has from he start had a "wait until this site takes over soon" delusional belief system. If this site ever happens, it might become the next Unibet, if that.

Hopefully next year when people are discussing a hopeful Q1 2020 release the mood will still be as positive!

I think adding regular/trackable games without dynamic avatars would be a great move for RIO. Players then could choose. They've stated that they will do that for high stake games. I think at least a good portion of tournaments, if not all, would also have to not be anonymous and allow trackers? So adding that to the platform wouldn't be anything majorly extra I would think.

But I wonder if anonymous non trackable games turn out to be more profitable than regular. I've dabbled on MPN and although my sample isn't huge there I definitely found their anonymous games to be a lot fishier than their regular games. I've also played on Bodog a lot(also anonymous) when I lived in US and those games are infinitely fishier than ACR for example.

So if players give RIO a shot and learn that they're more profitable there it could be enough of an incentive to forgo trackable games elsewhere.

Would RIO steal 12k cash players from Stars...? Let's just say this would take time..

But I think it's realistic for them to claim 3rd spot fairly soon after launching AND adding tournaments. Then push Party for 2nd based on how crappy Party's software is, even after current updates. But again, adding good tournament schedule will be necessary for that IMO

This is an extremely essential point IMO

There's been so much energy wasted discussing how to bring recs back, how to build a site that caters to them, how to protect them etc etc etc. with a delusion that some magical formula can bring them to your game with an abundant supply..

The fact is, well IMO anyways, that the rec of the good days is gone and is never coming back. It's best to move on and stop searching for some gimmick that will make the games better. The opponent that we can have an edge on, for the most part, is not some mindless button clicking gambler anymore, but someone who thinks about the game just on a slightly lower level than you. Your edge might be experience, more studying time or some other nuance. In other words, your opponent is mainly a fairly competent player and that's unlikely to change anytime soon.

That's why rake is the ultimate feature of the game.

Only by adjusting it to the level where players can still squeeze out their ever shrinking edge will allow professional poker competitor to exist.

smh . Do you really believe that or just hope/want it to happen.


Please read below and let it sink it in a bit.

All of the above tbh.

Part software is actually fairly decent now and come a long way since start of the year.

I feel like this is just one of those things people say because it was truly awful for the longest time.

I would not be surprised if it's on par with stars in another years time.

fair enough. I can respect that.

I do feel though that some cheerleaders in this thread are just wild eye optimists, longing for days of past when they could earn a living playing online,

Yet, they likely have little business experience (of any kind) which would help them understand better the very stiff headwinds ahead of RIO as it relates to the repeated claims that they will quickly (or even not so quickly) take over the online poker world.

Though we never will, it would be interesting to see RIO's market share forecast in their current 3 year plan

I'd guess its way way below estimates made above ITT.

I hope you're right, I'm rooting 100% for that to happen.

I've last played on Party very recently. I have a MAC so maybe it's a different experience on a Windows machine. Their MAC client hasn't been updated but even when I use windows client on a virtual machine it's crap. Blurry as hell(their support said that their client doesn't support 4K monitors..), bet slider sucks, replayer is awful and the whole feel is way to digital for my taste. I know that's subjective but I know a lot more players that dislike it as well at the moment.

Fair enough I have no experience of the Mac client.

Buuuut that's what you get for having a Mac

j/k aside if you play poker it really is optimal to have a Windows based pc.

RIO client was awesome on a MAC

But yea, I have to keep launching windows for all the studying software I use, it is a bit annoying..

Who's that exactly?

maybe the new and not improved stars

I think teh Tim is alluding to the Asian networks, which have grown at a very fast rate and now compete with Stars on a global basis.

I think it's unrealistic, unless Galfond has an angel investor with hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on marketing.
For reference, Unibet is a well established European sports betting site, with a market cap of about a billion dollars. When it launched its own poker client (previously it was part of MPN), it took about 2 years for them to (briefly) crack the top 10 in poker traffic (and now it's only just about in the top 40, thanks to the listings of various (Asian?) sites I've never even heard of). https://www.pokerscout.com/
I think Galfond will be ecstatic if RIO can hit the top 10 within a year of launch. If it can get 1000 players online at once, I think that would be considered a success.

Will RIO be available to the US players in NV and NJ?

This is crazy talk. It's not quite as bad as it was in some ways, but it's still terrible and light years behind stars. They spent a year talking about the new tournament lobby and when it came out it was like the car designed by Homer.

Homer of the Illiad ?

Sure, that very well could be unrealistic. Your arguments are reasonable.

FWIW, I wasn't really including Asian or any of the ring fenced markets serving networks in my perhaps too optimistic/wishful prediction.

I was speculating that RIO stands a good chance to pass MPN, Unibet, Chico and iPoker.

I think it's in a sort of unique situation compared to Unibet's or other networks market entry. It will get a lot more free publicity than any other recent entrant did, it will be a story. And in a current independent content creator/influencer culture they are in a good position to capitalise on it from the marketing perspective.

And as importantly their software is way better than any of those networks mentioned above. It's better than Party's and 888's. I really do believe they offer a unique and better on line poker experience that should help them retain players.

Fwiw, Unibet tracking at GameIntel (the data provider that powers PokerScout.com, they we also have a direct data feed for) has been faulty since early December.



Not sure the problem, but it is safe to say its 7dma cash game traffic is still around 500 cash game seats, which puts 12th or so in the global rankings. It is bigger than its former network MPN.



Not sure its relevance (closed beta, peak time), but i've seen more than 300 concurrent players during a RIO beta test.

Putting initial development and other investment to the side for a second.

Assume a $100K / month OPEX (put marketing costs to the side for a second)

High level, what would this 7dma cash game traffic thing need to be to break even?

High level what would the monthly marketing spend need to be so support that business?

It really wouldn't surprise me if the RIO training part of the business makes enough money to cover most of the initial losses from the poker site.

I would guess they have around 1000-2000 members - lets say that on average the members pay $75 a month (the sign options are either $24.99 or $99.99 a month) that's somewhere between $75k-$150k a month pre expenditure.

Assuming they pay out around 30-40% of that to the video makers, they are still making good amounts of money.

Overall i don't think it will be long before they are making a profit overall.

to put it into perspective; stars made $217m rake in Q2 this year - which is actually up over 6.9% from Q2 in 2017.

https://www.cardplayer.com/poker-new...-in-rake-in-q2

lets say run it once can grow the business in 2019 to a point where they are making 2.5%-5% of pokerstars revenue - they would make around $5-$10m in rake over a 3 month period.

even if you halved that estimate above you would still be up over a million a month.

wow.

haven't looked at Stars Group financials in a while. That's a a chit ton of rake.

Somebody should start a new and better online poker site and go after some of that revenue

Another advantaged of RIO's training side of business is that their customer base will provide a guaranteed initial liquidity when poker lunches.

That's a head start other market entrants didn't have and another aspect that makes RIO different.

good point. he just tweeted this.

"RIO hardest pokersite you ever played!"