lol this is cute

This is the only way for a sustainable environment! You have to work for your customers(=poker players), if you want to build a great company. People tend to pay for quality.

IDK how this could possibly work out overall in 2016 + but PG is one of very few people that might be able to make it happen.

Super skeptical for obv reasons but also rooting / wishing him the best of luck.

p.s Looking forward to hearing what WCG thinks about it on his weekly polkernews thang.

Hey, Guys. Wow.

The response to my announcement has been awesome. Not only positive, but reasonable and understanding too.

I expected a lot more posts about either how I'll definitely fail or how I'm going to magically re-create Stars 2012. I'm thrilled by how seriously all of you are taking this venture, as I obviously take it very seriously. Thank you!

I mentioned in one of my responses on Run It Once that I won't be answering a lot of questions yet (and why). We're a little bit too far from launch to go into a lot of the details that some of you are looking for and speculating about. We will share everything with you guys before we launch, and we will be looking for ideas/feedback on the decisions we've yet to make.

I want you guys to know that your response has been inspiring- not only for me but for my team too. We know that the road ahead will be a long and challenging one, but we are now even more excited and motivated than we already were.

We'll all be reading your suggestions and ideas and bringing them up for discussion. Many of these posts have been very intelligent and insightful, which is what I hoped for and expected from the poker community.

Thanks again.

Phil

^ You'll have my business.

What happens to retired poker software? IMO Amaya could be desperate enough to make a sale privately...and a player of PG's stature or his team could have made the right offer.

Just speculating as the man said, but wouldn't it be easier that way than building from scratch?

I just hope you're not putting all of your $$$ into this, Phil

Just write new software. Why spend capex when you can just develop.


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This. I hope it will be a succes, but starting a new online casino/poker site is a pretty high-risk venture even if you have an amazing team. I wish you the best of luck Phil!

I'm 100% sure you can do it. No doubit in my mind. The competition is so bad (aside from amaya) that a smart guy like you will make it. Poker must be the online business where the competition is really the worst i've seen (i've played in more than 10 sites).

I'd suggest:

- You have to find the balance between the recreationals and regulars. Keep the site multitable with the use of a HUD for regulars so we can multitable easily, (you can limit tables ofc 6-8 or 10) and offer benefits to recreationals that you don't offer to regulars (promos, free money, opportunity to change SN if the account played 1/2 tables and is inactive for 6 months etc).

- More deposit bonus, more promos towards recs if you see that they deposit and lose at a more than average rate... basically a whole team dedicated towards these losing accounts that are crucial for the ecosystem. This group of players should have more incentives to play compared to regulars.

- Fast cashouts. You can get a good competitive advantage right there. Apart from stars the other sites take days, weeks to cashout. Guarantee a 48hour cashout if the account is fully verified. And no bull**** like ACR that a player has to contact support day in and day out to know about the cashout. It's a 48h timeframe that the cashout is guaranteed, and you don't need to spend "customer support" resources because player A wants to know when will the cashout arrive.

- Competent live support. This stars doesnt have and is very important in todays climate imo. Almost every site has a live support option.

- Security should be number one priority. At this site you should focus on keeping accounts safe and offer the options like RSA or google 2factor so the accounts are secure (i think only stars has this).

- Funds 100% safe. I don't think I need to mention this but no site other than stars I trust with having a lot of money there. You can get a competitive advantage here to build a credible brand.

- Good software. I don't understand how ppl say that a good software is very expensive. It can't be. i've seen bit coin poker sites with very good layouts and other unknown sites that have like 10 players playing only. You don't need to spend much on making it too beautiful just make it effective and bug free.

- Every change should be comunicated in advance. And you should be monitoring and hearing to the players... you should aim to build a bond to the players were their experience and feedback is taking very seriously. Not like all sites that says "thank you for suggestion" and even when everyone is asking for a change it doesn't happen. Because they simply won't listen.

Man, i've so many ideas.. the poker sites are so bad in everything that the hard part is to not do better than 95% of them. biggest challenge will be market to recretional players. that's why i mentioned that you should attract them but RETAIN the ones you attract, as your marketing budget is small compared to others I imagine. If you need any help or idea, u can pm me.

gl

man, as I said before.. give me a site that it's only 1/2 of pokerstars "level"?
I think you guys make it harder than it is. The only thing it's difficult is to attract players.
The other things it's very very doable to outperform the competition.

glgl

Have no idea where you play but pretty much every site that works under eu license pays under 24hrs. Only 888 takes like days.

But totally agree w/ this. And obv skrill and neteller is must.

Possibility to change your alias like once a month would be sweet allso. And option to not show where you are from if thats possible.

the latter would only be good for recreational accounts. Why? Too easy to collude, bot and other problems. Why would a reg want to change their SN? I honestly can't see a benefit in that, rather would be much easier to cheat and bot.

For recreational players, once a month is too short. 6 month period seems good, and can only be done by invitation by the team that is in charge of recreational players if they flag that the account plays few tables, deposit and is inactive since. This along with a promo would make the players comeback with a new screename thinking (this is it this time etcetc. basically look like a fresh start for them)

I also would like to mention that most of the sites are so so awful because the owner/funder and the team that is behind it don't have a clue about poker. I bet that most of the teams that build the pokersites some guys they didn't even know the rules, and most of them never played an online poker hand.

Phil, You ve the advantage of playing for years, poker site experience (rio) so you know what will work and what won't work. You're lightyears ahead of the guys that create most sites, bc the inputs you have and the ideas you have came up due to years and years of contact with several poker sites. Because unlike them, you and your team play poker /have played poker for a living.

Perhaps so other regs cant exploit you so easily w/ huds. And works just fine at unibet even without huds.

The barriers to entry are pretty large, poker is a declining and over-saturated market, and you're competing against a company with a market cap of 2.8 billion CAD that almost has a monopoly outside of the US. It's not easy or cheap to develop good poker software, good security, get licenses and most importantly attract net-depositing players. You may think it's a no-brainer to have extremely low rake and do everything else that makes people on 2+2 happy, but it's not that simple. Customer acquisition is expensive (look at Amayas' marketing budget) and without a steady stream of net-depositing players the business is doomed. People who think a good business plan for a new poker site is as simple as "have low rake and good software" tend to forget this.

Hoping for the old T6 software. That was great

Knowing someone is trying to put up a poker site for the good of Poker rather than Corporate lies is def refreshing. And putting forth games that r more honest.

First thing that comes to mind to me is lower raked PLO games that don't eat out its own player field and Fast Cashouts (bitcoin maybe could facilitate). Even though Phil is a High Stakes PLO mainstay, to me the site should not offer Super High Stakes that clean out weaker, fish, or fun players, Maybe nl1k max or something comparable. Prob have promos that incentivize the PLO cash games and other forms would b great as well.

PL :0 !

Not very Good at this but a 'Hope' Galfond pic would b on point.
Also there should b a table with the name 'Gandalf'

Marketing too saturated to attract recreationals at this point so this site will fail.

I hope I'm wrong.

Will there be a slide?

My recommendations: Sign Isildur. Get money from Guy Laliberte and not some sharky venture capitalist. Hire Isai Scheinberg as a consultant.

I think a good way to get word out at the start besides online ads would be to partner with a big streamer that isn't with stars sponsorship to shout the name out to thousands of people per day

He oreddi has alot of laliberte's money