Indeed, I saw an article yesterday about this and it's terrible news imo.
They are probably locking up a monopoly in the process as well and small/new other rooms like RIO will be simply excluded because SwissCasinos and others will decide exactly who can enter the market or not (this new law was only made and pushed by casino owners anyway).

It's only a matter of time before decentralized poker is a thing. When is this site supposed to hit the market?
I would never be able to handle the slanted cards. That is insane.

Slanted cards can be de-activated in the settings
About launch time of RIO, I would say it will happen kinda soon...

Really? Wow. That is cool. Thanks for the info.

You're right, it is far from ideal.



Well it's better than a total blackout, at least. It is the same model used in the US states and Belgium. In the latter, there are some decent options (bwin. pokerstars, kindred, ipoker, and ongame until that shut) despite it being such a small market. Switzerland has more casinos than belgium so you might see a more competitive market.


Also, PokerStars already claims to control three quarters of the market, so it won't really change much for most consumers.


But yes, it is far from ideal. The UK system is by far the best, hence why you see even the little guys like RIO getting licenses there. I think the Swedish/Dutch/Danish model are also similarly progressive and I would expect RIO to have these next on their list after launch (there's a dozen+ options in each of these markets)

Hood.

wanted to take a moment and thank you for your posts. always informative.

You obviously have working knowledge of this space and know what you are talking about ( not usually the case here in NVG land )

Thanks, appreciated.

yup, that's a problem for RIO, that is has, at least in the beginning, a small budget.
But I think with a newish looking software + half the rake of stars + the other unique features of the software, they can go a long way with mouth to mouth propaganda and few online ads. I also hope that some pros will give the site proper shoutouts (free ads) for trying to bring beatable & fun online poker back.
They only need time to grow bigger from there.

As for stars, i wonder how much they spend. 50 million $ is awful amount of cash. You can do lots of online marketing and pro player sponsoring with that. If they don't do heavy TV ads in various western countries (and i don't see them doing this anymore), I don't know if they would break through 50 m.
But they made 877 million $ revenue with poker in 2017, to put this into perspective. Even if you further deduct some cash for salaries, office and server rent, the profit must be obscene.

Can we get Hyper Turbo Sit and Gos with beatable rake please

Games which are easily exploited by having a solver or running a bot shouldn't be spread at all.

God please no!

@ the RIO guys... Any idea when the next beta testing will be?

Or even better, launch?

This!

I hope they stick with 100bb minimum with maybe some option to buy in deep.

200/250bb would be sweet...

I’m all for tournament poker but hoping for none of this 10bb push/fold stuff from the first hand dealt

Launch Q1 2017..

Seriously tho, what worries me the most about RIO is that things are moving incredibly slow

Slow and steady wins the race.

yeah who cares if things are moving slow, as long as the end product is good quality, I can wait

slow & steady is fine with me but we are already on level: sluggish

Someone gotta hustle those programmers. Don't know what they are doing.

I am afraid one of their key features isn't implemented yet. They wanted to give you the complete handhistory of all the players after 24h but this doesn't seem to work at all. I requested them from my beta but only got pretty empty .txt's. On top of that, I don't know if they actually have a viewer yet where you can replay the hand. At least I didn't see that. The hand history they offer is definetly not beginners-friendly since you have to search the text for villain's hand. Recaping the hand this way is tiresome.

i have inside sources that told me that galfond wants to launch the site with a publicity stunt of having tom finish the challenge on it, but he's been difficult to get in touch with

If accurate about the decision-making process, that post bodes poorly for the future of this endeavor.

If he is "difficult", switch to plan B, ditch plan A and launch when a genuine marketing plan is ready to implement.

Why wait ?

If true then that would be amazing, but it won't ever happen as Tom doesn't want to play someone better than him despite what his own rules said.

That promo would only really appeal to online grinders who have been around a while anyway, and that group is already a slam dunk to sign up and try this site the second it launches.

Still, If this is accurate and was PG's idea it is very Isai Scheinberg like. Signing Isildur and running the big HU challenges with him back in the day. IIRC at the time Phil did comment he thought Pokerstars/Isai's signing was genius.

Phil .. buy Poker mavens and get the site going?
whats the holdup? lol
I could get a site going in about ten mins .

why is anybody even excited. if the rake is not even alot cheaper than the standard?
i mean i know if u stream a ton of hours u can get lower rake but for the average players its still going to be 5% right?

Great. Go ahead & get rich.

You mean site you could actually play with real money? I do not believe you.

You know that competition is allways a good thing? And rio is offering something that any other site doesn't offer.

Well there are tonnes of people out there who don't have 6 hours to play a tournament and they don't want to play some deep nitty ass cash games.

There are 120,000 people on Pokerstars right now and there is only 120 people in the 100 zoom cash pool.

People like Fast structures that involve a bit of gamble

Fast structures which are solvable with some simple push/fold strategy?

Seems like a terrible option for poker rooms to host... UNLESS they rake it to a point where not even the good players can win

I look forward to this site, I do worry that online poker is on it's last legs and this was 5-10 years too late. Wish the best to Phil though.