Phil wants to make the game fairer! I am a reg and I have trouble to understand how the rakeback system works, how easy will it be for recs? It's much more simple to deposit 40% every week into accounts like Party does and give an additional 11% through Splashpots. That way recs will know that they can grind every Monday without the need to deposit.

Also, think about the variance involved and how big of a sample you need to earn exactly 51% rather than 10% or 90% depending on how you run.

When we are talking about "skills", a completely new game would be probably the best solution. A game where no solver exists and the gap between strong regs and weak recs will be not as huge as it is in NL and PLO.

You come off as a dick. Just sayin.....

Or they can move away from 100bb+ poker and let their site be completely 40-50bb cap poker. It's the perfect balance between having enough play to make the game fun for regs but limit the huge edges that they can have over recs which ultimately means that the recreational players have more winning sessions, more fun at the tables and keep depositing.

Woah! De-anon the tables? #onetime

What led you to this conclusion? Did something i said offend you? Which parts of my view are off? Please, enlighten me.

Hey Phil,

I think there is just a lot of frustration in poker community as a whole. Many sites change for the worse and I believe a lot of people hoped that RIO would somehow bring back the good old full tilt/pokerstars times ( at least partly).

Unfortunately my country (Estonia) is in the restriced list of RIO poker, but I have checked out the software and followed the progress since you started. I must admit that even while not being able to play on the site it is a little frustrating to follow the progress. Everything you say and explain makes perfect sense, but I am fairly sure I would also not play on RIO just out of frustration of not having a full working product.

The wait was so long before site was lunched that everybody expected a lot more and now feel let down. You can explain all you want about the future EV and catch 22 of getting more players to play etc.
However, it seems such long ways away so naturally the player support slowly fades and people just keep playing on their regular sites.

I do not mean to bash you or RIO - this is simply my honest opinion of the situation. I wish you luck and I truly hope RIO succeeds, but imo nothing will/can change before you have a fully functional site including tournaments.

Hi Phil. I also thought that the rake would be a lot lower than it is. I respect the fact that it might be a bit lower than on Stars or party if the Splash the Pots go your way but I thought that Run it Once would have the lowest rake easily No Contest!

But, I know that you can get a similar amount of Rakeback on IPoker without having to gamble for your Rakeback and recreationals end up on IPoker skins through the sports books!

So, If the rake on Run it Once and IPoker is similar I'm not exactly sure what Run it Once brings to the table ??

What's Run it Once's Unique Selling Point ???

Why should I play there ??

That's a very good point as well. I had a discussion with a friend and he also said that recs prefer to buyin short and run it up. They don't grind the same stakes as regs do, they want to double up and move up in stakes immediately.

Other than that, RIO should introduce reg tables, instead of that "Zoom-like" seating style. Right now observing is not possible and recs like that as well. You pretty much wanna see what's going on before jumping into the action.

I mean Phil should have just copied what FTP/Stars did in the past and just made it better.

omg why arent you supporting me, my product is bad but im a good guy remember?

sorry man, thats how the world works.

anonymous tables have to go, splash the pot prob has to go but who cares, tournaments and sngs lol, 3 years in.

good luck from a guy still rootin fo u

I'm not gonna pretend that I know the financial situation in the matter, but my opinion is that you are missing way too many markets(that you can potentially obtain license for) to gain any traction. Countries like Sweden, Denmark, Bulgaria, Estonia combined make up a good chunk of EU traffic and not having ANY of them in your pool sounds impossible to overcome in today's landscape. I'm sure you guys did the math and are on top of it, but I don't see this mentioned enough as a major problem and to me its the first thing that comes to mind.

edit: Like I said, I have no idea how much it costs to get these licenses, but it just doesn't make sense to me that you didn't account for obtaining as many markets as possible from the get go and decided to try to build from much smaller pool when it was obvious that traffic will be the biggest problem to overcome no matter what...

P.S. I'm also biased as someone who wants to play on RIOP, but is located in one of those countries

Add tourneys and cash games other than NLHE and PLO and get rid of the bot friendly anonymous tables and I’m there. I do appreciate that you have good intentions though Phil (genuinely really want to play on this site but never play straight nlhe/plo cash and refuse to play anon tables)

Edit - I should add that I don’t really care about tourneys, it’s more the other stuff but kinda mind blowing that tourneys aren’t available. I like the idea of splash the pot fwiw

This seems/seemed to be nothing more than wishful thinking, it should remind you of fish you've crushed at HU PLO that had no business playing you in the first place. Instead of quickly realizing that and cutting their losses, they instead chase their losses. As they near the busto-mark, they complain about a lack of rungood (favors), as though that would have changed anything in the longrun. "I didn't want to rely on rungood, but maybe if I got some more rungood at the start, I wouldn't have gotten so tilted, and then the downswing wouldn't have happened, etc...", ignoring the fact that they were in way over their head to begin with.

The problem with that analogy is that unlike the fish, it's impressive and commendable that you've even made it this far, and I'm sure you've learned a lot in the process. That said, online poker has objectively been dying for a long time, and we have every reason to expect that to continue, and you had no experience developing software. So you starting this company was never going to work out, just like I would inevitably lose if I played you HU PLO. Just cut your losses and move on with your life.

In fact you know what, if you get rid of anon tables I’ll sign up and play some NLHE cash just to support the decision, even tho I’d prob be break even at best.

And it’s not even just the bot issue, it’s like not even really poker. Like in your vision I’m pretty sure you stated you wanted it to be more like live poker; when you play live do you all show up in burkas and never speak so no one knows who each other is?

When I won my bracelet at WSOP Saudia Arabia in the women only event, that's exactly how it was.

Hey, guys. I appreciate all the feedback. I don't have time yet to respond in detail, but in the meantime, here's an explanation I gave about Splash The Pot that addresses a lot of what has been posted as best I can.

I don't think STP is the problem, the site just needs tournaments and freerolls to get traffic from recs and zoom to get traffic from regs.

Phil,

No post, do.

I received a 10 euro play-through bonus a few days ago.

I have just finished doing that, and was lucky enough to make a large STP.

But I went all-in with a PP because I was playing with bonus money, and I was very lucky that all of the big draws didn't pair.

As a rec these days, and as a terrible NL HE cash player, there is no way I would have wanted to be in that situation with my own money.

Phil, I've been quite negative in this thread but the below sums it up fairly well for me.

I don't play cash at all but when the site was released I deposited, was grinding, telling everyone about it but just ended up with people asking me how they sit back in, how they resize tables etc. I wanted to apply for StreamR, couldn't as I was from the UK. I ran my deposit up a bit and withdrew, got a rate MUCH worse on the withdrawal (downside of not allowing me to have my account in GBP). Ever since getting stung there I've not deposited a penny and in similar fashion a lot of the people I've told about the site have not played a hand since their first bad impressions.

Over the past few months I've keenly followed both RIO 2p2 threads, posting a few times in this one. It took 4 or 5 times for me to ask about the FX issue above before Nick even acknowledged it, giving me some generic response everyone seems to receive about no estimated date but working on it. I want the site to work but I think anon needs to go and STP is a bit meh because of the variance. Most importantly though, I won't deposit until there are SNGs and I can deposit in GBP with my balance being exchanged into euros when I enter/leave games (at the same rate).

I'm not going to lie, the product after 3 years was massively behind where I'd expected it to be, having not been part of the beta. Furthermore, progress seems to have been painfully slow in the months since. I think you're lucky in the sense that the competition is so bad that you will have a second opportunity to make it work, only if you take the site down a different direction though. The 'protecting the rec' features are admirable but poker isn't dying because of screen names, it's because of segregated markets and sites such as Pokerstars putting ridiculous rake on structures that are getting worse and worse.

Keep it simple imo. Build good tournaments with good structures, SNGs without ridiculous rake and a solid RB programme.

When RIO was released you asked us to just play 1 hand IIRC. Well I played a few more than that and it was pretty uninspiring. A decent number of people have given your site a try and the liquidity issues are not our fault. I will try RIO again when it's further down the line but my fear is that it'll be at least a year before we see SNGs.

I’m an American player, so not in your market, but I wouldn’t really be interested in playing on your site because of STP.
If you offered 51% normal rb I would snap sign up if I could.
No idea how Recs feel, maybe they prefer STP. I could see that being possible.
Hope to see you succeed, GL.

As an American, I'd like STP. The only thing I'd hate on this site is the anonymity. Bots are an increasingly problematic part of online poker, and anonymity makes it easier for them. I know I'm exploited by the occasional bots in anonymous ignition. On the other hand, I've identified (obvious) bots on other networks that can be easily exploited. They're overall winners, but not against me. The only reason I can ID them and win against them is because it's NOT ANONYMOUS. With screennames, I would snap play most volume on your site. Only problem is I'm in the land of the free!

Phil, you have to look into the real possibility that your programmers are bleeding you dry until you run out of funds. Starting a business and not having a full understanding of the specific talents involved ( in your case coding and programming etc) just seems like a disaster. Have you taken your car to an auto shop where the owner isn't a mechanic? I doubt it.
You need to be able to fire everyone and DIY if they're not getting the job done. Your programmers should have a stake in your company and not get paid unless it succeeds. If you're just paying salaries to people who DGAF about your success or failure then you're in for a rough ride.

I think in one of his posts Phil said that he already replaced his coders.

It has been bizare how slowly things have been moving along.

I'm quite a soft person and at work unfortunately I have to be very firm with a lot of people or they never do anything that I ask.

I hate it, but for some reason it's the only way that a lot of people listen.

Just returned to online poker, and have a soft spot for PG, and I am a current member of the RIO training site.

Can someone give me a clear reason as to why I should support PG's poker site over competing sites? Is there any facet of RIO poker to suggest that it is better than Pokerstars atm? Or are we supporting RIO poker in the hope that it becomes a market leader one day because we all collectively like and support PG?

Should we add, say chess to the game as well while we're at it?

Why change the game of poker?