This is not entirely correct. Rakeback used to be different back in the day. You did not even have to be involved in the pot to get a share of the rake back. Sitting at the table and folding was enough. So with that in mind, „rake contributed“ is just one of different possible models to give players back a share of the rake. So your argument, that calling STP rakeback is misleading, does not make much sense to me.

I kind of see the point, that it’s a promotion, but don’t see why regular rakeback would not be viewed as one as well.

I don't need to speculate.

Lol at you saying its not rake back... Rake back mean rake given back witch is exactly whats splash the pot is.

The exact method of rakeback is immaterial. Yes, I'm aware of the "rake contributed" versus "rake collected" methods of computing rakeback, but the bottom line was that the term "rakeback" always meant you were getting some kind of end-of-the-month cash payment which would be related to the time you played.

Everyone understands the term "rakeback" to be a portion of the rake collected at the table being returned a few weeks later to the players who were in those games.

If you brought 100 experienced grinders to runitonce.eu, had them examine the front page, and asked them what they were expecting regarding the "51% rakeback" they were promised, 100 out of 100 would say that they were expecting a flat 51% of their rake paid back to them at a date in the near future.

This is highly misleading. Experienced players know what "rakeback" is supposed to mean, and Run It Once has changed the term in order to mislead people via marketing.

Again, this is a jackpot promo, not rakeback.

Let's look at the difference:

A jackpot promo:
- Comes from a pool of money funded by a portion of the rake
- Hits on an occasional frequency
- Rewards only a small percentage of total players when it hits
- Has huge variance regarding each individual player's return on it
- Can sometimes return huge to players who have barely played at all

Rakeback:
- Is returning rake collected at a later date to players at the table
- Goes to everyone who played on the site
- Is not tied to an infrequent random event
- Has very low variance -- it's easy to approximate based upon number of hands played
- Will never return huge to someone who has barely played

Which one sounds like it describes Splash the Pot more?

The big issue here is that not even the shadiest of shady card rooms ever had the nerve to advertise their jackpot promos as "rakeback". Not one. You just can't call a jackpot promo rakeback.

If you want to be the most pedantic **** in the world then yes using the term rakeback probably isn't ideal but the RIO website is clear that rakeback is paid in the form of STP and anyone that has eyes can see this. If you are a reg that downloads the client, doesn't read anything, doesn't notice the splashed pots and still expects to receive a flat 51% then you're a reg I want in my games.

Aside from that, who gives a ****? Surely you have something better you can be doing with your time that long post after long post of this tripe?

How am I being "pedantic" if the 51% rakeback claim would mislead literally every single grinder who signed up new to the site?

I'm not just being a terminology nazi here.

It's actually very misleading, and I feel it's intentionally that way in order to get new signups by people who think that 51% rakeback is exciting (which it would be, if it were actually 51% rakeback.)

There's no evidence to suggest that RIO's rakeback claim would mislead literally every single grinder. If it did literally mislead every single grinder, it would have been widely publicized by now (I would imagine). I think everyone gets your point, YOU believe it to be misleading, YOU do not like the choice of the word "rakeback" in this instance. Once YOU get your online site up and running, YOU can create a whatever rakeback/rewards scheme YOU would prefer.

they advertised STP as their form of rakeback. Thought it was pretty clear.
Don’t think they are trying to mislead anyone at all.

Of course it wouldn't mislead the people already very familiar with the site (such as those posting in this thread).

However, the vast majority of poker grinders are either unaware of Run It Once or simply know of its existence, but not much about it. These people would 100% be misled by the term "51% rakeback". And that's who they're attempting to market to -- not the ones who have been anticipating the site's launch for years and were planning to play anyway.

If you disagree that it's misleading, I'll be glad to bet you that if we found 100 grinders who weren't very familiar with Run It Once, and then asked them what they were expecting to get from "51% rakeback", at least 70% of those people would say they were expecting something similar to the traditional rakeback I described.

Want to take that bet? I'll bet you up to $50,000 on this. We can hammer out the exact terms if you're interested. I'm not kidding.

No thanks. I do find it quite funny that someone who has been railing about "definitions" that your definition of "literally every grinder" translates into "at least 70%". For someone so concerned about definitions, it's interesting to see you try and create a new definition of "literally every grinder", which I would assume means 100% of grinders!

Look at the graphic I posted from the front page of runitonce.eu.

It says nothing about the 51% rakeback being Splash the Pot. It simply says "51% rakeback for all players", and Splash the Pot is referred to separately as a feature of the site.

That's not clear at all.

(On a side note, "51% rakeback for all players" is also highly inaccurate, because all players won't be getting 51% through Splash the Pot -- a few will get a lot more, most will get a lot less!)

If they changed the promo to clearly say "51% of rake returned to players through our Splash the Pot feature", then I'd have no problem with it.

I can't see why anyone would argue against that. Clear and to the point.

not true that rakeback is strictly cash payment deposit into your account though, there are plenty of forms of rakeback and it's not exlusively cash

hell even in live tournaments the free drinks/food is rakeback

Not a single poker room -- online or live -- has ever referred to single-hand bonus promos like STP as "rakeback".


No it's not, and no cardroom has ever claimed it's rakeback.

And no one ever ran a 4 minute mile, until someone did.

Ah yes, when you get your rake returned. Now I see the difference!

51% rake returned
51% rake returne
51% rake return
51% rake retur
51% rake retu
51% rake ret
51% rake re
51% rake r
51% rake
51% rake b
51% rake ba
51% rake bac
51% rake back

Oh wait I don’t.

Where are you even getting that image from? Does RIO have a page with that image and nothing else and you’re saying that’s misleading?
Are you saying you’re incapable of reading the huge text that always (at least that I’ve seen) accompanies that image explaining STP?

Break down the two root words, rake and back!!!! Then add them together..... Not rocket science!!!!

Well this thread took a nice turn, kinda represents a nice reflections of RIO.

Seriously though, If Phil Galfond streams while playing on his own site[which he plans to] especially if he does it regularly, I dont think you guys realize how big that is! And from what I hear some of it will be highstakes!

For me lack of resizable tables and bugs were the main reason to hold me back from playing on RIO . Tried now after the latest update and it went really smooth stable. I guess splash the pot isn’t for everyone but I personally like it quite a bit. Probably a combination of both fixed RB and STP would be ideal to please all players.
IMO anonymous tables and no HUDs aren’t that big of a deal since it forces you to focus and observe the action. Nothing more monotone and boring then grinding the same nitty ZOOM games day in day out ... also not that clear to label players as regs or recs , the dynamics are changing quickly and a seemingly spew player may be a reg willing to splash around in some pots (pun intended ). I personally enjoy to tune up the aggression and play looser then in other games, forgetting about GTO and balance for a moment- and what can I say , it’s a hell lot of fun!
Sure , if the threshold for some players is multi tabling , player names and HUDs then they probably won’t get happy on RIO but I could imagine a lot of Recs will really enjoy the experience once the games are running more frequently since they will most likely enjoying the action and don’t care about the same issues as some of the regs.

Youre acting like you know the guy who made up the word "rakeback"....

With that kind of software development, and the fact that Phil himself can't actually monitor it correctly, how long before the super users start playing? For sure they built a backdoor for themselves!

Kilowatt is spot on, all other crying in here are just deluding themselves and not being logical at all!

Agreed that if Phil wants to grow this site, then he needs to put his ego aside and actually LISTEN to his customers, and either add tables with a flat 50% rake back with (rake races via rake back partners such as raketherake, rakerace etc) why is RioP not even advertised on any of those sites, baffles me!

Or add flat rakeback. We can still ahve stp, but it needs to be something like 10% with 40% flat rake back. At this point, you'd have to be blind and completely deluded to not face reality, Regs don't like stp, the sooner you understand this, the better your site will be!

Casuals don't play on empty sites, they flock to sites that have traffic. You can always backstab us later, like all other sites are doing, but why **** us over from the get go?

Go all out and build a player base, by giving away many promos. Make sure you are giving a FLAT rake back, this is the most important thing to do. You should add many different promos, then add weekly rake races. If you want people to rake on your site, you have to give them something to shoot for, how have you not even added rake races, I mean, you have to be the worst operator to ever exist, for real!

The software is actually quite nice to play on, I've been trying out different sites lately and I prefer it to 888/Unibet/Microgaming/iPoker. Hopefully their marketing goes well cos traffic is pretty much zero apart from a few evening hours.

Dude, for real. If I advertise a cheese sandwich, and you come to my store and I give you a ham sandwich and you say, hey I wanted a cheese sandwich as advertised, and I say, it's a sandwich right.

You would happily accept that and tell everybody else to as wel, because, it's just semantics, right!

I agree, last time I played, the site ran fine and is on par with other sites. Functionality is fine, though I'd like more customisation, and I'd love to turn of those silly avatars.

I can't stress this enough though, if you want regulars to come to your site, you need to give them something in return, something better than what they are already getting.

Look at it from a Regs pov. He has to give up EV, with a site he's comfortable playing on, the fish on those sites and the rakeback/races he has.

RioP has no fish yet and has crappy promos compared with other sites. Stp is a crappy promo, idc if it's 50%.

Rake back
Rake races
A vip program like Stars used to have, Supernova Elite, that was the bomb, players had a goal, a mission, they would rake the **** out it, to level up.

How can you be so deluded and not even have a vip program in place for players to level up? For God's sake, you miss the most elementary of things that makes a poker room. I'm really sorry to say this but your whole experiment is run like a 12 yr old, it's terrible.

As a poker player and a long time pro, how can you not even see what I'm talking about here?