This blog seems like a blame-the-customer exercise disguised as taking responsibility for the business' failure.

You see, everyone, the site is failing because today's grinders don't have enough heart or adventure to realize that Splash the Pot is a tremendous opportunity. Instead, these people just want bland, predictable games, and tremendous opportunities like STP just give them anxiety.

We're really sorry for overestimating the modern grinder's ability to adjust and recognize huge opportunities when they see them. We made a mistake by not realizing that most pro players today are such rubes, thus they stayed away.

Our bad!

Yeh when I read it I felt similar. It's sort of like "We really want to hear your ideas but we've got our business model and we're not deviating from it."

Either way, there's been a lot of constructive criticism in both this thread and the RIO thread in Internet poker, most of which gets ignored. I wanted to play on RIO eventually once SNGs were added but after bringing up the whole FX issue about 10 times, even tweeting Phil directly recently and getting ignored pretty much every time, I really can't be arsed to care any longer.

I know I can get a different bank account and deposit with smaller fees but I shouldn't have to. I've not had this issue on any site dating back 12 years so why should it be an issue in 2019?

1. If you get 10% for 3 month in a row you play style is so poor rakeback should be the last of your concern.

2. Thats not true at all give me only one example of a mainstream site that will give you 50% rbk if you rake under 10k a month.

In what markets is this site available?

So sad that you have the two polar opposites that are AmayaStars and RIO, with Stars taking more money off the tables in exchange for reducing variance (terrible for the ecosystem). Then RIO keeping more money on the table in exchange for more variance, and making tiny tweaks to the game that will keep it alive without making huge changes to it.

Based on the traffic, the side of "overfishing" and milking poker players is winning. The side that wants to keep it alive, the side that wants to innovate vs the bots and solvers, is losing. Not to mention, RIO provides a better deal than stars in terms of $$$. bUT wHaT iF yOu oNlY wIn 10% of SplAshedPots? Well what if you win 110%?

Poker is a game where you can hit your flush draws only 10% of the time for months. Anyone playing this game is clearly okay / dealing with that, so how is STP any different?


RIO have to build this site the way they have, because building it the way Stars has means accepting the death of online cash game poker.


IMO the biggest thing RIO need to do to get players is marketing and player recruitment. I log into the client and just wait at a table while I grind other sites. I see 91% rakeback promos on the client and on discord, but imagine if you put this on instagram, twitter, reddit, facebook, this thread, etc. One post at the beginning of the week isn't enough. Get the word out, keep the tables running 24/7, and you can start adding to that player base one by one.

He quoted me for don't wat to fight for my rakeback. Too bad it wasn't in positive way so it allmost doesn't feel good. Yeah stp might be good way to fight bots etc but I don't want more variance to allready variance heavy game that plo is. I don't get it why they wont atleast try like for two weeks where players get something flat + stp and see if the games runs more often.

I think his point about people not wanting to try new potential goldmine stuff where they could have big edges but can't quantify it is true. Another site launched a 1% rake 10BB NLO (so jam or fold) game to go alongside the established 10 BB NLH they have. Nobody supported it so they took it off after a while. Presumably the reason is that without commonly published push/fold charts for NLO, nobody was confident they had an edge, even though just by thinking about the game for a while they would have a big edge compared to people who hadn't thought about it.

But also **** the haters - rather than splashing the pot pre-flop you could also occasionally splash the pot on the flop, which would be more likely to benefit the fish and also completely mess up the calculations behind all the pre-flop charts developed for other sites. Being good for winning players isn't about helping robotic human players. Help the ones who can adapt and win by their own wits, not by blindly doing stuff their stables and training sites taught them. That's not living the dream.

What is the FX issue? Are they playing dollar or euro denominated games?

I know it's not a popular opinion on here, but I just think 100BB cash isn't a good game (= isn't a good recreational experience). If you're willing to sit with 100 euros on a table you want to do something more exciting than fight over 1.50 euros of blinds with 6 people. Maybe there should be straddle tables.

I would try this site if it had SNGs or MTTs and then comment more.

I disagree with the splash pots being "the glory days of poker" lol, you guys had a money printer back in the day, in todays game most of you would get crushed.

I have played splash the pots, medium to large splashes, you have to flip your stack, massive gamble and massive variance = terrible idea for a poker player. The worst part is that you are incentivised to get it in because once 1 or 2 players get it in, you are getting insane pot odds, regardless of hand, YOU HAVE TO GAMBLE FOR YOUR RAKEBACK!!!!!!!! Just terrible.

Small splashes are played like an ante and I really didn't see anybody making huge errors. They did make huge errors when RIOP launched, that 1st week they were all in for 2bb splashes but that's not the case anymore.

I have played the plo20 and plo50 games and they really aren;'t that soft as Phil is portraying, quite a few nits and sometimes a wild fish at your table, nothing to write home about. I really don't know who told you the games were really good, filled with recreationals but that's just complete bullcrap.

It's in €. If you deposit from the UK, for example, the bank will charge you for the conversion from £ to € rather than depositing in £ and the site doing a conversion to € or $.

Same here, I got stung with £15 on a £550 deposit, I have deposited and withdrawn a few times from the site and have always got that money returned when I withdrew but this time they didn't refund the £15 fee, prob won't be playing until they resolve this and also won't re-deposit until they have a decent reload bonus.

They still have lag issues as well, this is especially noticeable when you play more than 4 tables, not good at all, detracts from the overall player experience.

1. It's got nothing to do with playing style, it's all about luck to win big splash pots, you have to gamble 4-6 way all in with any hand. You can easily run bad in those spots and not make much rake back, hence my 10% estimation, which is winning some small stp pots that don't get contested and perhaps a few medium sized. Point is that you can run bad in those spots and can go months without actualyl getting 51%!

2. Just look at any rake back affiliate, there's many that offer 30-50% and you don't need to rake anywhere near 10k!

Just an opinion but if you cared so much about poker sites not dying why would you start a training and coaching business to help players solve the game? You are directly involved in killing online poker probably even more so than any other element.

Yeah didn’t really think too much into this, but agree

Clearly doesn’t care about the players, just $, not that there is anything wrong with that.

Phil's statement
Phil for NLHE it simply isn't
The rake is good for PLO compared to other sites
It's worse for NLHE you set that up yourself and admitted as such
And you give it back to the levels of other sites through StP that has a learning curve

I get that you always wanted to avoid raising rake with hard launch
And have room for promotions
But I think you're realising you made a mistake with the rational grinders, and why your NLHE traffic suffers you can see it in the data

The PLO:NLHE Traffic ratio must be the highest of any site out there

If you matched Stars rake for NLHE from the get go
with StP on top
for NLHE
you would get people on your site
you would build their grinding habits
And StP would be a nice bonus they get without much resistance. It's not a barrier of entry, it's a nice bonus on top of the same cost of playing they get on Stars.


You didn't do that because you want promos and want to avoid bad publicity when you do pour money into marketing when you hard launch... but you have to face the consequences.


If you took the hit, actually have low rake in beta you'd build up the habits of grinders and then you'd raise it gradually as you ramp up marketing expenditure and games get softer I think you'd have way more regs now, and way more regs after in theory. Manipulating the habits of consumers is a strong thing most industries and especially gambling is built on


I mean it's your money I get to make the decisions in theory for free, I just think this was pretty clear to see.

EDIT: It might be too late to do that now, you alienated a lot of regs now, flip flopping rake would look bad and and you just kind of have to hope your marketing push towards the general population works, traffic increases and then regs follow because of high soft traffic to the now solid platform you built. And if it doesn't, good riddance.

I don't even know how you're planning to do this - quantitative research based customer acquisition marketing companies and data cost loads of money
And if you plan to wing it with your best intention towards marketing strategy it's gonna be a massive gamble.
A fascinating gamble - it's like having a toy and learning how it works and how you can influence people would be tons of fun to be part of it actually
If I didn't have so much on the line like you do heh

I was under the impression that you have to gamble to earn rakeback on any poker network. Although I guess mass nit-tabling can't really be called gambling though, can it?

I played some hands of 100nl yesterday. only 1 person was in the pool when I joined at 22:00 CEST, but it was up to 14 people when I hopped out ~30 minutes later. people want to play but they don't want to game start- the tables fill quick though.

btw, I didn't see a single preflop all in gamble for a splash pot (though I saw a lot of bad play)

Splash the pot is the worst idea in history of poker sites. Unfortunately GG also uses it for rush^cash.

This might the dumbest thing I have read in the internet. If you seriously believe that poker is game of gamble you must be one of those funny players.

so if poker =/ gambling why does stp = gambling? are you arguing that there are no edges to be had in splash pots? if so, wouldn't you be guaranteed to get your 51% rakeback? since it's just 0 edge gambling every player should average out to 51% rb in the long run

more likely is that you realize there are massive edges to be had in splash pots and you're afraid of the variance that comes with it

The overarching question is whether in the long run it would be better for poker if games were more fun for amateurs by becoming a bit crazier and only providing edges for talented game players rather than merely diligent studious types. Certainly in the short run it wouldn't be better as these diligent types go back to be CPAs or chemists or whatever. But there is evidence that such a change would in fact eventually see an upswing in poker play. Namely the home games, where most poker used to be played, of 40 years ago.

I'm not suggesting that we go back to Anaconda and Baseball. But assuming you are not better off at Coopers Lybrand or Dupont I think you would want some sexier games where the right strategy can't be memorized.

Thanks, Diane.

I have been focusing more energy responding on our Discord and social media than here on 2+2 in my limited time available, so I'm sure I've missed a number of questions here. I'm sorry I missed your question about FX rates both here and on twitter.

There are a number of common suggestions that we get that I can assure you we aren't ignoring:

FX rates - a solution for this has been in progress for a couple of months. Step one is supporting multiple currencies in the app, and step two is the automatic conversion of them.
SNGs, MTTs - In our development queue, of course, with SNG development well underway
Table Starter Program, Loyalty Rewards Program - Each require tech changes. Each are in our development queue.
Reduce variance of large Splashes - In our development queue
Add BTC deposits - We have been petitioning regulators for over 1 year and continually, actively search for alternate solutions
Add p2p xfers - same as BTC
etc. etc.

The list goes on much longer than this.

We'd been getting demands for resizable tables, which are now available, but they'd been in the queue long before launch.

While many of these things might sound like it shouldn't take long, there is a list full of so many of them that it's just impossible to get them all out quickly. I've also learned that every individual thing takes longer than I'd expect.

I'm sorry you (and some others) feel you're being ignored. I'd suggest you contact support or @RunItOncePoker on twitter rather than leave questions for us here. I'm the only one allowed to reply in this thread (which is entirely fair - we're not paying 2+2 for promotion and should have to in order to bump a thread like this with support all the time), and my time is very limited.

As far as your feeling that "We really want to hear your ideas but we've got our business model and we're not deviating from it."...

Outside of 2+2 (twitter, discord, twitch chat, email), we've received much more positive feedback about our policies and features than negative. It's not like we're hearing everyone tell us to change course and simply deciding that we know better.

That said, even if we want to change course, it's not viable in the near future. You can see a very small fraction of our development queue above. Adding "completely overhaul the way screen name logic, stats, and table selection works" is not really viable in the next few months, nor is "add zoom."

I do still believe we're more or less on the right path, yes, but we also happen to be stuck on it for now, so focusing on the things we can add and change is what I believe is most beneficial. A complete redo of what already exists isn't a viable use of our limited resources.

Thanks for the feedback, for understanding what we're doing, and for trying to help with liquidity by sitting in pools while grinding other sites - it wouldn't take many poeple doing this to move the needle, so it's very much appreciated.

We do plan to ramp up marketing efforts now that the software is much improved, though I think we're a long, long way from 24/7 action. My streams the other week did have a big impact. Here's hoping we can keep the ball moving in the right direction!

I appreciate the very well-thought-out, intelligent post - thank you!

I have to run in a minute but I wanted to at least reply about the existing rake levels.

Off the top of my head, our calcs had effective (net) rake around 30%-40% lower than Pokerstars. Are you seeing something much different than that for our NL rake?

I will address this, I'm not sure you are trolling or just a little slow. I don't think poker is gambling, it's a game of skill with a lot of variance. That's the main issue I have with STP, it adds a ton of added variance to a game that is already high in variance.

I don't play NL, I only play PLO, it's not uncommon to go on 20-30 buy in swings multiple times a year and at least 1 50+ buyin over the course of a year. In those times, it's nice to have rake back that you can rely on to get you through the month (several months in some cases) to pay bills, eat etc.

Imagine losing 50 buyins but receiving 30 of those back end of the month, it makes a huge difference, and you are still in the game and can continue to play.

Now imagine playing on RIOP, losing 50 buyins and missing a ton of big splashes. Not only that but you had to ADD A TON OF VARIANCE to gamble for those splashes. Now you are down 100 buyins as a result and you still won't get anything back because you bricked big splashes.

Now imagine running bad for a prolonged period of time (several months), we've all seen the graphs, 100+ buyins is perfectly possible, now ADD the increased variance you have to take on because you are forced to gamble to win rake back, you are now looking at 2,3,400 buyins loss, this is not good.

Also, if you are running under EV, you will automatically run under EV in those big splash pots, it's guaranteed added variance, in a game that is already high in variance.

If you want to make it fair for everybody, why not just add an in house HUD. Everybody has access to it, so then it only comes down to who is willing to put in the work. No excuses anymore, even the fish can read a hud and adjust accordingly.

This is the fairest thing to do, I think a hud is an absolute necessity in online games. You need a hud because you can't possibly get even the simplest of reads on opponents when you are 4+ tabling. I'd agree with a no hud if everyone was playing 1 table, as you can easily do 1 table in your head.

Having a hud is a must for even the simplest of stats, like how often a player VPips. You can get a good feel at 1 table, sure no need for a hud but you have to rely on stats when you are playing 4+ tabling.

I mean seriously, who do you think you are trying to convince that a hud will make it fairer for recreational players? I can spot a sucker within 10 hands, make a note and that's the end of him. All taking away a hud does is decrease my ability to play more tables, you are killing your own games as a result.

The anonymous tables are actually better at "saving" fish, as I can't build up massive reads on them, which again is totally unfair, you don't see that in live games. It's completely unethical to make games anonymous, that's not what poker is about. But an unethical poker site will do anything for a buck!

Thank you for being very logical

Thanks for joining the pool to get it going. We definitely need to figure out a way to incentivize people to start pools. It's surprising how many people are happy to join if one is running but not happy to start it.