Sort out how to do timebanks properly so that they are not abused simply as a cushion to add more tables. Same with time-to-act, I guess. The point being to deter chronic slow play by more precisely targeting the players that cannot keep up with their tables (rather than a simple table cap).

I think the key to establishing a new poker site at this time is gamification. It must be the goal to make poker tremendously fun for new and recreational players. I has been 10y+ since I played the last time videogames, but what I recall from that is that he vast majority of players I knew and myself included played those (strategy) games not so much because of the game but because of the game environment. I would suggest to make it a high priority so that even playmoney players are absolutely addicted to playing on RIO Poker.

I think it would be absolutely fantastic if there was some sort of HU ladder or leaderboard for playmoney games, or maybe even two, one weekly and one monthly. The top 3 get a bonus of respectively $50, $30 and $20 to clear before they can cash it out. For the top 20 make a special kind of freeroll.
Another leaderboard may be about who won the most bb's in a certain game, again pay the top 3 and give the top20 or 50 a special freeroll.
The winner of one of those freerolls could be playing a best-of-three HU game against the winner of the weekly TLB leaderboard for a small price like $250.

Maybe create a new and „outrageous“ playing mode in playmoney games. Everytime someone makes a hero fold, in that he has TP+ and their opponent has a better hand give that player a special reward, something like a badge or a level status. This way people get even rewarded when they lose. Build your entire platform around badges, levels ect.

Create a user friendly, open lobby so that people can chat with each other, reardless in what games they sit. Make it a possibility to challange people for a HU game, either SNG or cashgames. Give some more reward to people who never decline a challenge, or have a certain winning strike ect. Make it also a possiblity to hide your record if someone is a breakevenish or losing player at the time.

Create multiple freeroll tournaments, like satellites, just much nicer marketed. I don't know, call them the WSOP primaries. Create a multitude of freerolls that all culimate into a final freeroll of maybe a 50 players and the winner gets to go to Vegas to play the Millionaire maker.

I think to get recreational and new players you need to make them want to play (playmoney) poker and then create loads of brigdes between the playmoney world and the real poker world. In the other example, a winner of a freeroll who competes against the winner of the weekly realmoney TLB, hype it up extremly. Put the guys (screen)name, and possibly face if that person agrees to, on every banner on the site. Make it an event every playmoney player wants to watch.

This are just a few ideas what one could do to engange new and recreational players for RIO poker. And this was only the playmoney part. I played poker (mostly) professional my last 10 years and I truely believe that RIO does not need to have an outstanding VIP system. I'd much rather give a few $ up for the recreationals. This obviously does not mean that there should be a 30% flat RB. Again, I believe that gamification is one key element to hook players.

Remember when PTR was still allowed for Stars? Oh man, I found it so cool that they had all those badges for individual players. RIO poker could work similarly and have the badges and various rewards build in. Give people who played an average of 6 out of 7 days every single week of a year a special sort of badge and give them an additional rakeback like maybe 5%, regardless what games they play.

Make chasing a VIP status something really enjoyable and challenging. Limit your higheset VIP to a very elite group of players, make it even harder than reaching SNE. Give those players a place in your hall of fame, invite them to special parties and give them a great concierge service. Put them all in a freeroll and give the three best a small sponsorship for either online or live poker.

For all the other status think of something similar. Just remember the key aspects, connect with people and make them feel part of a community. Make people feel special, be it trough badges, various leaderboards, vip status or whatever, just make them feel special and let them show it. Ultimately, make it fun for the recreationals. I think it all comes down to seize new costumers and make them addicts for the enjoyment that you offer. If stars feels like crushing you and for a year or two starts giving 40% flat and maybe some more for the super sickos then you are going to be in trouble if your entire model is build on „being fair“ to the players, because the vast majority of those players are going back to stars.

HUDs are a completly new topic. Even though it is a lot of work and certainly is going to cost quite a bit, how about introducing a user friendly, easy to understand, general HUD in the client? This way, recreational players can play with that HUD and don't feel like they are in such a big disadvantage and more advanced players can use their own hud. I'm in favor of limiting the information that a HUD can give, but this is a whole new topic and I think it would be better to have a seperate discussion for that. I also agree to that you should have various table types, some that allow HUDs and some that don't. Maybe it would be a good thing to generally not allow HUDs on the highest stakes.

Allow it for people to create aliases. Let them create their account under their regular name and let them pick aliases they can keep. Limit the times they can swap from one alias to another every 30-90 day regularly and give them twice a year a shot to change their alias for 5 days, this would be especially helfpul and interesting for people who move up in stakes or recreationals who just want to shot the higher stakes. An another exception could be made for tournament players, let them play under their real name if they wish and have their cashgame or SNG screenname something different.

There are already quite a few good ideas about how to start the games, for example making people pay much less rake and giving them back more rakeback for starting games makes perfect sense. I don't know, maybe even give them an award for doing that or enroll them in special kinds of freerolls additionally.

I realize that most of these ideas are actually quite hard to realize, in that they will cost a significant sum to implement, but at the very least I hope that these thoughts influence someone at RIO poker.


good luck guys

Where do I deposit?

Mr. Galfond is you read this :

1.No HUD table

2.Fast Response time table (10-15 seconds for every decision and No time bank allowed)

3.Bring more Variation of games (5-6 cards Omaha,etc)

4.Easy,Secure and well known deposit and withdraw instrument (Skrill,Neteller)

5.Available chat feature on every table/game..maybe with minimum money in account,ex. $5-10(miss those FTP railing)

6.P2P transfer

7....and last,I Hope you have a good UI poker software that easy in the eye and navigate..somewhere around FTP and PS

Good luck

<3

Some users here and on RIO's thread suggest no HUD tables.
You have to understand this, HUDs cannot be stopped, that's a fact. Obv you have to understand how programming works to get why, but seriously, stop saying that without any knowledge.
Also, there's is a huge drawback, if you ban commericial HUDs, some HUD eventually be developed privately and in the end they will have a huge advantage.

Blueson talked about gamification, and he's totally right, as research showed.

Probably top 1 issue with starting a new poker room is getting the traffic going. This could be a real problem and Phil doesn't have the money to invest in big commercials like Amaya is doing. Probably one of the best shot he can make is to contact as many live professional possible in order to promote the new room in a cheaper way.

I hope the best for his site, I really do. But, 2p2 users has too high expectation IMO, at least in the short term.
Beside of that, go Phil, go kick some asses

Motorway speeding also can't be completely stopped, therefore we should allow everyone to drive as fast as they want.

This is true and the only defence is to allow regular name changes and encourage all players to use them, as Unibet does (it's often a step in the monthly missions).

Good point. The logical conclusion of not having any difficult to enforce rules is robo-wars.

So how come that there are some poker sites where a HUD won't work?

If you get caught using banned software it's a lifetime ban. 1st time , no 2nd chances.

Which sites? Reputable HUDs won't work obviously.

Unibet offer cash in your account if you find and tell them about a HUD that has been made to work on their site and my understanding is they've paid this out before.

It's obviously risky to install software designed specifically to breach ToS - not least because you might turn from predator to prey if unethical developers can see your holecards, but it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Just change your name every week.

Fyp!

You are assuming he is doing this all on his own dime. I would be shocked if there wasn't investor money behind this.

Are you still bumhunting? Hopefully those practices won't be tolerated much on the new site.

guys dont u realize that huds exists for 10 years? lol. huds are for reg on reg only, and are not that important. it's suitable for multitabling battle vs regs.

Mentality of the reg-fish on this site:

"I'll win at pokerz if there was no hud.. one timeeee!" lol guess what? You won't

ye they wouldnt win but some fun players would lose less simply bc regs cant remember all the exploits. Spewy fun player would lose less vs a guy who plays gto approach than vs a guy who adjusts quickly because of historical data and starts widening his own ranges asap.

obv I'm not that naive, clearly there are investors behind the scene, but it's very unlikely they put in a large about of money (10M+)

I do not think that vs a fun player you need to know specific exploits that would show up in a hud. A fun player is a loose calling station, I do not need a hud to find out how to play vs such player! Fun players do not lose faster because I see their betfold riverstat is at 80%...

I am not saying,you have to ban all of the HUD,but it would be nice if there's an option like that (No HUD table)

Someone plz hit me up if Phil ever posts any basic details of said site.

Other than that, carry on with all these great ideas on a site most of you wont ever get to play on unless Phil wants to go all Calvin Ayre type fugitive, or he started licensing several years ago, or he's gonna buy an existing site .

Yes, I think he is 360 wrong, trust me. Poker is all about the long run exploit.

Nah, i try to play reg only lineups to make sure stars makes enuff rake and i dont win too much...

i guess its not that good of an example if ur playing regular tables. most losing players huds are useful against are not purely recs, but fishregs who have obv long term leaks. but it also obv helps against recs quite a bit. for example if ur masstabling zoom and u see a rec who has 3bet smth like 2/4 and if there has been a showdown u can see from hud notes if they had a decent hand or a random spew. also if u have played w a certain fun player b4 and others havent and u have data thats very useful even in reg tables.

Without wanting to derail the thread, if HUDs are just useful for reg-on-reg battles then the site enforcing a "disarmament" will save the regs money - so I'm expecting regs to be 100% behind this.

That assertion seems silly on the surface. HUDs are useful for more than just reg on reg.