Technically the most socialist sites would be the state-owned ones.

someone said it earlier but if you are making a poker site and are against freerolls, you're legit punting. even daily 10, 50 or a 100$ freeroll would be huge. is huge.

PS at its prime had like 10$ freerolls that would get like 6-8k runners lmao.

hope they look into that if they do want to re launch. I dont see any downside to having daily small freerolls to attract a base

How they finna get freerolls when they can't even make MTTs XD

I would like to think that Phil already has a contract in place with an existing casino in the regulated markets to run their poker side for them to make this announcement. Maybe a small player like TwinSpires would take them on.

Someone should write a business case study on how to start a new poker site (GGPoker) and how not to start a new poker site (Run It Once).

One small thing that no one else has mentioned is that the name of the poker site is the same as the name of his training site. He should've changed the name of one of them.

He realizes there is more money in the US market. I think its a smart move to end that site. He needs to focus on getting recreational players not catering to grinders. Nobody wants tables full of grinders. He did create splash pots and every site uses it. I am sure he will come up with some other new ideas to help make poker more fun to play.

These sites need to stop taking rake in the lowest stakes games. First site to do it on a mass scale will make poker real again.

Micro Rake is obliterating low stakes, killing new players, slaughtering market growth.

this combined with allowing bots is the answer.

I'm not getting the negative connection between a poker site and a training site.

So... cardrunners is inherently a bad name for a poker platform?

They should have been able to create MTTs in the 2 years that they were in operation though.

I with others was saying that it was as if his software developers were taking the piss out of him.

Maybe he was just a bit too nice.

In my experience humans tend to take advantage unless they are a little bit scared off you.

The nice quiet guy at the bar never gets laid. It's the loud guy that approaches the woman that goes home with the pussy.

You should not outsource tech products if they play a major role in your business. Find a CTO co-founder and build your own development team instead. Otherwise, it's a way with a dead end. I hope he is not doing this mistake again.

If they can find a way to share liquidity in the US market, I could see this being an advantage. They likely can attract certain types of players pretty well. Less "reg heavy winners" and more "training site customers" (there's a big difference, just like 2p2's userbase has always been like the latter for years). They'll struggle finding the sports book whales under anything that resembles their previous model, but with shared liquidity, they don't need to. They could also pivot into sports.

It's not that I'd be all in on their success or anything, I just see some potential paths to victory for them. Rooting for RIO though, they seem like a good group and they have added a few innovations that are outsized for their share of the poker market.

Regarding the PFA article, it's practical and feels like a realistic assessment. But I wouldn't hold my breath that they aren't 1) going to pivot to include sports in the business model 2) don't need to make a ton of money to run a successful business. Having 50-100 cash game players (and assuming similar for MTTs) on average could be plenty profitable, especially if they get most of those players by leveraging their current business. Market leaders like WSOP.com aren't out to make 500k-2 mil a year, it's like a big business with a marketing budget into the millions. If RIO runs a low 7 figure profit in the US market in the short term, that seems great while holding your spot near the front of the line for future domestic expansion/sports.

As mentioned earlier I think their dynamic HuD approach as well as their splash the pots, gold pots, whatever were great additions to the poker world.

The Dynamic HuD approach was a neat way to sort of have a HuD but not really have a HuD in the software for all players. If you've played on GGpoker you realize this is helpful when multi tabling and a fair way to do it for everyone. HuDs are sort of overrated in general these days and I think it's possible RIO did fail in thinking that only way to totally stop them was to make the site anonymous. I didn't hate the site being anonymous but it does take away some of the appeal of playing poker online and I don't think most people these days are going to try to go out of their way to run an illegal HuD on a pokersite that provides a basic HuD in the software. I guess you could argue it opens up data-mining possibilities on players when the tables aren't anonymous. What are the results so far with this on GGpoker? idk but as far as I know it's not a huge issue there. Regardless the in network HuD I believe was a first and RIO brought that to us.

Splash the Pot. Dropping money into the pot from the sky, whatever you call it was and is a huge addition for cash games and online poker. Notice how quickly GGpoker added this to their client. As an MTT player who dabbles in cash games from time to time I cannot tell you how much things like high hand, bad beat jackpots, and now Splash the pot add to a experience. This was truly a huge addition to online cash games as far as I'm concerned and I'm still puzzled why sites like PokerStars have yet to implement it. It just makes the experience of playing a cash game so much more fun.

Fwiw ggs huds are pretty much useless because they reset every time and a nit running hot can look like a maniac in your eyes. Can't remember excactly but rios huds didn't reset untill some hours passed if you happened to run into the same player again. Allso ggs spt is bad because it increased the allready high rake you pay. Huds aren't overrated either if you have a big enough database.

I would say THE fatal flaw.

For the professional dream to thrive at the lower levels you have to have a significant edge over the field and rake.

This is only achieved with a steady supply of recreational players.

Plus having a support and regulatory system for multiple countries/Jurisdictions must be a huge use of resources.
Having just the US, after initial start up costs, would greatly reduce this.

Follow-up tweet:



Doug just being Doug - throw out an antagonizing statement to goad someone into coming on his podcast so he can print da monies at their expense.

Ouch, so sad. Fellow degenerates betrayed Phil by not playing his stupid HUD dolls in a reg heavy environment also being pretty busy applying RTA to various Chinese apps.

It's not really Phil's expense as he might benefit from being able to present his side of the story.

We're not talking about a situation where a single nay-sayer finally has his moment of being right while everybody else was wrong. I can't remember a single person with knowledge of the ecosystem who said that RIO Poker had a shot at success without putting in a boatload of cash to get recreational players on the platform.

+10000

Been there. developing and owning your own tech products and team is essential.

It also is the only way to address the inevitable mistakes made , as well as changing requirements of ever evolving markets.

Ya I already mentioned a few times for a couple years that you cannot start a business if you are not an expert in that field of work. Huge fish mistake

lol I remember grinding those. It was steps wasn't it?. Win one and get entry to stage 2 etc.. I remember the horrible green lobby