+1, well said

I am not totally disagreeing with you. I do see your point, and since you have read my posts you can also see what I think of STP, or Splashback as I derogatively called it. I did enjoy Strange Days, and also liked Babylon Five where who the enemy is keeps changing depending on your perspective and viewpoint.

I have heard many pros describe poker as a treadmill or similar. I started to think that way about the game myself around five years ago, just before I retired, became financially secure, and knew I wouldn't have to earn money at the game. Just as well really because I started to hate the game, and wasn't particularly talented. I found it hard, but am now enjoying it more as a bit of fun, playing occasionally when they have plo or d/c tourneys. I still like to win though, even though the peanuts I earn just about pays for the petrol.

Cardrooms casinos and online poker sites are doing it for the money, it's merely a case of where you choose to play as you lose or win money. I enjoy playing occasionally on RIO, and even an online cash muppet like me can at least break even or make a few buy ins. I don't do the online grind, am a live tourney player, so probably have a different perspective.

I can understand the business model they have, but don't regard them in emotive terms as running a slave galley. There are a few African Americans who may not like that term when referring to an online poker site. It is everyone's choice whether to play poker, as it is everyone's choice how to spend their money. Now we can go into the various arguments on big business or banks operating as cartels, and the political set up, but I shall put that to one side and look at it realistically in terms of what alternative sites there are currently out there.

Given the discontent on 2p2 about online poker sites this looks to be a good place in comparison, but it's a business. I have no problems with card rooms or online poker sites making money out of players, it's how much they make, and how they make it. Obviously we disagree a little on this. I would much prefer the idea of STP of 10x or more being more fairly distributed. I think they are going to tweak it, and I would much prefer they do that.

I just deposited, but not 600€ for the full bonus and now I saw this column at the "My account" page, which says "Top up your bonus".

So when I have unlocked the amount of my current bonus and then do another deposit, will I also get a bonus for it? Until I have reached 600€ in total deposits?

No.

The bonus amount is based on your initial first deposit only.

If for example you deposited €100 and got a €100 bonus, depositing a further €500 (to take it up to the €600 bonus limit) won't actually give you another €500 worth of bonus - your bonus amount will still be €100.

Subsequent deposits make no difference in regards to your bonus balance increasing.

Ok thanks.

What's "Top up your bonus" then?

Anything on this please? Cheers

Can we track our rake back yet?

Also, while I trust Phil and team, is there a way to verify that they indeed pay out 51% in splash the pots?

When plo20?

The rake is not even competitive vs his target competition. Look at the Microgaming network for example! It's not just that though, look at the Swedish site Svenska, they nailed it imo, super low rake, no rake back!

Really blows me away just how idiotic the outcome is of this pokersite. Especially coming from a guy that is a professional poker player!!!

@ Nicht don't say it as it is, many idiots here with Stockholm syndrome will defend their slave owners to the day they die! They are but sheep and can not see the light!

You open yourself up to their never ending idiotic rant about how RIO is a business, just in case they thought you were as ******ed as them and obviously didn't figure that out!

Guys, just as an example! Fortnite and other online games have changed the landscape of how to make money, they don't charge anything for their game. It's free, yet they make a ton of money.

Now take call of duty franchise, what's happened, they are slowly dying out, they used to make $$$ each and every year, but now nobody wants to pay $60 for their ****ty game and another $60 on DLC. Yet players are easily spending more on fortnite, why is this?

You can change the paradigm and perhaps be even better off than competitors. Did Phil do anything of the kind, no of course not. They are just as greedy as any other, just trying to **** everybody over and get paid THE ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM! He gives 0 ****s about poker players, period!

He did nothing for us players, nothing at all! All he did was create another site for you to play on!

What's so special about RIO Poker? Why would anybody want to leave other sites they are familiar with, that offer better rewards too?

Anonymous?
Because no hud?
Because no bot?
Because all of the RIO members (aka nits and students of the game, and mostly winning players?)
Because rake is lower? It's barely lower than the MOST overpriced (Stars and PP) and they have light years on him. I don't agree with their numbers but they can get away with it because they have built it up.

I agree with Nicht, why wouldn't Phil change the landscape, completely turn the poker world on it's head. Take all the poker players from all the sites by offer something revolutionary, something so great that all players would move over in a heartbeat!

To greedy to see the light imo! Sure you will give up EV to start but once you get going and have all their players, skies the limit!

What has Phil really done for us players though, ask yourself?

would there be a way to allow pokertracker to import hand historys but completely disable the hud feature while playing on RIOpoker?

i like the idea of keeping track of my progress and seeing graphs, ect.

i guess that would be something you would have to workout with the pt devs , would be great if something like this was possible

According to RIO all HHs will be importable into trackers 24hrs after the play.

To my knowledge there is no timeline on when it will be available.

In there any way to convert RIO raw hh from prev. hands into more viewable format?
Converter/software or anything?

I had high hopes for RunitOnce Poker but Im also rather disappointed how everything turned out.
I know Phil doesn't own the community anything at all but he was the one writing all these big words and now we have just another site that rakes is players to death.
Another big disappointment is STP and the way they praise it as if most people like it.
Do a vote on 51% rakeback straight into your account VS 51% rakeback through STP and see what the players really like. I bet 85%+ would vote for option 1.
Once the software is finally bug free, it will be the 2nd best behind Stars and the support is also good.
But if the rakeback system stays like that, I won´t even bother to clear my first deposit bonus.

These aren't even the same thing. If I understand correctly, with their STP they are returning 51% of raked money back to be fought for, so in a 6max game if all players had equal skills, it would basically be 51/6 = 8.5% rakeback. So if you played HU you would actually have biggest rakeback with 25.5%. No idea how/if they take table size into consideration.

But for sure it is not 51% effective rakeback since you are basically getting close to your equity with all other players.

Not impressed at all with the site that's supposed to be "by poker players for poker players".

You do not understand correctly.

Right, my bad... :facepalm: Since you can also win money raked by other people not just you.

Where did you get 51/6 from?

Each player pays 100% rake. $100 for example. $600 is paid in total.

51% is then put back on the table.

So $306.

$306/ 6 players

= $51

Hey this is an obvious question but one that is hard to look for, what is the difference between RIO.eu and RIO.com player pool wise

I do feel like most of the goodwill and positive regarding RIO is because of Phil's positive standing within the community. If I or any random person had set up RIO it'd likely be dead because of the state of the software and the whole having to fight for rakeback.

As someone above mentioned, at the moment it's just another site raking the players to death and there is very little incentive to play there, especially high volume. I understand the whole STP aspect from an ISP and bot deterrent perspective but I must admit I am disappointed given the hype.

hi is it true UK players cant get the rakeback stream promo? if so that's sad

and I often travel to Singapore can I login from there?

there is no rio.com pokerroom. that is a training site.

Just to let you know that even tho I won't get any streamer rake back I will be streaming on twitch one session a day on Twitch as Coach technique. Good luck to RIO

No UK StreamRs as yet, they're working on a way to include UK players. They've not stated why officially yet other than it being UKGC related

Singapore is on the restricted list of countries so no play from there.

I registrated here to write a little about RIO Poker. (Not native english, so be nice to the typing misstakes) ;-)
I have been a professional poker player since 2008. And even though I had a nice success playing online mtts (1 M winnings/ XXX K profit
I quitted online poker, and switched to live mtts and cg, because it is obvious that most of the sites rigg and fix the games.
I don't want to go deep into that topic, but if one knows which "group" all these sites belong to, and what their agenda is,
there is no doubt what is going on in in this industry. (888, stars, pp, bwin, all Ipoker and more). Anyone who doesn't feel this way, feel free to keep playing those sites.

Therefore I was even more happy that Phil Galfond is opening this new site.

My first impression is very good!
To all the people that are crying about the beta I can say this:

Be happy that there is a legit online poker site now, that doesn't rip of it's "customers"/golddonkeys by putting bots into
mtts to steal extra money from the price pool, generating fixed action with rng algoritms, and ripping them off. Seriously, you guys should thank heaven,
and support this project as much as you can.
All you people should be super happy about this site and that the owner keeps such a close contact to his customers.

That said I have some improvements to make to make this site better.
I hope that RIO will grow over time and destroy sites like stars, 888, pp etc.

Here are my thoughts:

1. Implement mtts ans (6max/12max/32max/108max) sngs as soon as possible.
2. Implement plo20
3. Fix the table sizing issue as soon as possible
4. Fix the time out issue as soon as possible/ and enable people to sit back at the table, they were kick of
5. Time bank should be expanded to at least 10 seconds.
6. Implement picture cards into the hh
7. Increase the time the showdown hands are shown. They dissapear too quick.
8. Fix the shortcut key issue. I always have to renew the check/call shortcut, as I laungh the lobby to start a session.
9. Implement a check/fold shortcut button
10. Fix the bank money transfer issue. My Fidor business credit card was not accepted.
11. Fix the Skrill issue. Skrill was not accepted due to gambling protection.
12. Please implement a vip system that values regs that grind a lot, that do not want to stream.
13. All beta software players that didn't deposit 600 €, should be able to get the bonus at the second deposit of the original version of the site. That would be just fair. At least all users are supporting this site.

Finally:
I am not very happy with the anonymous player pool. Here is why:
Poker is an adult game with money. Adults don't need to be protected in this context.
They are fully responsible for their action. If someone plays bad it is his full responsibility to change that.
The whole "protection of recreational players" bs is a made up vibe by the greedy big poker companies that
are only interested in squeezing as much money from fish and shark as they can.
It is a fake debate.
The essence of poker is winning money with the better hand from an opponent that has a weaker hand or is not able to read ranges. If the opponent is bad, he loses in the long run.
This is the professionals bread and butter.
Anonymising the player pool takes a huge aspect from poker, that represents it's core essence. I am not cool with changing the core essence of this game to protect adult people that are not acting clever with their money.
Imagine a live casino handing out masks to the bad players at the reception to protect them.
^^
I like the STP feature to keep bots away from the playerpool.

So congratz, and all the best to Phil and his team.
You made online poker great again hehe. Never get greedy. Stay like this! Don't let negative people demotivate you!

Koenigsblut

Excellent post. English may not be your native language but it makes a change from some of the sulky one or two liner posts, badly spelled and punctuated, from people who are supposed to speak English.

I agree with much of what you say. Although they were expecting a backlash concerning STP, I wonder if they have overlooked some of its effects. I would like to see half of the rake go towards STP, and half go back to the players who have earned it. That idea is a compromise and they may not want to do it. Players at least get to see it physically credited to their account. RIO probably will not want to do that, as they seem very attached to the hardline STP approach.

I can only speak personally as a muppet online cash player. I don't play much on RIO, as I am waiting for tourneys, but I would certainly play more if there were a better rakeback system. Of course what a "better" rakeback system is, is a matter of opinion, and since they run the site, I guess they get to run it how they like. Whether RIO will catch on or fail because of, or despite of STP, only time will tell. Some love it some hate it, which I guess is what they wanted.

I think they are currently working on a number of things you have mentioned. We have to give them time as it is still in beta, but I think we are in agreement that this is a great place to play already. I consider it to be the nearest thing to playing live that I have experienced. I am hoping they will bring in some alternative games like plo8 and some stud games. A HORSE tourney eventually would be great, as would some PLO and PLO8 tourneys. Like a lot of tourney players I want to see it happen, but want them to get it right, so there is still some time to wait. Months rather than weeks I would imagine.

What on earth makes you think this "RNG" is any more random than the others? Computers cannot randomise FACT and ALL RNG's are patternised. So this one will be no fairer than any other, kthnxbai

The day will come when you also "figure" out that RIO is rigged. What a shame that you stated this at the beginning of your post which contains imo a lot of valid points.....but somewhat you wrecked it for me when you outed yourself as rigtard.