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For a long time the best value for FPPs on Pokerstars was to play 5400 point satellites to the Sunday Million to win T$. People did that and still called it rakeback.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dan Druff
Jackpot suggests there is a huge prize up top and not much else to be had. Splash pots on RIO are mostly handed out as 1-25 bb antes so the variance is not as high as you might think.
But that was how you chose to optimally spend your points (if you liked satellites, that is), and not forced.Quote:
Originally Posted by klinzFor a long time the best value for FPPs on Pokerstars was to play 5400 point satellites to the Sunday Million to win T$. People did that and still called it rakeback.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dan Druff
Jackpot suggests there is a huge prize up top and not much else to be had. Splash pots on RIO are mostly handed out as 1-25 bb antes so the variance is not as high as you might think.
At least when I played Stars, you could cash in your FPPs for a bonus which was pretty easy to clear, and then cash it out for real money. That's not quite direct rakeback, but to be fair, Stars didn't refer to it as rakeback that often, except in a few 2+2 posts and small marketing blurbs.
But it was still a hell of a lot more like rakeback than splash the pot, for the reasons I stated in the previous post.
Oh, and Galfond himself is playing on the site now at low stakes PLO.
That's a good idea, and a throwback to the Full Tilt "Play With the Pros" model.
Unfortunately, he's also asking if anyone wants to play him at high stakes on the site, which I think would be a bad look for obvious reasons. I don't think Phil would cheat, but it's still a bad look to ever play high stakes on your own online poker site.
Wow how out of touch is this guy? "Hey do you want to play me at high stakes. I know I own the site and have access to see hole cards, but I wont cheat." LOLQuote:
Originally Posted by Dan Druff
Interesting, but somewhat long and rambling blog regarding Phil's assessment of why Run It Once has been a failure thus far:
https://www.runitonce.eu/news/talkin...16_20-20-20-16
While he finally has come to admit that their "innovations" didn't work out, he's still not fully understanding the reasoning for it.
The general message of the blog?
Splash the Pot is a venture into the unknown for grinders, as they haven't yet come up with a GTO way to beat it. This makes them uncomfortable, and they don't want to play at Run It Once for that reason. Poker players in the 2000s, when Phil came up, loved new challenges and constantly enjoyed coming ways to beat the unknown. However, modern grinders are different, and lack the heart for adventure, thus needing predictability. If they only realized that Splash the Pot was a return to poker's glory days (because it's not solved yet), they'd realize that it's a wonderful opportunity that they're missing, but sadly they don't, so the site has been a failure.
LOL!!!!!
This blog was a classic example of "It's the customer's fault that my business failed", disguised as taking responsibility for what happened. Instead of, "Yeah, we misunderstood the market and are suffering badly for it", the message is, "We thought the customer base wouldn't be as ignorant as they are, but we were wrong, and now we're failing because we didn't expect such ignorance."
He's also not really addressing that the main failure was due to the site lacking basic features (bug-free software, tournaments, resizable tables), and that Splash the Pot wasn't really what was keeping the site dead.
The lack of a marketing budget was also a huge mistake.
Oh, he does admit in the blog that they're "burning through money each month", which obviously isn't a surprise.
He also gives players a way to take a survey and contact him, which he claims he will give personal attention to most of the people responding.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil Galfond
This is interesting and refreshing in some ways, but I'm not all that optimistic that it will mean much. He's seen plenty of feedback on 2+2 and elsewhere which has been directing him and the site the right way, and he has dismissed almost all of it. This site has no chance until he gets out of his head that he's done mostly the right thing thus far, and that they're on the cusp of succeeding. He needs to realize that they've made some major, major errors in judgment, and only some tremendous changes in direction will save the site at this point (and possibly it's too late anyway).
Guys, here's why my restaurant failed.
It's not that our food sucked, or that we marketed poorly, or that our menu was full of unappealing dishes.
It was because customers these days lack the sophisticated, adventures palates of decades prior, and our food was too gourmet for them. We overestimated the sophistication of the typical 2019 customer, and should have adjusted our menu to mostly feature bland, predictable food which doesn't give the average rube anxiety. We would have been a wild success if people just realized how innovative and tasty our food was, but they are too gauche to ever realize that, and it's our fault for not understanding what simpletons modern restaurant-goers have become.
:lol
I had to stop reading at " feel like we are 1 or 2 updates away from a clear top 2 or 3 poker platform experience, and I think that a year from now we have a good chance of being #1. " ...
He is fucking insane and is probably within months of shutting it down I bet
Galfond interview on DAT poker podcast worth a listen
Yeah I listened to it. Starts at like 46:30 mark.
https://datpodcast.libsyn.com/phil-g...ast-episode-46
The first 11 minutes are the best. Some good questions there. After that it goes into a lot of softballing and nothing meaningful is said, except at the 1:17:00 mark where he talks about his lol marketing ideas.
You can tell at the beginning of the interview, he realizes the whole project has gone horribly wrong, but he doesn't seem to want to change course. It's very odd. Combination of optimism, denial, and resignation to failure.
Very simple way to right this ship before it's too late (Nevada, NJ and PA excluded of course):
Phil responding like a madman in the 2+2 NVG thread about his site.
For awhile, he ignored it.
Between 2+2, the DAT appearance, the blog, and the Twitch streaming, he's clearly engaging in an all-out publicity blitz to get the site on its feet. Not a bad idea, but that alone won't save it.
Interestingly, he won't respond to me at all in the thread. I've been cordial in the thread and never personally insulting to him or the site, but I've been pretty tough, so I'm guessing he is pissed and won't acknowledge me. I don't really care. It's just funny. Either that, or my comments are too difficult to craft a good response to, so he's skipping them.
There's another guy in the thread posting way more than I am, named The_Jackal21. Jackal is in Europe and actually plays on the site. He posts a lot of constructive criticism, but again in kind of a tough manner. Phil responded to him once, and now seems to be ignoring him, too.
I think the problem is that Phil's ultimate plan is to mostly stay the course and give the illusion of being open to change, so it's hard to respond to big time critics who feel that a major change is necessary to succeed.
And then there's troubling statements like this:
Bolding is mine.Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil Galfond
So there's still more of these condescending statements, blaming the grinder/customer for being too stupid to understand how wonderful their promotion is, rather than blaming themselves for coming up with something which just isn't exciting people.
That doesn't bode well for his level of introspection, or the future of the site.
Bc the site is being ran by a bunch of Phil's butt buddies, so people exactly like him. So of course they have no real prospective ...Quote:
Originally Posted by Dan Druff
"Inspired by some discussions here, our promo for this next week is 35/35. 70% rakeback, with 35% coming from STP and 35% going directly into accounts.
https://www.runitonce.eu/promotions/35-35/
We've run a promo similar to this once before, but we need to do it multiple times in order to gather meaningful data about how people respond to getting direct rakeback in comparison to splash-specific promos.
Perhaps our players will prove some of you right
Phil Galfond is offline "
Best promo yet, he is starting to learn a bit at least. Doubt it can save his site but ...
Looks like he probably bought an advertorial in Pokernews.
https://www.pokernews.com/news/2019/...back-35404.htm
World Sports Exchange ( now defunct ) was one of the first gambling sites on the Internet. They tried rake free poker. They had limit holdem and I think no limit.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dan Druff
Even though this site had high credibility in the online sports betting world, their rake free poker product didn't translate into traffic.
Trying to re-invent the wheel by concentrating on rake seems pretty fucking stupid. It's about marketing, getting players. Lying or even telling the truth about rakeback isn't going to make your site successful. The guy is a typical arrogant poker player that thinks he knows everything. When he does admit fault, it's really someone else's fault but he failed to communicate (i.e. 'optics'). Still someone else's fault, if only they could "see" better, this wouldn't be happening, etc..
What a fucking douchebag.
How is their software compared to Seals With Clubs? Serious question.
Update:
Still a ghost town.
No new significant software updates.
This week they have some stupid promo where the first 50 people to win pots per day will get a 50% direct rakeback for that day, but who cares? That type of shit isn't going to bring in more traffic.
Apparently they're finally advertising via some affiliate sites, but it's not making much of a difference.
This site has zero point zero chance to succeed until they get MTTs running, and even then it's going to be questionable. Everyone on 2+2 is begging them to just abandon the whole anonymous table concept, but it's falling upon deaf ears.
The best one liner was from a guy on 2+2 who said, "What the players wanted all along was a site similar to Pokerstars with less rake and a proper rewards program."
Very well put. Phil tried to over-innovate and overthink the entire project, while ignoring the basics, and the result hasn't been good.
The result has been exactly what anyone with a brain expected lol ...Quote:
Originally Posted by Dan Druff
As I said on radio, this is such a fascinating story to me.
My girlfriend actually manages projects like these for a living, so I told her the whole story, and she's also fascinated.
This project had potential, but they got so many basic things wrong. Among them:
- Stressing innovation and gimmicks over the established basic requirements
- Poor marketing plan which lacked any kind of budget as a contingency
- Lack of proper market assessment, and completely ignoring advice of industry veterans which was provided for free on 2+2 and elsewhere
- Putting the cart before the horse -- "solving" problems like HUDs, bumhunting, etc which are really only faced by sites with substantial existing traffic. At the same time, they didn't focus on creating a basic site which would attract traffic in the first place.
- Improper reaction to the site's initial failure, focused upon customer blaming rather than introspection regarding their ill-advised plans.
- Inability to see that the site should be built for and aimed at recreational players, not pros. Pros will come if the games are good.
- Poor software testing procedure, leading to a buggy launch
The amazing thing is that they still don't get it, and are repeating the same mistakes.
I've noticed Run It Once just disappeared from pokerscout.com, which is an activity monitoring site. Is it possible Phil asked them to take them off the list, to prevent embarrassment?
November 12:
Now go look at pokerscout.com and it's totally missing from there.
You will also notice from this review page on pokerscout that they stopped taking peak data after November 13: https://www.pokerscout.com/reviews/run-it-once-poker/
Things that make you go hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....
just attempted to download "runit once" and to no avail, problem w/ apple..and it says so on site . i tried phil ol pal.
Even back in February, this was a lie
:lol3
He has a challenge for anyone to play $300/$600 PLO against him heads up... on Run It Once Poker.
https://www.runitonce.eu/news/heads-up-battle/
He does say that he would "consider" playing on another site.
Anyone who plays stakes like that on Run It Once is crazy. I'm not saying Phil is a cheater, but you'd need to trust someone as much as you trust your own mother to play stakes like that on a site they own.
Bill Perkins looks like he will be the guy to take on Phil.
Not clear where it will take place... probably Run It Once?
https://i.imgur.com/6pd1Ebt.png
https://i.imgur.com/EWLj4HK.png
Phil finally did something right.
They reduced the Splash the Pot "rakeback" from 51% to 30%, and added a real rakeback program where you can earn "up to 45%", depending upon the tier level you earn.
Here's the details: https://www.runitonce.eu/rewards/legends/
So obviously they are dialing back the Splash the Pot thing as the entire form of "rakeback", because pros hated it. They wanted more predictable rakeback they could count on from active play each month. Now they'll get some of that, while Splash the Pot still remains (which by itself is a fun feature).
So they're doing much better with their rewards program now.
They also had the highest traffic ever since rolling it out, with 164 cash players on at the peak.
Still, it's devoid of tournaments, has no marketing money behind it, and basically only microstakes run. So there's a long way to go.
Oh, and it's also back on Pokerscout, so its disappearance was probably just a glitch.
:lol2
Anyone know how this site is doing?
I could be wrong but I feel like I used to see a lot more promotional tweets around the holidays in past years. Probably hard to compete with PP, GG and Natural 8. Maybe it's good for carryover business tax losses.
Ghost town.Quote:
Originally Posted by JoeD
It's essentially finished. They stopped even trying. I don't know why they don't just shut it down.
This must have been a lesson in humility for Galfond, who was used to succeeding at whatever he did. In this case, he ignored community feedback regarding all the reasons his site sucked, and proceeded full speed ahead. You saw the result.
Galfond is generally a nice and easygoing guy, and good for poker, but he screwed the pooch on this one. At least it was only himself and his investors who got hurt here.
It was a site for competent players, right?
Why should we play there and also without tournaments?!
Not at all surprised but it would appear Run It Once is closing down.
Just received an email confirming that from the 3rd January all current game offerings will cease.
Surprised it lasted as long as it did
And there's no coming back with that nameQuote:
Originally Posted by nutty007
Ok Leslie. I admit it that was funny.Quote:
Originally Posted by limitlesAnd there's no coming back with that nameQuote:
Originally Posted by nutty007
At least with it there wasnt an insider stealing funds unlike FTP and a few other sites that shall remain nameless.Quote:
Originally Posted by nutty007
Here's the blog where he explains everything: https://www.runitonce.eu/news/running-it-again/
In short, it's closing on January 3 (just 4 days notice), but they will be working on moving to the US market in the future. Phil is framing this in the blog as an exciting new beginning.
He also put out a tweet linking that blog, and he has a ton of comments from mostly well-meaning but clueless people, acting excited for him while not understanding the tremendous odds against success:
https://twitter.com/PhilGalfond/stat...79992909713411
There are several elements to discuss here. First off, as Phil verified in his tweet replies, this will be an effort to run a LEGAL site in the US. That means he's not going to put up another ACR or Bovada. Therefore, he can only run out of states where it's legal, which at the moment are: Nevada, New Jersey, Delaware, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Connecticut.
However, he can't just abruptly set up shop in these states. He would need to get licensed. In Michigan and Connecticut, it's likely impossible for the moment, because those states only allow one site per land-based casino, and all of those licenses are all given out already. Delaware (population 1m) and West Virginia (population 1.8m) are too small to be considered viable options. That leaves Nevada, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.
Let's look at each one of these:
Nevada also has a small population (3 million), and online poker has failed there miserably, with all attempted sites down except WSOP.com, which is still struggling despite the heavy marketing, popular brand, and combined player pool with New Jersey.
New Jersey's non-WSOP sites are doing even worse. Pokerstars is averaging just 120 cash players (!!), despite its extremely popular brand and software. Party is averaging just 90 players. Ouch.
Pennsylvania's Pokerstars is doing about the same as the combined WSOP NV/NJ, but still both are only averaging 260 cash players. The only other competition in PA (Bet MGM) is averaging 35 players. Clearly there's no room for a third player in that market.
You can see all of this data here: https://www.pokerscout.com/us/
In general, legalized online poker has been a huge failure. It will stay a huge failure unless some big states (California, Florida, Texas) get on board, and then combine player pools. Will this happen? Possibly, but don't hold your breath. It's been almost 11 years since Black Friday, and almost 9 years since the first legalized poker site (the now-deceased Ultimate Poker) launched in the US. It has been well learned by casino operators that regulated poker is a loser in the US, and the real money is from online sportsbooks and casino games (mostly sports). In some states, poker may ride along with these other two, but there will never be much effort put into marketing it, as it will always be seen as the redheaded stepchild, whereas sportsbetting will be treated as the prodigal son.
While Phil is a well known pro, and is well respected, that's not enough to draw people over bigger brands. Furthermore, Galfond is one of those guys who is very well known to pro players, but not as much to recs and poker fans. He's not on the same level (marketing-wise) as a Negreanu or Hellmuth.
The takeaway is that it's not very smart to start a new US legalized poker site in 2022. In 2013, it was a worthwhile gamble, as the ceiling was unknown. Today, it is clear that it's a small market, has a small potential player pool, and it's already saturated.
More next post...
You might also have the question, "Why is it necessary to shut down the non-US Run It Once, in order to start a US version?"
That's actually an excellent question, and Phil never fully addresses it. The closest we got was in this tweet:
https://twitter.com/PhilGalfond/stat...38663815544834
He simply says it was the "wrong business decision for us right now", but doesn't go into detail.
While I can only speculate, my guess is that Run It Once is burning enough money every month to where leaving it open in the non-US market simply didn't make sense for them. It is unlikely to turn around at any point, and that money being burned would be better spent toward their regulated US effort. Furthermore, it is possible that potential license partners in the US would be turned off by seeing that the existing non-US site is a ghost town, so it's probably better that Run It Once is completely down before they undertake this effort.
You can also read a lot into the January 3 closure date, which is surprisingly just 4 days after the announcement! While players will be given additional time to withdraw their funds, it is clear that this was an abrupt decision, and that the present site is considered of such little value that they want to shut it down virtually immediately.
I actually agree with this decision. There is nothing to be gained by leaving the existing Run It Once operational, and it would simply cause more investor money (and probably some of Phil's money) to fly out the window.
More next post...
You might also be asking, "Why will things go any differently in the US? Why even bother?"
My prediction is that things won't go differently, and they will either fail to obtain a license, or they will get one and have the same disappointing results stateside.
However, at the same time, I understand why they are taking the shot.
They spent a lot of money developing their proprietary software. They spent a lot of time, money, and effort, building the rest of the business which surrounds the software.
Much of that is reusable in the US market. It also doesn't have much resale value. So they can either have a fire sale and recoup a pittance of that money, or they can give this one last shot at making use of it.
If this sounds like the "sunk cost fallacy" to you -- the phenomenon where a person is reluctant to abandon a course of action because they have invested heavily in it, even when it is clear that abandonment would be more beneficial -- you're probably somewhat correct. However, it is possible that Galfond and his partners are projecting that it won't cost all that much to give this final shot to the US market, especially if they can partner with a land-based casino which agrees to promote the site for them. It is true that most land-based operators simply want to buy existing software and sometimes farm out the operations as well, so Galfond probably thinks they might have what it takes.
I don't think it's a bad idea if it can really be done as a low-risk Hail Mary, but I feel the chance of success is low, for reasons I already mentioned.
Finally, I want to address Phil's reasoning in his blog as to why Run It Once didn't work out.
He blames two factors -- hiring a bad software team initially (which he claims set them back a lot), and poker players being "sticky" (meaning they are creatures of habit and don't like to try new sites or experiment with new ideas.)
Here's what he wrote:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil Galfond
This shows he still doesn't understand why Run It Once failed, which doesn't bode well for any future efforts.
While I believe that the initial lousy software team probably caused some delays and burnt money which could have been used elsewhere (such as marketing), that wasn't the reason the site failed. Why? This simply caused a further launch delay -- something which had already been repeatedly pushed back in the first place, so a little more delay wasn't going to hurt them long term.
The biggest killer to Run It Once was lack of basic features. He said that he "didn't want a cookie-cutter poker site", but all poker sites need to have basic features before the "innovations" begin. They didn't have those features. Most notably, there were no tournaments (a total traffic killer) and you couldn't resize poker tables (something Pokerstars could do almost 2 decades ago). They eventually got the resizable table thing going, but this was long after the site was on the way to being a ghost town. Tournaments never showed up. Why they launched this way is a complete head scratcher to me.
Another problem was that they put the cart before the horse. They were "solving" problems which didn't yet exist -- bumhunting, HUDs, etc -- which tend to only be a factor on successful sites. Why craft policy and spend money on creative solutions to "problems" a new site won't have for awhile? Indeed, the anonymous player thing was a complete flop, and people hated it. Nobody wanted anonymous tables on Run It Once, when they could simply stay on Pokerstars, Party, and GGPoker, and play against real screen names. Phil was given this feedback over and over, but he chose to ignore it.
Finally, I want to discuss the concept that non-US players were "too sticky" and simply weren't interested in a new poker site. Absolutely false. And guess how I know that?
https://worldpokerdeals.com/uploads/...-Good-Pros.jpg
GGPoker did it. They did it well. They are virtually tied with Pokerstars for the biggest site in the world.
GGPoker is not a legacy poker site. They launched in 2017, and Run It Once launched in early 2019. GG got there a bit earlier, but they didn't really blow up until 2019 -- exactly when Run It Once was trying to do so. They're essentially two sites from the same era, competing for the same market.
GG did things mostly right, and is thriving. Run It Once was a ghost town from the start, and has gone down. GG also innovated plenty, but they didn't try to reinvent the wheel.
While I've had a lot of criticism for GG and some of their unethical, pro-unfriendly policies, I'll at least give them credit for being the model of how to create a new, ground-up poker site for the non-US market, and quickly become huge. They definitely knew what they were doing.
Had non-US players been "sticky" like Galfond claims, GG would have failed. It didn't.
Here's the bottom line: Phil Galfond is a nice guy and a great poker player. He exudes positivity and doesn't get rattled easily. I sometimes wish I had his temperament. However, he also had no clue what he was doing with Run It Once, and oddly refused to take (very useful) feedback from the community regarding what it wanted. All of us have dreams, and Phil's was to start a highly innovative, successful, and industry-redefining poker site. However, that also requires a proper understanding of what makes the industry tick, as well as the humility to accept that your customer base may not want what you wished they'd want. I've watched many businesses fail for exactly this reason. An expensive restaurant serving avant-garde cuisine isn't going to make it in a small Montana town where they mainly want steak and potatoes, and you can't blame the customers for being too gauche to appreciate your offerings. It's up to the business owner to present customers what they want, and to do the proper market research to find that out. Here Phil had FREE market research (an entire thread of people on 2+2 who gave constructive criticism), and it was ignored. Now that it's all over (at least for the non-US version), he still seems to be ignoring it.
That's not a recipe for future success, but I guess he still has time to realize the truth of why things failed, and apply those lessons to the US market.
Good luck to him.
Ummm... didn't GGPoker welcome US players openly and had very soft geo-targeting measures in place? Lots of credit/agents in the US and also allowing VPNs... which forced Stars to also take it easy on VPN usage in order to compete?Quote:
Originally Posted by Dan Druff
Sounds to me like Run it Once made 1 mistake - not figuring out a way to service the US Poker market - something GGPoker was able to do.
Looking the other way with VPNs for Americans isn't going to be a huge traffic booster. Only a few dedicated pros will resort to that.
That wouldn't have saved Run It Once. Furthermore, Phil clearly wants to stay within the law, because he has a lot to lose if he gets busted. I don't blame him for that. I'd be taking the same approach if I were him -- at least as far as legality is concerned.
By the way, someone involved with the project told me that they were completely perplexed that the site had zero marketing budget. They told me that Phil believed that the site would basically market itself. There was no marketing budget or marketing plan, which was frustrating for this person because they believed in the project, but knew it would fail without a marketing plan/budget.
"I really don’t think they appreciated the competitiveness of the industry they were in", was a direct quote from this person.
I didn't touch much upon the marketing aspect in my writeup, but yeah, that was another huge blunder. Phil's blog seems to imply that the money wasted on that first failed dev team blew their marketing budget, but from what I'm hearing, there was no plan to ever have a marketing budget.
The attitude was, "If we build it, they will come", which is never the case for online poker, especially in 2019-21.