Phil Galfond to start poker site

[klinz]

If you brought 100 experienced grinders to runitonce.eu, had them examine the front page, and asked them what they were expecting regarding the "51% rakeback" they were promised, 100 out of 100 would say that they were expecting a flat 51% of their rake paid back to them at a date in the near future.

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.

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.

[Dan Druff]

If you brought 100 experienced grinders to runitonce.eu, had them examine the front page, and asked them what they were expecting regarding the "51% rakeback" they were promised, 100 out of 100 would say that they were expecting a flat 51% of their rake paid back to them at a date in the near future.

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.

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.

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.

[Dan Druff]

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.

[Matt The Rat]

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." LOL

[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.

[Dan Druff]

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.

I will make an attempt to chat with a variety of player-types and to give each of you who I do chat with an appropriate amount of personal attention. I won’t have anyone pretending to be me – if we chat, I promise it will be me on the other end of the conversation.

I’d also love to hear opinions publicly. I’ll be doing my best to keep up with reading forum posts, Reddit, and Twitter. I’ll be busy replying to people privately, but if you don’t see me responding, I’ll still almost surely be reading at some point.

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).

[Dan Druff]

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.

[sah_24]

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

[MrTickle]

Galfond interview on DAT poker podcast worth a listen

[Dan Druff]

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.

[JoeD]

Very simple way to right this ship before it's too late (Nevada, NJ and PA excluded of course):

[Dan Druff]

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:

.
.
.
If you think you're getting less than 51% in EV, who do you (by you I mean any grinder) think is getting more than 51%? Someone has to. If you and two other players are only getting 21%, then the other 3 players at the table get 81%, or two get 51% and one gets 141%, etc.

The money is being given out and has to go somewhere.

I'm not understanding how pros, who have to have a good understanding of expected value and variance, don't see this as a lot of money in their pockets.

---

All that said, it's clear that I'm wrong about everyone understanding EV the way that we do, and as such, we're completely failing on the very important marketing front that is optics.

We have rake much lower than major competitors yet a subset of players think it's higher - that's an absolute disaster, and a big failure for us.

It's something that we didn't see coming from the reg community and we're going to have to do a lot of thinking about how to address, what previously planned changes to bump up the priority list, and what new changes to make to our pricing/rewards.

Bolding is mine.

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.

[sah_24]

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:

.
.
.
If you think you're getting less than 51% in EV, who do you (by you I mean any grinder) think is getting more than 51%? Someone has to. If you and two other players are only getting 21%, then the other 3 players at the table get 81%, or two get 51% and one gets 141%, etc.

The money is being given out and has to go somewhere.

I'm not understanding how pros, who have to have a good understanding of expected value and variance, don't see this as a lot of money in their pockets.

---

All that said, it's clear that I'm wrong about everyone understanding EV the way that we do, and as such, we're completely failing on the very important marketing front that is optics.

We have rake much lower than major competitors yet a subset of players think it's higher - that's an absolute disaster, and a big failure for us.

It's something that we didn't see coming from the reg community and we're going to have to do a lot of thinking about how to address, what previously planned changes to bump up the priority list, and what new changes to make to our pricing/rewards.

Bolding is mine.

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 ...

[sah_24]

"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 ...

[Dan Druff]

Looks like he probably bought an advertorial in Pokernews.

https://www.pokernews.com/news/2019/...back-35404.htm

[Sidewinder]

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.

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.

[Dan Druff]

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.

[sah_24]

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 ...

[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.

[Dan Druff]

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....