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Thread: Phil Galfond to start poker site

  1. #101
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    just attempted to download "runit once" and to no avail, problem w/ apple..and it says so on site . i tried phil ol pal.

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    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.

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    Bill Perkins looks like he will be the guy to take on Phil.

    Not clear where it will take place... probably Run It Once?



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    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.

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    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.

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    Quote Originally Posted by JoeD View Post
    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.

    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.

  9. #109
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    It was a site for competent players, right?

    Why should we play there and also without tournaments?!
    Winner of the $555 freeroll

  10. #110
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    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

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    Quote Originally Posted by nutty007 View Post
    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 name

     
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      Matt The Rat: LOL Good one

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    Quote Originally Posted by limitles View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by nutty007 View Post
    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 name
    Ok Leslie. I admit it that was funny.
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  13. #113
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    Quote Originally Posted by nutty007 View Post
    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
    At least with it there wasnt an insider stealing funds unlike FTP and a few other sites that shall remain nameless.

  14. #114
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    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/status/1476579992909713411


    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...

  15. #115
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    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/status/1476638663815544834


    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...

  16. #116
    Owner Dan Druff's Avatar
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    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.

  17. #117
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    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
    Our initial tech leadership, which I put into place, came nowhere remotely close to their targets. Part of that was on them, but part was on us, too – not communicating early and clearly enough that we weren’t looking to launch a cookie-cutter poker site. We wanted to innovate at every turn. We planned around their estimates, including hiring operational staff long before we were able to launch, costing us money that we could’ve used to increase our marketing efforts post-launch.

    Even when we put the right tech team into place, later on, we’d been set back so far that completing our platform was no easy task.

    I also vastly underestimated just how sticky players would be when it came to playing on new sites (especially with low liquidity). Of course, I knew we’d be fighting an uphill battle there, but I was very surprised by how few future-RIO-players (people excited about RIO Poker and eager to play once games picked up) wanted to play now. Playing on new software, dealing with the requisite KYC hurdles, splitting funds across multiple poker sites, along with a number of other factors, clearly made players want to be sure they’d be moving decent playing volume over before making the jump.

    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?




    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.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Dan Druff View Post
    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
    Our initial tech leadership, which I put into place, came nowhere remotely close to their targets. Part of that was on them, but part was on us, too – not communicating early and clearly enough that we weren’t looking to launch a cookie-cutter poker site. We wanted to innovate at every turn. We planned around their estimates, including hiring operational staff long before we were able to launch, costing us money that we could’ve used to increase our marketing efforts post-launch.

    Even when we put the right tech team into place, later on, we’d been set back so far that completing our platform was no easy task.

    I also vastly underestimated just how sticky players would be when it came to playing on new sites (especially with low liquidity). Of course, I knew we’d be fighting an uphill battle there, but I was very surprised by how few future-RIO-players (people excited about RIO Poker and eager to play once games picked up) wanted to play now. Playing on new software, dealing with the requisite KYC hurdles, splitting funds across multiple poker sites, along with a number of other factors, clearly made players want to be sure they’d be moving decent playing volume over before making the jump.

    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?




    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?

    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.

  19. #119
    Owner Dan Druff's Avatar
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    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.

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    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.

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