Phil Galfond to start poker site

[sah_24]

The fail site even has SJW galfond fan boys as their customer service too, HALL OF FAME.

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...&postcount=766

[Dan Druff]

The fail site even has SJW galfond fan boys as their customer service too, HALL OF FAME.

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...&postcount=766

So a customer uses the word "imbecile" because he's unhappy about a refund, and is banned from the site permanently.

Not a bustling site like Pokerstars, but a dead site where they need every player they can get.

Bravo.



(Bigger version: https://i.imgur.com/GXNY9Jc.png)

[Dan Druff]

Phil finally speaks on 2p2:

Hey all,

I appreciate the kind words and feedback and I understand the less-than-kind words.

I'm kept very busy, so excuse me if I just pop in with updates/responses here every once in a while. Trying to keep up with activity on Discord, social media, and multiple forums is more time consuming than it might sound. I've got a lot of other work on my plate and I'm a very slow writer!

Some of you think we've innovated too much while others think we've focused too much on new features and not enough on releasing a perfect core product. Obviously, we won't please everyone, but I can tell you where I stand:

I believe we've innovated quite a bit with what we've released so far when you compare us to other poker sites. This did, of course, add some time to our development. Bugs would've been introduced either way, and we'd have needed plenty of time to fix them either way, but we'd have been done and in beta sooner, and therefore would be further along on the fixes by now.

Do I regret the additions we made given the time it cost us?

I think that we may have had more success by now if we'd skipped them and launched sooner, but I think in the long run, we'll benefit from being different.

As a poker player, I have learned a lot about when to regret my decisions and when not to. There have been a lot of surprises for us, and while I'd make a number of decisions differently with the benefit of hindsight, I still feel pretty good about the feature and policy decisions we made given the information and expectations we had at the time.

So, I don't regret innovating as much as we have.

For those saying we should have innovated more - I completely agree, and we intend to. We had a lot of ideas that had to be cut or put on hold for the sake of development timelines. If we could turn things around instantly, you'd see a drastically different platform. Unfortunately, that's not how it works for anyone, and we've suffered more development-related headaches than your average project.

On that note - many of you are disappointed in the remaining bugs and limited features and on our decision to launch with them.

There are a few major issues that we launched with that I've seen mentioned here:

1) No re-sizable tables
2) HH downloads not working
3) Sit-In Bug
4) Bet slider reset bug

As far as our decision to launch, 2-4 came as (mostly) a surprise to us. We expected HH downloads to be working within 1 week, but they weren't. We thought that we'd fixed the bet slider reset bug, and that the sit-in bug happened very rarely (and would be fixed quickly).

Once we launched our public beta, we learned that these issues were worse than we expected. We managed to fix most (all?) instances of the bet slider bug in our February release, but the other issues weren't as easily resolved.

We also had a number of server crashes in our first week of operation, and we had a large subset of users who had serious performance issues. Our devs fixed the issues causing those server crashes and improved performance for the majority of those users (there is now a smaller subset of users that still run into consistent issues, which we are still working on).

So the team has made progress on some very serious issues, but, as you've seen, it doesn't usually happen as quickly as any of us would hope.

Re-sizeable tables are a little bit different in that we knowingly launched in beta without them, and we also knew they would not be added quickly.

This wasn't an easy decision, though I think, in hindsight, it was probably the right one. We'd still be pre-launch now if we waited for them and that would mean that we'd have still not learned about the unexpected issues we've experienced thus far. So we'd launch later, then have a number of bugs that take longer to fix. I believe this route gets us to our "final" product faster.

I certainly don't blame anyone who disagrees with that decision or who's disappointed that we have a limited offering with some remaining bugs - I'm disappointed by that, too.

If there's one thing that I want to get across in this post it's that our current limited offering has nothing to do with our team's knowledge of what poker players want. We've got some extremely intelligent, diligent, experienced poker players in this company, who have been involved in the community for a long time. While I'm proud of what we've accomplished so far, our product is very, very, very far from finished. Much of what is in currently isn't there by design, but through compromise.

As I mentioned in my first update post on runitonce.eu (https://www.runitonce.eu/news/1-an-update-and-a-plan/), we started out with different tech leadership and went down a path that was really bad for us for the first while.

Though I'm still no expert on development, and I'm not truly qualified to know this with certainty, I very much believe we're in good hands now with the team we've got. They've accomplished things that previous team members told us weren't possible, and while they've still come in behind schedule on a number of things - it's often because they've been dealing with the technical debt created by our early development.

(If this sounds like I'm passing off blame, I'm not. Choosing a tech team, picking features and designs, detailing specs for the developers, analyzing timeline estimates and planning accordingly - these are all things I've been heavily involved in from the start, and we absolutely made a number of mistakes. I'll spare you the exact details of where we went wrong, but I was as large a part of it as anyone.)

I mention all this because I want to set expectations accordingly. This update we have in the works, which was expected to be the 2nd of many over this time period, is being referred to in a few places as "the big update." It will certainly be bigger than our previous update, which fixed a handful of bugs and made a few visual improvements, but I don't want everyone expecting it to be groundbreaking.

Among the things being fixed and added, there are a number of codebase improvements that you won't be able to notice. This is because we have to keep chipping away at our tech debt so that we can move faster in the future. We're doing our best to strike the right balance of getting some important things done as fast as we can in some spots, and waiting in other spots so that we can refactor things to set us up for a better, more flexible future.

I really appreciate the continued support from many of you and, as I mentioned, I understand why many others aren't happy with our beta platform.

The plan (hope) is that subsequent updates happen much more frequently, and we make continued small improvements to the platform while working on the larger ticket additions in the background (SNGs, MTTs, etc), over time.

As we move forward, we'll keep trying to make the best decisions we're able to as we work towards the product we dreamt up, and we'll keep expecting the unexpected and adapting as best we can.

Source: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...postcount=3939

[Dan Druff]

Cliffs of Galfond's post: We've pretty much been doing everything right recently, so we are staying the course.

Let's take a look at these parts:

Re-sizeable tables are a little bit different in that we knowingly launched in beta without them, and we also knew they would not be added quickly.

This wasn't an easy decision, though I think, in hindsight, it was probably the right one. We'd still be pre-launch now if we waited for them and that would mean that we'd have still not learned about the unexpected issues we've experienced thus far. So we'd launch later, then have a number of bugs that take longer to fix. I believe this route gets us to our "final" product faster.

This passage shows he just doesn't get it at all.

Even Doug Polk recently posted that it's "super wtf" that the tables can't be resized.

Phil is trying to say that launching the beta release now was better than waiting many more months to put resizeable tables in.

What he 's missing is that they put too much effort into bullshit (like those changing avatars) and not enough effort into the very basics which are necessary for a poker site -- like resizeable tables ad MTTs.

The sentence at the end is also laughable, as he's saying that launching this bad beta at this point was a good thing, because it allowed them to learn about other bugs.

Yeah... and it also frustrated a lot of your core membership away from wanting to continue playing on your site.

Though I'm still no expert on development, and I'm not truly qualified to know this with certainty, I very much believe we're in good hands now with the team we've got. They've accomplished things that previous team members told us weren't possible, and while they've still come in behind schedule on a number of things - it's often because they've been dealing with the technical debt created by our early development.

I don't think he gets this, either.

People aren't criticizing the current technical team for its abilities.

They're criticizing both the lack of basic features and the apparent slowness in fixing urgent bugs.

Phil is still too hung up on the fact that they had some previous tech team which didn't work out, and has since switched to this one.

Your tech team can be great, but if they're managed poorly, then they aren't going to get the job done properly. I can say this from over a decade of working in software development.

This update we have in the works, which was expected to be the 2nd of many over this time period, is being referred to in a few places as "the big update." It will certainly be bigger than our previous update, which fixed a handful of bugs and made a few visual improvements, but I don't want everyone expecting it to be groundbreaking.
.
.
The plan (hope) is that subsequent updates happen much more frequently, and we make continued small improvements to the platform while working on the larger ticket additions in the background (SNGs, MTTs, etc), over time.

Or, simply put, the next update is going to be underwhelming and little will appear different.



In Polk's brief post, he mentioned that the real concern should be the fact that they launched with a lack of basic features and had major bugs. He said that the other stuff (splash the pot, anonymous tables, changing avatars, etc) isn't all that important either way.

I mostly agree. While those design details are worthy of debate, they aren't the main problem.

Someone should have told Phil that you don't launch with a garbage, incomplete product, and you need a marketing budget if you ever want to become anything more than a niche failsite.

Many 2p2 posters are complaining that constructive criticism is falling upon deaf ears, and I have to agree. As affable as Galfond is, he seems very set in his ways, and doesn't seem particularly interested in the community's input. Have they even changed a single thing (aside from bug fixes) as a result of community feedback?

[sah_24]

Galfond is a libtard, so of course he isn't gonna listen to anyone. This place was bound to be a massive fail from day 1, and it was very obvious to anyone with a brain ...

[Dan Druff]

LOL here is the infamous "imbecile" e-mail which got that guy banned.

Notice how harmless it is.

They really have a bunch of bitch boys working at customer service at RIO.

Imagine banning someone permanently over a single letter like the one below:




Amazing.

[Dan Druff]

Everything is super negative on 2+2 now regarding Run It Once.

Even Mike Haven the mod is joining in on the bashing now (in a polite way, but he's basically saying it's a huge fail and they shit the bed).

High chance that this site is going to go down in poker history as one of the big fails.

[sah_24]

Everything is super negative on 2+2 now regarding Run It Once.

Even Mike Haven the mod is joining in on the bashing now (in a polite way, but he's basically saying it's a huge fail and they shit the bed).

High chance that this site is going to go down in poker history as one of the big fails.

Exactly as anyone with a brain predicted, Galfond has 0 reach to recs. The only people who were ever gonna be on the site were 2+2 fan boys lol. Then even funnier he made his entire company ran by SJW's like himself which = insta doom lol

[BeerAndPoker]

I didn't catch this to confirm but from what I am told they did a Run It Once 24 hour charity poker stream last week on twitch switching between pros on there and Ben "Sauce123" Sulsky was streaming mid afternoon (EST) playing something small like 25 or 50NL. I guess he kept saying how he couldn't play anything higher but will continue to try to find something running at no limit but nothing else bigger at that moment was running.

If this really was the case it's sad that not even a single 1/2 or higher game was running during afternoon hours.

[Dan Druff]

Phi just posted this on 2+2, then tweeted about how he "opened up more than expected", linking the post:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...postcount=4216

Here was my response:

I don't want RIO to fail. When I heard about Phil's vision initially, I thought he was very much on the right track, and wanted to see it work.

Unfortunately, between launching a totally-not-ready product, the misleading 51% rakeback promise (a promotion like STP is NOT rakeback!!), and complete lack of incentive to start and keep games running, is killing the site.

You have to give the customer a reason to select your business instead of the competition.

Sadly in RIO's current state, there is no reason for most people to do that.

Low traffic, bugs, lack of tournaments, lack of basic features, anon tables (which almost nobody likes), high-variance promotions instead of real rakeback (or simply lower rake), etc...

At some point you need to decide if you are designing the site for the players or for yourself. Many businesses fail because the owner makes decisions based upon his preferences, rather than customer preferences.

I hope you can turn this ship around, but that starts with a willingness to quickly course correct in a major way.

Cliffs: Phil still doesn't understand that if you release a shitty product which isn't ready, people will dismiss it and look elsewhere. He also doesn't seem to understand that you build features people want, not features YOU Want.

[sah_24]

Phi just posted this on 2+2, then tweeted about how he "opened up more than expected", linking the post:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...postcount=4216

Here was my response:

I don't want RIO to fail. When I heard about Phil's vision initially, I thought he was very much on the right track, and wanted to see it work.

Unfortunately, between launching a totally-not-ready product, the misleading 51% rakeback promise (a promotion like STP is NOT rakeback!!), and complete lack of incentive to start and keep games running, is killing the site.

You have to give the customer a reason to select your business instead of the competition.

Sadly in RIO's current state, there is no reason for most people to do that.

Low traffic, bugs, lack of tournaments, lack of basic features, anon tables (which almost nobody likes), high-variance promotions instead of real rakeback (or simply lower rake), etc...

At some point you need to decide if you are designing the site for the players or for yourself. Many businesses fail because the owner makes decisions based upon his preferences, rather than customer preferences.

I hope you can turn this ship around, but that starts with a willingness to quickly course correct in a major way.

Cliffs: Phil still doesn't understand that if you release a shitty product which isn't ready, people will dismiss it and look elsewhere. He also doesn't seem to understand that you build features people want, not features YOU Want.

After reading Phil's post, it's clear he hasn't learned anything ...

He actually said his customer service was good lol ...

Site will be a massive fail as was easily predictable ...

[Dan Druff]

I just got this in e-mail.




Notice the blank where it says, "First off, we are offering a new and improved..."

It says "Welcome Bonus" after that, but the geniuses made the link text black, so it didn't show up on the black background.

Site is a complete ghost town.

Whole thing is a mismanaged comedy of errors.

[duped_samaritan]

Phi just posted this on 2+2, then tweeted about how he "opened up more than expected", linking the post:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...postcount=4216

Here was my response:

I don't want RIO to fail. When I heard about Phil's vision initially, I thought he was very much on the right track, and wanted to see it work.

Unfortunately, between launching a totally-not-ready product, the misleading 51% rakeback promise (a promotion like STP is NOT rakeback!!), and complete lack of incentive to start and keep games running, is killing the site.

You have to give the customer a reason to select your business instead of the competition.

Sadly in RIO's current state, there is no reason for most people to do that.

Low traffic, bugs, lack of tournaments, lack of basic features, anon tables (which almost nobody likes), high-variance promotions instead of real rakeback (or simply lower rake), etc...

At some point you need to decide if you are designing the site for the players or for yourself. Many businesses fail because the owner makes decisions based upon his preferences, rather than customer preferences.

I hope you can turn this ship around, but that starts with a willingness to quickly course correct in a major way.

Cliffs: Phil still doesn't understand that if you release a shitty product which isn't ready, people will dismiss it and look elsewhere. He also doesn't seem to understand that you build features people want, not features YOU Want.

Did you get a chance to play on it while you were in Canada?

[klinz]

I've been playing a lot of RIO this summer. I play PLO50 which is the most popular game on the site. Games run for about 12 hours of the day. About fifteen tables of PLO50 is the most I've seen during happy hour promotions.

Games are quite soft so no complaints there. The biggest issue is the software. It used to crash all the time. They released a bugfix in June and now it only crashes every so often. Usually when opening up more tables. Compared to other operators the RIO client hogs a lot of memory. It looks great but is clunky to use.

Rat-holing is an issue. You can double up, leave the table, re-sit and continue playing with one buyin like nothing happened. Table stakes is fundamental to poker, I may be sentimental about it but rat-hole tables at RIO do not feel like real poker. The issue is not helped by a relatively popular streamer employing this strategy a lot. I don't blame him, it's allowed and he thinks it's +ev for him.

Splash pots are great. I hear a lot of NLHE players complaining about them but for PLO I have nothing bad to say about them. Small splash pots increase the better player's edge and big splashes are a welcome gamble for everyone.

Unfortunately I can't see RIO taking off. The software is just too bad and the problems with it seems hard to fix. I think they could have become a popular site if only they launched with working software and tournaments. Despite what is being said about anonymous names and ridiculous avatars the recreationals don't seem to care much.

[Dan Druff]

Yeah, I read about the ratholing problem. Unbelievable that a site so obsessed with "fairness to all players" is allowing this.

To be fair, though, Pokerstars allowed ratholing for a very long time. But still, this should have been disallowed.

I agree that the recs aren't that bothered by anonymous tables, but such tables really turn off pros/grinders, and they also discourage railbirds from wanting to watch the games, which in turn spurs action/deposits later from them. Additionally, recs will sometimes like facing particular opponents and re-deposit in order to play them again -- something that again won't happen on anon tables.

An already successful site can transition to anon tables without too much damage (think Bovada), but getting one off the ground with anon tables simply places an unnecessary additional hurdle.

The biggest problem of course is the lack of basic functionality of the software, and the bugginess. The lack of marketing is also a huge hindrance.

They just had a very poor plan going in, and refused to change course when everything was going poorly. Phil keeps thinking success is just around the corner. It's too late. Game over, man.

[sah_24]

Yeah, I read about the ratholing problem. Unbelievable that a site so obsessed with "fairness to all players" is allowing this.

To be fair, though, Pokerstars allowed ratholing for a very long time. But still, this should have been disallowed.

I agree that the recs aren't that bothered by anonymous tables, but such tables really turn off pros/grinders, and they also discourage railbirds from wanting to watch the games, which in turn spurs action/deposits later from them. Additionally, recs will sometimes like facing particular opponents and re-deposit in order to play them again -- something that again won't happen on anon tables.

An already successful site can transition to anon tables without too much damage (think Bovada), but getting one off the ground with anon tables simply places an unnecessary additional hurdle.

The biggest problem of course is the lack of basic functionality of the software, and the bugginess. The lack of marketing is also a huge hindrance.

They just had a very poor plan going in, and refused to change course when everything was going poorly. Phil keeps thinking success is just around the corner. It's too late. Game over, man.

It was game over the day he hired a group of people just like himself ...

[Dan Druff]

They just sent out a promo e-mail promoting the resizable table feature (welcome to 2003), and then also mentioned that there's "81% rakeback" for the next 3 days.

Of course, this rakeback is BS, because 51 of the 81 percent is that "splash the pot" promo, which indeed kicks the money back to the players, but isn't actual rakeback. It tilts me that a veteran of online poker like Galfond is intentionally misusing the word "rakeback" like this.

But they are tacking on a direct 30% additional rakeback, which they haven't done before. It only lasts 3 days, though.

So looks like they are taking the suggestion I mentioned a long time ago, and that's to either have greatly reduced or no rake to get activity going.

Of course, 3 days isn't going to do much. But at least they're finally getting a clue that they've got to change something up if they want to see action on that site.

[klinz]

It's nothing new. They have ran similar promos before. In a previous one you got 101% direct rakeback for a couple of days. I really don't mind rakeback in the form of splash pots. It creates action and makes the game more complex. Also seems to keeps nits off the site.

[Dan Druff]

It's nothing new. They have ran similar promos before. In a previous one you got 101% direct rakeback for a couple of days. I really don't mind rakeback in the form of splash pots. It creates action and makes the game more complex. Also seems to keeps nits off the site.

Oh, I think the Splash the Pot promo is fine. In fact, this is one of the few good ideas that they've had for the site.

It's the fact that they call this "rakeback" which tilts me, because it's not. It's a jackpot promo which is misleadingly being called rakeback. I'm currently arguing with a bunch of guys on 2+2 about this, and it's very frustrating because barely anyone is understanding my point.

Here's the discussion. Scroll down a bit to find my post (I'm "Kilowatt" there, btw): https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2.../index178.html

Here was my opening post there:

-----

Guys, it's very simple.

The term "rakeback" is well-established in our industry, dating back over 15 years.

It means "at some point in the future (usually at the end of the month), a percentage of your paid rake is returned to you in the form of a cash payment or deposit to your account".

That is NOT what is going on with Splash the Pot. You don't get anything from Splash the Pot unless (1) it occurs while you're playing and (2) you win the pot. Additionally, you aren't getting Splash the Pot money in proportion to the rake you paid. It is possible to win a lot of STP money on your very first hand on the site, before you have paid any rake!

Splash the Pot is a jackpot (albeit a small one), and the 51% rake paying for it is a (large) jackpot drop. Think about that and you'll realize I'm right. It's no different than your local casino dropping a dollar each hand and then paying out a bad beat jackpot with that monet every so often.

Imagine if Commerce Casino promoted "20% rakeback" because they were dropping a jackpot-funding dollar in addition to the $4 rake they were collecting. There would be outrage, and rightfully so.

Phil is a fairly old-school poker pro, and knows exactly what the term "rakeback" means. They are bastardizing the term in order to promote something they're really not delivering. It sounds a lot better to say "51% rakeback" rather than "51% of the rake is a jackpot drop which is returned to the players via the Splash the Pot promo." It sounds better, but it's not the truth.

Remember this, from the announcement of Run It Once:

I want a fair, honest, transparent poker site that believes in the dream that I have lived.

If this site is fair, honest, and transparent, then it needs to stop lying in promos about their "rakeback", given that the term has had a specific meaning in poker for almost two decades, and this ain't it.

[Dan Druff]

Another post of mine:

---

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.

This is highly misleading. Experienced players know what "rakeback" is supposed to mean, and Run It Once has changed the term in order to mislead people via marketing.

Again, this is a jackpot promo, not rakeback.

Let's look at the difference:

A jackpot promo:
- Comes from a pool of money funded by a portion of the rake
- Hits on an occasional frequency
- Rewards only a small percentage of total players when it hits
- Has huge variance regarding each individual player's return on it
- Can sometimes return huge to players who have barely played at all

Rakeback:
- Is returning rake collected at a later date to players at the table
- Goes to everyone who played on the site
- Is not tied to an infrequent random event
- Has very low variance -- it's easy to approximate based upon number of hands played
- Will never return huge to someone who has barely played

Which one sounds like it describes Splash the Pot more?

The big issue here is that not even the shadiest of shady card rooms ever had the nerve to advertise their jackpot promos as "rakeback". Not one. You just can't call a jackpot promo rakeback.