Three years later, Phil Galfond’s poker utopia is upon us. Run It Once Poker launches today, Wednesday February 6, and it successfully captures what Mr. Galfond has hoped to create – a fair and customer-focused poker community.
After Three Years, Run It Once Poker Launches
In an emotional Tweet in 2016, poker legend Phil Galfond announced his ambition to create a poker operator that was fair and honest, focused on the community and honoring the player. Transparent not for the sake of “public image and profits,” Mr. Galfond argued, but all done to favor the player.
The Public Beta, as Run It Once call it, is upon us, and three years and eight testing sessions later, the poker is finally readying to make its first truly public appearance. Mr. Galfond expects the platform to behave flawlessly bar a few occasional hiccups that will be ironed out with time.
Run It Once Poker is an interesting beast. It will enter with a lower net rake than such established operators as PokerStars and partypoker, but yet, it doesn’t seem to do it to intentionally gain ground from them.
Run It Once Poker Values the Player
With rewards that amount to 51% of the rake, Run It Once’s card room has a clear focus on the player. To spice the offer up, Mr. Galfond and his team have thought of adding a special feature, “Splash the Pot”, which sprinkles table pots with additional funds.
It may be just a few big blinds, but then again, the goodies can hit the delightful 1,000 in numbers. You never know. This aligns well with Mr. Galfond’s state blog, outlined in blog post:
A poker site needs to believe in the dream of poker as a career.
His commitment to the segment has been lauded by Farah Galfond, Mr. Galfond’s wife and an actress.
The player-focused approach is evident not only by the occasional dispensation of a tasty goodie, but also by the other features that accompany the experience, including the StreamR program introduced back in November, 2018 in yet another developer’s update post.
Run It Once Poker four loyalty levels when using the StreamR poker.
This multi-tier comes in four distinct levels that require to spend a specific amount of time streaming, to benefit from excellent Rakeback opportunities. It’s all quite tempting.
Deal the First Hand
At launch time, the platform will work with just No Limit Hold’em and Pot Limit Omaha cash games, although Mr. Galfond and his trusted team are going to come up with more additions for the poker ecosystem, including Multi-Table Tournaments (MTTs) and Sit & Gos.
The platform is going international at launch date, adding Europe, Canada, and South America, although certain local laws could potentially see Run It Once Poker not immediately available in some countries.
Even though PokerStars is already in France and Spain, Run It Once hasn’t had the same fortune, and players from these two countries, and the United States, will have to wait before they can join.
“I want a fair, honest, transparent poker site that believes in the dream that I have lived,” Mr. Galfond wrote in the end.
He’s going to give it his best shot.