[toc]Phil Galfond, one of the most popular and successful online poker players, has announced that he will be launching a poker site in the first quarter of 2017.
Galfond, 31, is the owner of RunItOnce, a poker training site well-regarded by the community.
On his blog there, he wrote about what he felt was important in an online poker room, revealing that he plans to launch RunItOnce Poker in the first quarter of next year.
Phil Galfond’s poker site vision
Currently, little has been revealed about the specifics of the site; will it be a standalone site or part of a network? So far, we know that it will not be a US-facing online poker site, at least to start.
Galfond laid out a vision for what he believes an online poker site should do in his blog at RunItOnce.
Appealing to professional players
Galfond wrote that a poker site should:
“…value the professional for embodying the dream that brings so many people to poker. For proving that poker is a game of skill. For promoting the game of poker to their fans, students, followers or subscribers.”
In the past, poker sites were designed to appeal to the professional players as they would be playing the most and generate the most rake and therefore income for the site. In recent years, this line of thinking has shifted.
Appealing to recreational players
“[A poker site] should value the casual player for the money he’s willing to put on the line to play a game he loves. For choosing poker over other hobbies, and for choosing their site over other sites,” Galfond continued.
Currently, the online poker industry has been bouncing back from the prior belief that winning, high-volume “grinders” are the priority customers with many sites stripping down their frequent player programs in favour of investing in casual, losing players to fuel the poker economy.
Most notably, PokerStars removed its “Supernova Elite” VIP level in a controversial move.
Meeting in the middle?
It seems that Galfond would like to strike a balance between the previous best practice of poker sites catering to professional, high-volume players and the current trend of sites neglecting them in favour of the recreational, losing players.
About Phil Galfond
Phil Galfond, better known to online players by his Full Tilt screenname of “OMGClayAiken,” is one of the most successful online poker players of all time.
He boasts lifetime profits of over $6.6 million as “OMGClayAiken” on Full Tilt and $1.28m as “MrSweets28” on PokerStars. Additionally, he has won two World Series of Poker bracelets (in 2008 and 2015) and has over $3.2 million in live tournament cashes.
He is the founder and owner of poker training site RunItOnce, and has consistently been one of the most popular and outspoken voices in the poker community, particularly in the online poker arena.
