Poker pro Andrew “luckychewy” Lichtenberger has launched his own online poker site, LuckyChewyPoker.com, which went live earlier this month. It is currently only available for play money games, but Lichtenberger has said that real money licensing is in the works.
In a series of tweets, Lichtenberger made the announcement:
Greetings everyone, I am pleased to announce that http://www.LuckyChewyPoker.com is live with play money gaming for you to enjoy at this point in time. Our team will continually be updating artwork, user interface and various system functionalities as we move forward. If anyone has any ideas or input they would like to share please do not hesitate to do so. Our vision is simple – a poker site by the players for the players with low rake and great rewards. We have been sharing our platform with the international gaming community and intend to create as large a player pool as international law’s allow for. We will have more updates and exciting news to share with regards to real money licensing and legislation in the times to come as well. We are excited to continue to promote and share the game we all love.
The site aims to be more than just a place for people to participate in cash games and tournaments. Included will be a poker community, which will consist of a message forum for discussion, player blogs, photos, videos, and articles. Lichtenberger also hopes that visitors will form tighter, more personal bonds and use the group and events features to coordinate discussions and get-togethers with friends on the site. Additionally, the site will host a poker school; Lichtenberger has provided training videos for Ivey League in the past.
According to the site, LuckyChewyPoker.com has already been vetted by the UK Gambling Commission, which has approved its software for internet gambling. The random number generator and card shuffling algorithms have been thoroughly tested, as one would hope.
For years, members of the poker community have wanted some known poker figure to step up and create his or her own online poker room with poker players in mind. Whether Lichtenberger will ultimately be that person remains to be seen, but “low rake and great rewards” is a start.
What may be interesting to watch is if LuckyChewyPoker does launch real money games and actually builds some sort of player base, if its business can sustain itself. It is all well and good to promise to be a site “for the players,” but that could mean catering to professional grinders and serious amateurs. The problem with that is as much as those players say they want a site that caters to them, they might not like it once they get it. Now, I’m not saying this will definitely happen – I am rooting for Lichtenberger – but a poker room that is designed for the players may very well be populated mostly by pros and other strong players. Those same players don’t typically love playing against their own kinds, as that doesn’t make for easy to beat, profitable games.
Another poker pro, Phil Galfond, announced in September that he was going to start his own poker room, Run It Once Poker, but it has not launched yet. Someone on Twitter asked Lichtenberger if he would consider partnering with Galfond, to which Lichtenberger replied that he is “certainly open minded to collaborating with him.”
