It had been a while since we heard from Phil Galfond about his new online poker site, Run It Once. The site finally went live in February and he gave an update in April, but for the most part, it has been radio silence since. Nothing wrong with that – it’s just how it is. Recently, though, he popped into his blog for another update, this time telling everyone that he, himself, will be playing on the site.
Galfond informed the poker community that he has “gotten approval” to play on Run It Once. I do not know what the approval process is, but it is understandable that a site owner might either not be allowed to play on his own site or have to jump through a bunch of hoops to do so.
One would think that people may be skeptical of Galfond playing on his site. The “poker is rigged” conspiracy theorists could come out in full force, believing that Galfond will know the cards or that the software will stack the deck for him. It is understandable, as after all, there have been incidents where someone did rig the game (see: UltimateBet and Absolute Poker). There is no reason to think Galfond would do anything, but it certainly isn’t unreasonable to be wary, which is why he had to get approved to play on his site.
Run It Once tables are anonymous, but Galfond will not be; he will go by his own name at the tables and will have a custom avatar.
Galfond said that part of his excitement for getting to play on Run It Once is to be able to stream his site’s games. He has been able to stream previously, but on competing sites. Makes sense to want to show off his baby. He has also been giving money away this week. Anyone who takes 100 big blinds from him in a single hand wins an additional €20. He has frequented micro and low stakes tables, so that €20 can be pretty meaningful to lots of players.
He also announced that a recent update added many features that players have been wanting. Directly from his blog post, all parenthetical comments Galfond’s:
• Finalized HH Formatting
• HH Downloads
• Multiple Hotkey updates (now nearly perfected), including mouse hotkeys
• New Table Backgrounds
• New Splash the Pot Visuals
• Automatic Updater
• New Card Options, including the solid 4 color deck
• Table Layout Options
• Game Alerts on Discord (I recommend you check these out!)
Galfond also lamented a decline in player traffic, citing player frustrations with bugs that existed prior to the May 29th update.
“As they left,” he added, “liquidity suffered, which is, unfortunately, a problem that compounds – other players who still loved Run It Once couldn’t find their games available when they wanted, and they followed suit.”
To that point, Run It Once plans on increasing its marketing efforts, including streaming and promotions, in order to grow the player base.
