Poker pro Phil Galfond still has yet to launch his online poker site, Run It Once, but he did post another update on Monday, this time explaining one way in which Run It Once intends to reward players. This is not the main rewards program, but it certainly an interesting one.
The program, called “streamR” (or the players who participate are called streamRs), is, you guessed it, centered around poker streaming. In his post, Galfond said:
Though we will still keep open the traditional route of striking deals with individual streamers, we knew that if we were going to break into the world of poker streaming on the scale we wanted to – no… on the scale we needed to – we would have to get more of the poker community involved.
We’ve been fortunate to have the support of the poker community, especially through all of the bumps in the road over the past couple of years with development delays. With so many of you out there wanting to support us, the goal of finding ways to reward you for it is always on our minds.
He went on to say that he and his team came up with an idea for rewarding streamers that they liked, but then he went to Run It Once pro Elías Gutierrez to check with him. Gutierrez came up with an idea that Galfond liked so much that he scrapped his original idea and went with this new one.
“What if anyone who wanted to support Run It Once could stream and be rewarded for it?” Galfond wrote.
“What if we could help them along at each stage – walk them through setting up and getting started, promoting them as they grow, and continuing to push them with increasing rewards?”
The Streaming Plan
How it works is that Run It Once streamers (streamRs) will have their “watch time” calculated, which equals the number of hours viewers watch a stream, with all viewers’ hours added together. In the example given, if someone streams for four hours in a day and has ten average viewers, that’s 40 hours of watch time.
Watch time then qualifies streamRs for one of four tiers, each of which rewards the player with rakeback. Here they are:
Level 1 – 200 hours – 50% rakeback
Level 2 – 1,200 hours – 75% rakeback
Level 3 – 8,000 hours – 100% rakeback
Team RIO – 20,000 hours – 110% rakeback and more
The “and more” will be determined after launch, when Run It Once has more data with which to work.
Galfond emphasized that rakeback will not be the primary rewards system for Run It Once. He also clarified things on Two Plus Two, saying that this streamR program is in addition the normal loyalty program. The rakeback given is not part of the rewards budget, so it isn’t cutting into other rewards. It is part of the marketing budget.
Galfond will be detailing the standard rewards and rakeback program in his next update post.