Run, Rush, Rake, Revolution

What if a poker site aimed to give back all their rake? How could it possibly work?

If the future of this plan to revolutionize online poker rake relied on players like you, would you support it?

Let's find out...

Run

For those of you who haven’t followed my journey closely, I’ll start with Run It Once Poker.

In 2019, in an attempt to change the online poker world for the better, my team and I launched Run It Once Poker. We designed a poker site that we wanted to exist, as online poker players.

Through every stage of our product design, we aimed to innovate.

In the months leading up to our launch, I wrote a series of posts – each introducing a group of our policies and features. I pulled back the curtain and explained the reasoning for each and every substantive decision we made, because this transparency and connection with the community is what we felt was missing from online poker.

Rush

Our journey as RIO Poker culminated in the sale of our business to Rush Street Interactive (RSI).

RSI recognized the value in our platform’s design and our team’s creativity. As a company who also puts players first, RSI loved our deep connection with the poker community, and they were eager to bring us on to complete their online gaming experience in the US and other regulated markets.

They also knew that there was some work to do.

RSI brought on a talented development team with extremely valuable online poker industry experience to ensure we could turn our beautiful baby into something with the flexibility and scalability expected of a leading gaming company.

As the tech and product teams put in that work, the poker team and I revisited our decisions in light of what we’d learned the first time and our new circumstances. While some minor changes to the product were made (none are post-worthy), we kept the overall design of our platform, which in many cases, we liked even more in this new environment (and from the feedback we received, our players liked it too)!

But we did innovate elsewhere, which is what I’m so excited to share with you (now that our history lesson is over)!

Rivers

We recently relaunched as BetRivers Poker in Pennsylvania!

We are no longer a small startup. We are part of a leading gaming company with an already thriving casino and sportsbook business. With that, priorities change.

I’ve had conversations with many operators and employees from competitors over the years, and the process of selling our business only reinforced what I already learned: When a business has casino, sportsbook and poker, poker is not, and cannot, be the top priority.

Why?

Revenue

If you look at revenue reports from publicly traded companies with casino, sportsbook and poker, you’ll see that poker makes up a very small slice of the pie. So why would a company give poker its best resources when it only makes up a tiny percentage of total revenue? Why even invest or care about poker in the first place?

At a large, multi-vertical gaming company, the primary purpose of poker is not to generate poker revenue. It’s to acquire and retain players for the other, more lucrative verticals. And it serves its purpose – poker players cost companies less to acquire than casino or sportsbook players, and casino and sportsbook bettors who enjoy poker will often bring all of their action to a platform that has it all over one that’s missing poker.

RSI has always supported poker, but launching BetRivers Poker presented us with new challenges and opportunities. We had to carefully consider our decisions about the poker platform, which we used to make in isolation, while also recognizing the need to support the broader goals of the company.

Would we focus primarily on what’s best for the players, like we did last time? Or would we make sacrifices on the poker side, prioritizing other higher revenue generating verticals, to better serve our company as a whole?

Reimagine

If you followed our pre-acquisition journey, you’ll know that we search tirelessly for win-wins. I don’t believe it needs to be player vs. platform or professional vs. recreational player. If you look hard enough, and you think outside the box, there are opportunities to reinvent the rules.

What’s best for the entire company is for us to do our job: Bring in new players, help retain existing players and introduce poker players to RSI’s sportsbook and casino products.

What’s best for the players?

Some would argue that not introducing poker players to other verticals is best for poker players. They fear that by doing so, we take good action and liquidity away from the poker games.

While I would agree with that in isolation:

• The cross-promotion of casino and sports players to poker is hugely beneficial for the poker ecosystem – it works both ways – and…

• We have no choice! Cross-promoting is precisely why we’re able to bring poker to the US in the first place, and having great, modern poker options in the US market is something I’m very passionate about.

So, what else do players and I care (deeply) about? What could really move the needle for professional and amateur poker players alike?

Rake

Tommy Angelo cleverly describes the game of poker as “zero-sum, minus some.”

Players can win if they outplay and outwit other players, but plenty of money leaves the game, through rake, because the house needs to make their money too.

In the years since we set out to start our own online poker site, the industry has changed. The former monopoly of Pokerstars made way for new industry leaders.

Poker industry leaders have raised rake far beyond levels even considered by the poker platforms we were used to. I’m in no position to argue with their business strategy given their success, but as a player, I wish it could be different.

Members of the poker community have expressed their unhappiness, too. They’ve staged boycotts. They’ve complained and criticized. But they haven’t made much of a difference.

The players want lower rake, more rewards, or both. I want that, too.

I could have argued that by significantly cutting the rake, we’d attract more interest from the community, boost player liquidity, and lower our acquisition costs, ultimately bringing in more players to explore our other products.

The problem with that argument is that the poker-playing community hasn’t consistently voted with their wallets for platforms with the lowest rake.

Of course, I knew players would like it, but I had no idea if it would help us catch the other poker platforms with a big head start. Simply competing on price isn’t exactly groundbreaking, and at least so far, it hasn’t worked in online poker.

Rewards

Less rake… more rewards… they’re similar. As rake-aware poker players, we learn to think in terms of Net Rake: The amount of rake we pay after deducting our rewards. In other words: Zero-sum, minus some, plus a little!

However, one of the benefits of giving rewards, rather than simply cutting rake, is that you can use those rewards to shape player behavior.

Want to build up your tournament fields? Give out more tournament tickets.

Want more volume per player? Create leaderboards to incentivize grinding.

We approached our rewards decisions from a first-principles perspective: We want to give players as much back as possible, and we have a clear business objective. I’ll quote myself, from above:

“At a large, multi-vertical gaming company, the primary purpose of poker is not to generate poker revenue. It’s to acquire and retain players for the other, more lucrative verticals”

In a matter of seconds, the solution here became clear.

If our purpose is to introduce players to other verticals, let’s do it really, really well.

And if our purpose isn’t to generate poker revenue…

Let’s not?

Revolution

Obviously, the idea of trying not to generate poker revenue is a bold one, and I’m not the boss anymore! You might imagine this would be an impossible proposal to get approved by a global gaming company:

“Hey, I know you bought our company and invested more into developing our platform further. Is it cool if we try not to make money? 😀”

But I was passionate about this idea. I wanted to give more back to players, and I believed it could be a huge win-win if executed well. So, I constructed my argument and presented our case.

Fortunately, RSI is a company that focuses on treating its players well, and they acquired us for a reason – our values aligned with theirs. Some in the company loved the idea. Others needed a little convincing on the numbers side.

Ultimately, we agreed to give the idea a chance.

We have three months to prove our plan works.

We need to prove that offering exceptional rewards will attract more new poker players than projected.

We need to prove that these poker rewards will inspire poker players to bring their casino play and sports betting over to BetRivers.

Most importantly, we need to prove that the poker community not only cares, but thrives when we give more back to players.

When we previously launched in the non-US market, many in the community supported us from afar. We didn’t have a complete platform. We didn’t have a big marketing budget. We didn’t have a lot of traffic. Players enjoyed our experience but told us they’d come play once we had those things.

Unfortunately, we ran out of time.

This time around, things will be a little bit different. We have a complete offering: Cash games, SNGs, and MTTs. Desktop and Mobile play. We have a real marketing budget. And through BetRivers we have an award-winning customer service team, an industry-leading platform, and a wave of casino and sportsbook players ready to try poker.

And we have three months to show that this model can work.

Rollout

Shortly after launch, BetRivers Poker went from having one of the lowest rakes in Pennsylvania to something much more radical. We plan to keep none of it, giving our share of rake away in rakeback, rewards, incentives, freerolls, and more. We will aim to disrupt the way online poker is run in PA and, if successful, many more regulated jurisdictions.

Much of that rake will be given back via our bonus store. Whether you prefer poker, casino or sports betting, you’ll have flexible redemption options. If you choose to redeem your points in casino or sportsbook instead of poker, you’ll benefit from significantly enhanced rates.

Pennsylvania (and Pennsylvania visitors!): If you’re as passionate about rake and rewards as I am, come play on BetRivers Poker. Your play and feedback will help us fine-tune our platform and rewards programs.

And if you’re not in PA but you like what we’re doing, let us know. Let others know! Reply here to help us spread the word!

This experiment could spark a paradigm shift. If we succeed in Pennsylvania, this model could become a long-term feature for us in each market we expand into.

If it doesn’t play out as we hope, we'll remain committed to building the kind of site we want to play on — with unique features, thoughtful design, and a focus on innovation and delivering what we believe players want. We'll keep searching for win-wins and adapting to the ever-evolving poker landscape, and I expect we'll still have the lowest rake in PA, even with a more traditional approach.

And the online poker world will continue on, unchanged by our efforts.

But maybe – just maybe – this three-month experiment marks a pivotal moment in poker history: The catalyst that transformed online poker into zero-sum, minus none.

See you at the tables.