BetRivers Poker Launches in Pennsylvania

It may have a new name, but early three years after closing in Europe, Phil Galfond’s Run It Once Poker is back.

On Thursday, the online poker room, now called BetRivers Poker, launched in Pennsylvania, the first of what it hopes will be several states.

Run It Once Has Made It to the US

BetRivers Poker is a partnership between Rush Street Interactive, one of the biggest names in online gambling in the US, and Galfond, one of the poker industry’s most respected players and personalities.

It is the first entry for the former Run It Once Poker in the United States, a dream of Galfond’s several years in the making.

From the amateur playing their very first hand to the sophisticated pro, everyone was kept in mind as we focused on fairness, excitement, and generous rewards that truly benefit the player.

– Phil Galfond

BetRivers has steep competition in Pennsylvania, as PokerStars, WSOP Online, and BetMGM are all well-established in the Keystone State.

But none of them have Phil Galfond as their top guy.

“As poker players, we designed this platform from the ground up to be for the players – all players,” Galfond said in the press release celebrating the site’s launch. “From the amateur playing their very first hand to the sophisticated pro, everyone was kept in mind as we focused on fairness, excitement, and generous rewards that truly benefit the player.

“I’ve been heavily involved in the game design, promotions, and policy decisions, and, more importantly, in building an incredible team that sees online poker the way I do.”

CUB3D, BetRivers’ Version of the Jackpot SNG

As one would expect from an online poker room, BetRivers Poker offers cash games, Sit-and-Go tournaments, and multi-table tournaments.

BetRivers also has its own version of the popular jackpot Sit-and-Go called CUB3D. These are three-handed, winner-take-all Sit-and-Go’s that offer a random prize of up to 1,500 times the buy-in.

Buy-in levels are $0.25, $1, $2, $5, $10, $25, and $100.

One difference between BetRivers’ CUB3D and other sites’ jackpot Sit-and-Go’s is that players do not know the prize pool until the game is over.

The prize multiplier is randomly determined based on a pre-set probability table. Top multipliers are extremely rare. The vast majority of the time, the prize will be 2x, 2.5x, or 3.5x the buy-in.

There is also a slight chance that CUB3D losers can win a “glitch prize.”

Tough Sledding for Run It Once

Phil Galfond launched his ambitious Run It Once online poker, which shares its name with his poker training site, eight years ago in the UK and Europe.

As a poker player first and foremost, Galfond’s goal was to make a player-centric online poker room. Make a site that respects its customers and where players of all skills can have fun and the traffic will come.

And while Run It Once got very positive reviews, the traffic never really flowed like Galfond had hoped. He closed the site at the beginning of 2022.

All along the way, Galfond blogged about how things were going, being as honest as he could about the site’s successes and struggles.

When it closed, he put some blame on the tech leadership, but also on himself, saying he did not communicate “early and clearly enough that we weren’t looking to launch a cookie-cutter poker site.”

Galfond knew it would be difficult to gain market share, but he admitted that keeping players on the site was much harder than he expected.

All along, though, his goal was to bring Run It Once to the United States, where he could apply what he learned the first time around.

Just a couple of months later, Rush Street Interactive acquired Run It Once Poker and began making long-term players for the US market.

Sources

https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2024/10/31/2972716/0/en/Rush-Street-Interactive-Premieres-Its-New-Online-Poker-Platform-in-Pennsylvania-Developed-in-Partnership-with-Well-Respected-Poker-Pro-Phil-Galfond.html