Run It Once Winds Down European Domain, Doubles Down on the US

Run It Once Poker is a lodestar in the poker community and now it’s off-limits, that is if you leave outside of the United States. Phil Galfond’s brainchild will carry on with a particular US focus while the rest of the world, well – they can figure it out.

Run It Once Takes New Direction in 2022  

A lot of the most serious poker action anywhere on this planet of ours is focused on the North American market, and that is a fact. While Europe habitually hosts some big events, they all pale in comparison with the magnitude of the World Series of Poker.

Now Galfond wants to help the US online poker ecosystem grow. The regulatory climate is particularly auspicious with both the Wire Act out of the way and individual states forging ahead with legislative rules to enable poker fans to play remotely in highly competitive and lucrative environments.

Of course, Galfond’s motivation to shutter the Run It Once European domain is rooted in some business sense, too. As of January 3, the website is no longer accepting new registrations or hosting games. Galfond and his team cite the challenges of adequately addressing two huge markets and they want to ensure that their efforts make the best sense for all.

The end of 2021 will, coincidentally, mark the end of an era for @RunItOncePoker, while the start of 2022 marks the beginning of a new one.

More details here: https://t.co/GTxlFBWwP1

— Phil Galfond (@PhilGalfond) December 30, 2021

Galfond, a poker professional himself who has amassed a “modest” $2,966,023, decided to step back from playing professionally and refocus his efforts on building a platform that adequately and quickly addresses concerns by the community.

Hew was among the first to clamp down on players who “farmed” less skilled participants in the poker action, discouraging them from starting and hurting the ecosystem by making changes to the HUDs. Effectively, grieving players was no longer possible thanks to Run It Once’s proactive approach.

Difficulties Still Plague Run It Once

Run It Once though is struggling to translate its player-first approach into measurable traffic. PokerScout, the definitive authority on how many players an operator has, posts the Run It Once numbers at paltry 200 at peak times. That is not great.

However, Run It Once has been an outlier when it comes to making sure that it innovates the experience. We need more people, the team behind the site asked. We can offer various incentives for the existing community to stream, the prompt response came. Of course, streaming your cards to the competition is not always great, but with the delayed features available to most platforms and software, it all comes in place.

The feature has not been particularly successful. Another pothole on the road of progress was the rollout of the Sit & Go tournaments. The logic was that people lacked competitive action and they could get it all by introducing this format. However, Sit & Go’s produced a very tepid response though, partly because of the Run It Once self-fulfilling prophecy.

Put this way, players usually want to stick with the biggest traffic pools, which translates into more games and hands played per hour, better prize pools, and more. However, Phil Galfond is still confident that it can make it.

As the European domain will no longer be accepting new players or running any games, players have until April 3, 2022, to withdraw all their money. Run It Once hopes it can help wrap up