Nearly three years in the making

More than five and a half years ago, poker pro Phil Galfond took the bold step and launched a new online poker room, Run It Once Poker. Built from the ground up, it was very well-regarded, but good reviews don’t pay the bills, and it closed at the beginning of 2022.

On Wednesday, Run It Once rose from the grave, this time as BetRivers Poker and perhaps best of all (depending on who you speak to, I suppose), it launched in Pennsylvania.

finely tuned to meet the needs of poker players at every level”

From the moment Run It Once shutdown, this was the goal. Rush Street Interactive, the owner of the BetRivers brand, bought the poker room in March 2022 with its eyes on the US market. And Galfond is still there, bringing his “invaluable insight into the game, ensuring the platform is finely tuned to meet the needs of poker players at every level.”

Applying lessons learned

In a press release celebrating the BetRivers Poker launch, Galfond said: “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.”

At the end of 2021, when Galfond announced that Run It Once was closing its “rest of world” site, he said: “The hill was too steep.”

The road to success won’t necessarily be any flatter in the US, especially with only a few states having legal online poker, but Galfond has the lessons he learned with Run It Once and the experience and muscle of Rush Street Interactive, so it should be interesting to see where it goes.

US interstate poker landscape could change

The timing of the BetRivers Poker launch in Pennsylvania may potentially indicate that the state will soon join the Multi-State Internet Gaming Agreement (MSIGA) and that Rush Street is ready to flip the switch in other jurisdictions.

BetRivers would likely not want to be a single-state site

After all, while Pennsylvania is a big market, it has yet to share player liquidity with other states. It started negotiations with the MSIGA members in October to join the group, so we know it is coming. And BetRivers would likely not want to be a single-state site, especially since as soon as Pennsylvania does join MSIGA, both PokerStars (Michigan, New Jersey) and WSOP Online (Michigan, New Jersey, Nevada) will be able to add Pennsylvania to their interstate poker networks.

This is also likely a great sign for poker players in Delaware. The three racinos in the state used to employ 888’s platform for online poker, allowing them to network with WSOP in New Jersey and Nevada, as WSOP also used the 888 software.

But in January of this year, the Delaware Lottery switched its iGaming provider to Rush Street Interactive, thus shutting down online poker. Rush Street does still have its BetRivers online casino and sportsbook in the Blue Hen State.

Now that BetRivers has a poker product in the US, it very well could launch it in Delaware. And because Delaware is a MSIGA member, it could then share player pools with Pennsylvania and any other state in which BetRivers Poker goes live.