Phil Galfond announces plans for online poker site

Galfond competes in the 2013 WSOP Main Event wearing a patch from his then-newly-launched training site. (photo by Vin Narayanan)

Yesterday, American poker pro Phil Galfond announced his intention to launch an online poker room.

In a blog post on RunItOnce.com, titled "A Poker Site Should," Galfond listed a set of principles for the operation of an online poker room, followed by the simple statement "I'm going to give it my best shot." An accompanying graphic promises the arrival of Run It Once Poker sometime in the first quarter of 2017.

The post provides few concrete details about the proposed poker room, but in the comments on the post, Galfond notes that the site will not be accepting U.S. players. He also promises to release policy announcements and information about the site's financial structure before it launches.

While the post does not mention any other online poker sites by name, some of the principles listed seem to reference the charges some online poker players have been leveling against PokerStars.com over the past year — namely, that it does not value all players equally and that it has failed to properly communicate changes to its players.

"A poker site should be transparent. . . . It should do its best to explain its actions," Galfond writes. "It can't seek to please everyone by making changes that hurt the business, but it shouldn't ignore the public. It should be held accountable for the decisions it makes. It should be able to explain itself in a way that reasonable customers will understand."

Galfond was part of the 2000s poker boom, and has made more than $10 million on Full Tilt Poker alone under the screenname OMGClayAiken. He has an additional $2.5 million in live tournament earnings and two World Series of Poker bracelets. He infamously installed a slide in his New York penthouse apartment just months before Black Friday, after which he moved to Canada to continue playing.

More recently, he founded RunItOnce.com in 2013, where he and several other online pros provide poker training, and has played for the San Francisco Rush in the Global Poker League.