Will Phil Galfond's New Poker Site Challenge PokerStars' Dominance?

(Photo: Runitonce.com)

It's no secret that PokerStars angered a lot of its regular players in recent times by, among other things, increasing rake and eliminating the elite class of Supernovas.

Claiming a need to appeal more to recreational players in order to sustain a viable poker economy, the Amaya-owned poker room tipped the tables in favor of the casual crowd of players. The disdain for PokerStars among regs continues to reverberate throughout the poker community, as is evidenced by anyone who reads popular poker forums.

While a number of those regs have perhaps taken their business elsewhere, others have seemingly remained at 'Stars despite feelings of betrayal and downright loathing. PokerStars continues to dominate the world of online poker by a wide margin, a virtual monopoly on the industry that will be hard to dent despite what some consider to be increasingly poor business decisions since Amaya took the reigns in 2014.

(Photo: Bluffeurope.com)

Run it Anew

Enter Phil Galfond and his plan to launch a new poker site. While opinions are mixed on whether or not 2016 is a good time to embark on such a lofty endeavor as a brand new poker room that won't be available to the U.S. market, Galfond appears up for the challenge.

"I'm going to give it my best shot," Galfond announced on his RunItOnce training site some months ago.

With a business model that aims to focus on fairness, transparency, and a desire to appeal to the masses that includes recs, regs, and those players somewhere in-between, the 31-year-old Galfond has injected excitement into online poker. A poker site by players and for players may be exactly what the industry needs at this point in time.

Of course, what many are thinking is that we've been down this road before. Full Tilt Poker was launched by and for poker players and we all know how that global Ponzi scheme turned out.

The Right Time?

But this venture by Galfond feels different, at least by the things he's been saying. As he replied to a poster at his coaching site, "Launching a site isn't easy, as I know you know," and added that the experience of creating RunItOnce from scratch was invaluable.

Along with the success of RunitOnce, Galfond has made millions playing poker. His "OMGClayAiken" moniker at Full Tilt is the stuff of legends, and two WSOP titles a testament to his skills on the live felt. His creativity was on full display when he installed a slide between two penthouse apartments he owned in New York.

Galfond will soon slide over to the role of online poker site owner, a transition that may take some of the wind out of PokerStars' sail. It won't be easy to knock off a behemoth that has been ruling the roost for a decade, but if anyone can do it, perhaps Galfond can.

Considering the bad press PokerStars has been getting over insider trading allegations and hitting the pocketbook of its top players, this may be a good time to launch a poker site after all.