This week the online poker site CoinPoker launched a new mobile app and client, and its ambassadors — including super high roller Mario Mosböck — have been spreading the news about some of the changes players can expect to find.
“Changing software is always tricky for any platform,” Mosböck shares with PokerOrg’s Craig Tapscott. “But it went without any hiccups, no issues, no lost account data or anything.
“There are surely some things that the team will optimize and work on in the future, but from the launch perspective, it went way better than I think anyone could have expected.”
The launch brought with it new features, new promotions, and a rakeback promotion that promises to give 100% of rake taken in March back to players in various forms, from direct rakeback payments to bonuses such as splashed pots — where money is added to random pots on cash game tables — to leaderboards.
According to the Austrian pro, the changes appear to have had an instant impact at CoinPoker’s tables.
“We had 700 real-money tables running at the same time yesterday, and that goes from 1c/2c all the way up to $500/1K. We had 200 active players on $2/5 and a hundred active players on $5/10 throughout the whole last day.”
New features at CoinPoker
Improvements to CoinPoker’s relaunched software go far beyond design and quality-of-life additions.
From a gameplay perspective, cash game players can now enjoy bomb pots, PLO6 and the option to run it twice. There’s also a new twist with ‘Run It Twice+1’, an option to run the board a third time if one player wins both runouts. It’s a separate opt-in choice to the more traditional way of seeing multiple runouts.
A more obvious change to the CoinPoker interface is the new, built-in heads-up display (HUD), tracking the usual gameplay statistics such as VPIP, PFR and C-bets (check our detailed poker glossary to learn more about what these terms mean).
Additionally, hand histories have been upgraded with a full replayer, player notes can be taken and a suite of other features designed to measure and improve poker skills have been added. These include ‘PokerIntel’, a detailed stat-tracker, the ‘Showdown Meter’ which can be used to monitor how much you’re running +/- EV, and a ‘Skill Score’.
This last tool measures seven metrics from your poker tournament results, such as winnings, biggest score and number of final tables, to help you see how you stack up versus the competition.
Rakeback (and a little blowback)
To mark the launch of the new software, CoinPoker announced that players would receive 100% rakeback for the month of March.
This actually takes two forms: a straight rakeback deal up to March 15, followed by rakeback promotions including splashed pots and leaderboards for the remainder of the month. This means that, while 100% of rake may be paid out to players, not everyone will receive the same levels of rakeback.
This varied form of rakeback raised the ire of some players, who had assumed 100% rakeback would be paid directly into their accounts during the entire month.
“We will give 100% rakeback to players for the whole month of March,” explains Mosböck, “but it's not 100% rakeback directly to their account. That's the small difference: We're not going to credit the account directly, but you're going to get tickets, leaderboards, splashed pots, and you also get rakeback. This adds up to 100%. Maybe you get less than 100%, but that means somebody else gets more.
“Obviously, it's a huge loss-leader for the company, but I'm very happy that CoinPoker did it.”
The topic of rake — always a hot one in the poker world — cropped up in more online debates as CoinPoker revealed the rake cap will increase following the conclusion of March’s rakeback promo.
Mosböck concedes that the news could have been better communicated to players.
“Obviously, any rake increase will always face backlash, and I think the issue from CoinPoker’s side was not addressing how it will operate in the future.
“Players are saying the rake has doubled, but it hasn’t. If you increase the rake cap by 2x, it raises the rake maybe 20-30 percent, because in most hands the cap is not being hit. So it's only in the hands that the rate cap gets hit that the cap is relevant.
“So it is not a 100% increase, it's an increase of 20-30%. And it just keeps it at a level where it's competitive with the industry. To be able to focus on the players who contribute to the game, you cannot just have a very low rake flatline, because it doesn't give you any room. You have to run the poker room; you have to pay the rewards. If your baseline is super low, it just doesn't function.
“What you need to do is have a competitive baseline and then reward with the money that you earn. Approach your whole ecosystem in a way where there's as much liquidity as possible, because ultimately this is what is good for the players. And it's super crucial for the site, it just cannot function without it.”
What’s missing — still — from the discussion of rake is details of how the upcoming rewards program changes will affect the overall rate. In a post earlier this week CoinPoker claimed it has been ‘designed to return a large amount of generated rake back to players’.
Would it perhaps have been wise to hold back on announcing the rake cap increase until more was known about the rewards program? Mosböck doesn’t think so.
“I think announcing it later would be misleading. I think the sentiment would have been that we give you 100% rakeback just to be hit at the end of the month with a rake increase. We would just have the backlash then, and the backlash would be even more justified because it would be misleading.
“The goal is not to just grab as much as possible for the site, the goal is to build up enough liquidity to become the world’s biggest poker room.”
‘It's crucial to incentivize players who contribute’
That ambition to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the industry’s biggest operators is informing CoinPoker’s approach to player rewards. A new loyalty program is in the works — details to-be-announced — which Mosböck sees as being crucial to CoinPoker’s future success.
“With the new software, we're now able to create very, very engaging reward programs for the players and the community. After all, that's super important to keep the ecology alive.
“Before GG came on board, honestly, the online poker landscape was slowly dying. It was only PokerStars, but most of it moved to private games and club games.
“Personally, I played in so many different clubs, and these just don't function if you don't reward the right players, because ultimately the pros play where the fish are. They don't care too much; if they like the product, they will play where they make money. I'm the same way. As long as it's beatable for me, that's where I play.
“I think it's really crucial for CoinPoker to incentivize players who contribute to the ecology and keep liquidity and the games running.”
More details on what form these new rewards will take will be made available in the coming weeks, though Mosböck broadly describes them as a mix of different rewards and incentives such as leaderboards, splashed pots, direct rakeback and tournament tickets. The full details will be announced once the number-crunchers at CoinPoker have analysed the data from the first month of the new software’s widespread use.
And, he says, they’re not going to be afraid to get a little weird with it.
“The goal is to have this as engaging and gimmicky as possible instead of something like, ‘Here’s a credit, that’s it’. The intent is still to have the lowest rake — effective after all the rewards — in the poker industry.”
Bug-hunting
As with most new software launches, there were a few bugs that needed ironing out of the CoinPoker app which only became known once the new client hit the many different devices, configurations, and operating systems of its many users.
Some issues were shared online and flagged — falsely, according to Mosböck — as critical security flaws.
“Effectively, the issue raised was a nothing-burger,” he says. “We did a full review and there was no actual issue. Some people had put the code into Claude AI, it was not an actual report. And Thomas Keeling, who works for a competitor, just jumped on it and spread the narrative that there's an issue on CoinPoker."
“But AI often makes mistakes in regard to the context of which things are being used. There were some points in the report which, when isolated, could have been true, but within the context were just factually false. So obviously when a player reads that on X, he doesn't know that. Then it spreads.
“The speed at which those bugs were fixed is absolutely insane. If you read about it on Twitter or somewhere, you only see the bugs, but you don't see the resolution.”
With bugs squashed, a commitment to more transparency when it comes to rake and news dropping soon about a new rewards program, we’re keen to see how CoinPoker’s playerbase reacts to the new software.
According to Mosböck, who in his role at CoinPoker has visibility over the crucial metrics needed to evaluate the impact, the results are already plain to see.
“Players on the platform hit 2-3x the previous all-time high after only two hours of the new software being loaded. And then, new signups were 4x the normal levels, and first-time players were 5x the previous all-time high.
“In this regard, it went way beyond expectations. Obviously, there are also players who prefer the old software, that’s to be expected, but looking at the new client and saying, ‘Bring the old one back', is an absolutely insane statement. The new one is very good.”
Additional images courtesy of CoinPoker/Triton Poker Series.
