Phenom Poker Celebrates 1 year of Success with Matt Valeo

Launching a new poker site is definitely not for the faint of heart. You must face technical barriers, regulatory red tape, and marketing challenges. And these are just some of the bumps on the road you have to overcome. Still, in a field that is run by a few big names, there’s a greater question above all: What can you offer that the others cannot?

We often see this sentence,

“Putting players first.”

But do they really? Nowadays, every operator claims to have its players’ best interests as a top priority – and yet they make decisions that are clearly aimed at maximizing profits.

But what if the operator’s profits directly benefited the players at the table? Creating a product that is additive to the poker community, rather than extractive, was a fundamental driver for the creators of Phenom Poker when it launched a year ago.

But what if that mentioned profit directly benefits the players who sit at the table?  That question was a fundamental driver for the creators of Phenom Poker. They wanted to create a product that is an additive to the poker community, rather than an extractive one. And a year ago, Matt Valeo and Brian Rast founded Phenom Poker .

“Sometimes when you play on other sites it feels like there’s some guy getting rich off of every button you click,” – Phenom Poker co-founder Matt Valeo tells PokerOrg. “But what if you could be a player and the house?”

It’s a bold idea to pull off, but with top players like Brian Rast, Dan ‘Jungelman’ Cates, and Ben Heath on their side, if someone can come close to this, it’s Phenom Poker.

After a year of successful operations, Valeo gives the world an up-close look at where Phenom stands now and what the plans are for the future.

No blockchain background needed

“There have been some unexpected challenges relating to the technologies we’re using,”

– tells Valeo, pointing out one of the many innovations Phenom has put on the table. Their focus is on decentralization, Blockchain, and a novel shared ownership model.

“We have a very complex system that involves centralized components, decentralized components, Blockchain components, and getting everything to work together reliably — and then work in a way that doesn’t require the end user to be a Blockchain expert, is not an easy task.”

As Valeo said in a previous interview on the day Phenom Poker launched in 2024, the platform is crypto-based, and it heavily relies on new and emerging technologies. However, the goal is to be the best in terms of player experience, not in terms of tech.

Additionally, although it is an overused claim, Phenom Poker is truly delivering on its promises, thanks to its shared Phenom Token ownership model, a form of rakeback, and a loyalty system that empowers players to collectively claim up to a 50% stake.

Of course, crypto is not every player’s cup of tea, and they might not be interested in the token system either. That’s also fine.

You can find all the information about the Phenom Token on the Phenom Poker website, but you can also simply play poker there.

“Some players completely don’t understand the value of Phenom Token and how it works,” Valeo explains. “They don’t want to go through the trouble of reading all the material, they just want to play poker.

“We have to find that balance of catering to the players who want to take advantage of that ownership opportunity, as well as the players that just want to show up and have a great poker experience, or players that care about something else.

“There are a lot of different types of players,” – Valeo continues. “Some think it’s really cool that they can use something like PolygonScan to see that their funds are always there. Some just want to pay a lower rake. Some just want to play on a site that listens to them. What’s most important is going to vary depending on the player.”

And most importantly, Phenom Poker ensures it addresses its players’ priorities, offering something for everyone.

“We care about all players as a community, and we want to listen to what’s important to them, because if we build something that we think is cool but nobody else does, we’re not really accomplishing anything, right?”

Bringing the right people together

It’s a double-edged sword, though. As Valeo highlights, when creating a community, those you welcome in are not the only ones who are important. The people you leave out are just as significant.

“We do the KYC [Know Your Customer verification] process upfront, which might not seem like a good thing on the surface, because it’s a lot harder to grow that way. We could probably be 3 to 5 times bigger right now if we just removed upfront KYC.”

“But you can’t be serious about security if you don’t know who’s playing. Someone could get caught cheating or using RTA [real-time assistance], you ban them, and they just create a new account.”

“I don’t care how much rake someone’s generating, and I don’t care how much action they’re giving; if they’re acting maliciously towards other players, they do not belong on Phenom Poker, period.”

“There is no leeway, there is no compromise there. If that’s your intention, we just don’t want you here.”

Mixed game hotspot?

The focus on building a healthy community runs through nearly everything Phenom Poker is pursuing — from shared ownership and greater transparency to tighter security. And last but not least, a standout spread of mixed games .

Although it’s not completely unheard of, it’s definitely rare for an online poker site to offer games like Dramaha, Badeucey 2-7, Archie 66, and Badacey A-5. Explore the lobby, and you’ll discover a range of these and other underplayed formats.

And again, all this momentum stems from a desire to serve the players and provide everything they need – something they cannot get anywhere else. It’s handy that the majority of the leadership team are players themselves.

“We wanted to have mixed games available at the start, because when you’re launching a new poker site and you’re coming to market, it’s extremely difficult to find that critical mass and early liquidity, and we thought it would just be a really natural thing to tap into the mixed game community, because it’s our community.

These are players that we play with regularly, that we know, that we see at the World Series every year, but there’s no home for them online. Other operators just ignore that group, which sucks because some of these guys are the best players in the world.

So we wanted to have a home for mixed game players, but our grand vision is for Phenom Poker to be the home of any poker player, of any skill level, at any stake, at any place in the world. Some place to go that’s fair, transparent, secure, listens, and puts the community first.

“Mixed games was kind of a natural niche for us to focus on first, but our brand vision is to have a large no-limit and pot-limit offering and just really to spread the games that players want to play.”

Partnerships Based on Shared Vision

To shape its vision, Phenom Poker collaborates with several high-profile poker stars, including Viktor Blom, Angela Jordison, and Sergio Aido, as well as Rast, Cates, and Heath, who are proud ambassadors of the newly born poker site.

“I don’t look at them as just ambassadors,” – says Valeo. “We really wanted to find the people that could bring a lot of integrity, experience, and also be a voice for the different types of players. We also wanted people that weren’t just going to be like, ‘Okay, how much are you going to pay me? What do I have to do?’

“There are plenty of brands out there that’ll give you a contract to be a paid shill for some period of time; if that’s your thing, then go for it. But we want people that really believe in and have an interest in what we’re trying to accomplish, want to be involved in it, and are going to be proud to support it.”

Receiving honest feedback from players who aren’t just walking billboards wearing the gear is a critically important aspect for Valeo. This is the kind of approach that helps Phenom Poker to reach the right audience in the industry.

“When you think about what a poker site is and how revenues are generated, to really think through a model that is going to add to the community and not extract from it, and not have competing interests with the players, this is a really delicate thing.

“It’s not easy to do, but that’s why we have someone like Brian Rast as an ambassador — because he’s really freaking smart. He’s a guy that likes to think on multiple levels, likes to go really deep on things, and is also going to push back and challenge if we put something out there that’s clearly not aligned with the players.”

“For example — and not to throw a competitor under the bus — but we see some of these features get launched, like, ‘Oh hey, how about we pay 3 big blinds to show everyone’s cards?’, and we’re like, ‘Why the f*** would anyone ever do that?’ And the answer can only be that there are no poker players in those meetings.

“If this feature gets past the product team, the feature team, and into development without anybody stopping it, there can’t be any real players in that loop.”

A spark of hope

Phenom Poker is doing everything in its power to drive home its USP through a structured improvement plan in progress, including downloadable desktop clients, gameplay features like ‘run-it-twice’ and ‘run-it-three-times,’ tournament series, bad-beat jackpots, and new game formats.

The actions Phenom is taking in this difficult, competitive market are coming down to that tired, overused phrase we’ve heard countless times — but rarely with the conviction Phenom is now backing it up with: putting players first.

“Look around and you’re going to see high rake and no consideration for players’ needs and demands,” says Valeo. “Rake traps and operators that prioritize profit over everything else, and we think the players deserve better.

“That’s our biggest differentiator, and everything else is a function of that. Take our token model, for example: that exists because we wanted to figure out a way to build value and then to keep that value within the poker ecosystem.

“We never want to put profits before the community. The second we do, we’ll have gone from being the Rebellion to the Empire, and I’m not interested anymore.”

Via poker.org