Real Gaming, Nevada’s third and least trafficked online poker site (Real Gaming’s traffic numbers are too small to even be measured by pokerscout.com) is trying to gain some momentum in the market, or at least get their foot in the door, with the announcement of their newest promotion, the Real50.
Based on the rake chase promotion model the promotion also doubles as a tournament leader-board with a Player of the Year award at the end of the tunnel, Real50 is a year-long rewards program that will hand out monthly prizes to the top 50 players on the site, as well as a yearly prize for the best of the best, the top 3 raking players on the site after one year.
Each month the site will hand out $7,000 to their top raking players, and the yearly prize amount for the Top players totals $16,000: All told, Real Gaming will award $100,000 over the course of the promotion, a pretty astounding number for a site that is bordering on zero traffic.
The only stipulations to enter the promotion is that you must deposit $50 at Real Gaming and you must meet the minimum loyalty scores to be eligible each month, other than that you simply sit down at the Real Gaming tables and play.
Who will get paid during the Real50?
Each month the Top 50 players (actually 100, as you’ll see in a moment) on the site will divvy up the $7,000 of monthly giveaway money. The reason I say Top 100, is that there will be separate “Small Stakes” and “Medium Stakes” leader-board, with the following monthly prize distribution:
- Small Stakes = $2,000
- Medium Stakes = $5,000
And the yearly Player of the Year prize distributions will be:
- Small Stakes = $6,000
- Medium Stakes = $10,000
Small Stakes Leader-Board
Small stakes total prize money allocated: $2,000
Minimum Loyalty Score: 60
Eligible stakes: 10c/20c, 20c/40c, 50c/$1
- 1st – 23%
- 2nd – 12%
- 3rd – 6%
- 4th-10th – 3%
- 11th-20th – 1.6%
- 21st-30th – 1.05%
- 31st-40th – .75%
- 41st-50th – .4%
Medium Stakes Leader-Board
Medium stakes total prize money allocated: $5,000
Minimum Loyalty Score: 80
Eligible stakes: $1/$2, $2/$4, $5/$10
- 1st – 23%
- 2nd – 12%
- 3rd – 6%
- 4th-10th – 3%
- 11th-20th – 1.6%
- 21st-30th – 1.05%
- 31st-40th – .75%
- 41st-50th – .4%
Yearly Player of the Year leader-board
The yearly prizes are a bit different. Only the Top 3 finishers will be rewarded for the yearly leader-board prizes, which will make these extremely substantial paydays for the winners.
The winner of each leader-board will receive 50% of the allocated prize ($10k for Medium Stakes players and $6k for Small Stakes players) with the runner-up receiving 30% and 3rd place receiving 20%. Here are the monetary payouts:
Small stakes winner – $3,000
Small stakes runner-up – $1,800
Small stakes 3rd place finisher – $1,200
Medium stakes winner – $5,000
Medium stakes runner-up – $3,000
Medium stakes 3rd place finisher – $2,000
Will it help?
As mentioned in the opening, Real Gaming’s traffic is nearing nonexistent levels, with barely enough players to keep a single table going. The promotion may attract players to the Real Gaming tables, but in the end the only thing that is going to solve their traffic woes is a superior product.
The current Real Gaming client wouldn’t even pass muster back in 2003, let alone in 2014.
The Real Gaming software is not only dated in terms of looks and features, but it’s also buggy (with a lot of lag and choppiness) and features several potentially exploitable bugs that I do not want to draw attention to, so I will not mention them in order to keep unsavory players from rushing over to the site and shooting angles —Real Gaming is aware of these problems.
But back to the promotion.
I’m sure a site where players are all but guaranteed of being in the Top 50 raked players each month will see some increase in traffic, but like many other sites that have tried to solve their problems by throwing money at them, what happens when the promotion is over?
That being said, if Real Gaming can roll out a Version 2.0 of their software during the first few months of the Real50 promotion it could be just what the site needs to lure in players.
Basically, if Real50 is the fix it will not work, but if Real50 is the marketing tool to make people aware of the actual fix (better software) it may just work.
