December 2, 2024

Cards and chips for poker on green table, top view.

Rush Street Interactive acquires Run It Once Poker from Phil Galfond – Casino & games

Rush Street Interactive (RSI) has acquired poker platform Run It Once (RIO) from Phil Galfond, bringing the European poker brand to the US market.

While details of the deal have yet to be released, RIO founder and professional poker player Phil Galfond says the process of reaching a deal took 18 months.

As part of the agreement, RIO will integrate its software into RSI’s platform.

“We have spoken with many potential partners over the past 18 months and are very excited to be part of the RSI team,” said Galfond. “They share our values: honesty, integrity, fairness and transparency – and not just with their players. They stood out for me for the fair and honest way in which they treated us.

“RIO Poker has created a platform that people love, with features and innovations that have the poker world excited, but we’ve also heard things like ‘if only they could iterate on their software faster’ or ‘I would move my entire volume to RIO” if they were bigger.

“Well, now we’re bigger – much bigger. And now we are adding to our existing technical team the expertise and experience of those who have built huge poker platforms in the past. I am extremely excited about what we can accomplish together.

RSI co-founder and former chief executive Gregory Carlin recently resigned from the board and left the company altogether.