What you can expect from iPoker in 2025

Looking back at 2024, how has iPoker improved/changed – what are you most proud of, and what are you earmarking for improvement?

Baard Dahl: 2024 has been a year of significant progress for iPoker. We’ve focused on improving the player experience across our network, from optimizing our tournament schedule to launching innovative features aimed at both recreational and high-volume players. The introduction of better promotional tools for our operators as well as engaging player-facing mechanics has contributed to healthier liquidity and a more engaged community.

I’m particularly proud of the strides we’ve made in game integrity. With enhanced detection tools and collaboration with GTOWizard, we’ve taken significant steps to ensure fair play across the network. This focus is critical in gaining our players’ trust, especially after the security challenges seen industry-wide this year.

Looking ahead, our primary focus will be on making sure that we launch all our new features in a way that gains the players’ attention, and in this way highlighting all the great work by our product team that might otherwise go unnoticed. Related to that, we are also looking for ways of raising the profile of our networks in the community. Not by putting ourselves in front of the operators, mind you, but rather as a way to support the good work our partners are doing.

How has the ‘Episode’ series of MTT festivals that have been a regular part of the calendar been received in 2024?

Baard Dahl: The ‘Episode’ series has been a resounding success in 2024. Players have embraced the concept of thematic and story-driven tournaments, which add a layer of excitement and variety to the traditional MTT experience. The consistent turnouts and positive feedback from both operators and players underscore the popularity of these festivals. In addition, if we believe the old adage that ‘Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,’ we are taking the fact that my old employers have chosen to copy this concept as proof positive that it’s a good one!

The success of the Episodes has also demonstrated the importance of well-coordinated network-wide promotions that allow operators to stand out while contributing to shared liquidity. Moving into 2025, we aim to iterate on this by using everything we learned over the past two years to give the players even more interesting events.

“We’ve been cautious with Mystery Bounties”

The MTT schedule remains the vast majority PKOs, and Mystery Bounties have not overtaken the schedule like some in the industry assumed they would. Will this be the case going forward in 2025? Is there not much call for ‘vanilla’ MTTs anymore?

Michael Bedulskis: While PKOs remain a dominant format in the MTT schedule due to their popularity and engagement factor, we’ve been cautious about overloading the schedule with newer formats like Mystery Bounties. Rather than replacing most or part of our existing PKO schedule with Mystery Bounty versions, we elected to integrate Mystery Bounty events into the offering without sacrificing the existing tournament lineup. We think this is the best approach, and we are happy the network was able to comfortably absorb all the newly added events.

There is still a significant demand for ‘vanilla’ MTTs, particularly among traditional players who enjoy the classic structure and gameplay.

In 2025, our approach will be to strike a balance. We plan to expand the variety of formats offered, including more Mystery Bounty tournaments, but without overshadowing the core MTTs that remain the backbone of the schedule. Player feedback will continue to guide this evolution.

What can we expect to see for MTT players in 2025?

Michael Bedulskis: We are building our biggest MTT campaign yet for 2025, and are excited to offer our players a robust calendar filled with big series and a new season of Poker Episodes. We will continue building on our strengths, but will also look into how we can enhance the MTT campaign even more. We’re planning to introduce:

• New weekly and monthly Main Events: We see a great player turnaround on weekends, and the Network at this stage has just the right amount of MTT liquidity to sustain a set of new weekly and monthly main events. We will be sharing more details on these plans early in 2025.
• New promotion mechanics: We will be introducing new and innovative mechanics for our Twister, Cash Game, and MTT players that will enhance their playing experience on our network. We are excited about these mechanics and look forward to their release on the network. Some of them are unique to iPoker and will really elevate our poker offering.
• Revamped satellites: We are planning a significant update to our scheduled and promotional satellites, making sure players have more options to qualify for our marquee events.
• Localized promotions: Enhanced collaboration with operators to tailor events for specific markets and player bases.

“Our players will have promotions all year round”

MTTs get all the marketing attention in poker, so what new innovations and promotions can we expect for cash game and Twister players in 2025?

Michael Bedulskis: Cash Game and Twister promotions will be a focus area of our campaign in 2025.

MTTs will continue to be the cornerstone of the campaign, but at this point, we have a structure for MTT promotions in place, and can really focus on building robust Cash Game and Twister promotions on the Network level. We are planning to significantly expand this part of the promotional offering by introducing new promotion mechanics that cater specifically towards Cash Game and Twister. News on this will follow very soon.

We want to make sure that at any given time in the year, our players have an exciting promotion to look forward to, no matter what game types they prefer.

Ultimately, we are looking to enhance the player experience and create full customer journeys, by enveloping multiple promotions under one umbrella, like what we did with the Gladiator Series in October. During this series, we not only offered ”Gladiator”-themed tournaments but also adjacently ran ”Battle of Gladiators” and ”Avatar Hunt: Gladiator,” combining multiple projects under one theme and catering to a player base outside MTT enthusiasts.

“We are optimistic about game integrity”

A rival site has announced higher-stakes games will be ‘private’ above a certain stake, reflecting what is happening on unregulated apps. Are there plans to make iPoker games invite-only?

Baard Dahl: No, we have no plans to make higher-stakes games private or invite-only. iPoker remains committed to providing an open and transparent ecosystem where players can join games based on their skill level and bankroll. While private games may be appealing to some, we believe they undermine the inclusivity and fairness that are essential to a healthy poker environment.

The year started with two major cheating scandals at other poker rooms, and security has been a big online poker discussion of 2024. How optimistic are you feeling about online security at iPoker in 2025?

Baard Dahl: I’m optimistic about the progress we’ve made in Game Integrity heading into 2025. We have invested in a new data warehouse optimized for fast querying that will allow us to search across millions of hands in seconds, identifying irregularities with unprecedented speed. This technology opens up limitless possibilities for creating automated alerts to detect potential cheating patterns.

Additionally, our continued relationship with GTO Wizard provides us with access to the best solvers in existence, further enhancing our capabilities in detecting and addressing unfair play. Finally, our Game Integrity team’s close collaboration with operators ensures that issues are swiftly identified and resolved, maintaining a fair and transparent playing environment for all.

iPoker has always been disadvantaged because, as a network, there has never been a significant central voice communicating with players like standalone operators can. Beyond communicating via the skins on your network, how can iPoker improve its communication with the poker community in 2025?

Baard Dahl: Improving communication with players is a key focus for 2025. While our operators are the primary touchpoints for player interaction, we recognize the value of making players aware of all the exciting events that are taking place on our networks. We are still working with our operators on the best way of achieving this, but some of the components might be:

• Enhancing social media presence: Creating dedicated channels for network-wide updates and community engagement.
• Being present at live events: We are going to visit both the Irish Poker Open as well as the Norwegian Championship in Bratislava. In addition, both Michael and I live in Malta, which makes it easy for us to engage with the players during The Festival series and both editions of the Malta Poker Festival.

What do you want to see from iPoker in 2025? Let us know in the comments: