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By Kyle Miaso (aka BabyDoooty on Phenom Poker)
This website is not affiliated with Phenom Poker. There are affiliate links embedded in the website.
October 7th marked the 1 year anniversary of the launch of Phenom Poker. A launch that had its proverbial ups and downs. What seemed like a very below average 1st half of the year with respect to excitement, token price, buggy software (on occasion), and lack of players, had a complete 180 degree turnaround the second half of the year. With some major signings (Jungleman, Isldur, Huck Seed), and amazing performance by team Phenom at the WSOP, the nostalgic nose bleed cash games that reminded us of the Full Tilt days, the continued release of new variants of poker, and of course the PHNM token run that saw it dip to its all time low on December 23 to $0.27 and from there has rocketed to an all time high of $3.71 on September 22nd (at the time of this writing the token sits at $2.79)! The momentum of Phenom Poker continues to grow.
Honestly one of the major factors that has contributed to the site continues to be their communication with their players. You can jump on their Discord or Telegram and to this day still have a conversation with the founders and builders of the site.
Below I have updated the overall grades for the site from my original post last year and the updated ones as well.
Can Play in USA: ✅ (Except Washington State. Check your jurisdiction)
Deposits/Withdrawals:
Original Grade: A
Current Grade: B+
With respect to the grading scale, if you’re paying attention, you will have noticed that this is the only area where the grade diminished. While there has been really no change in the options to deposit (you can still use around 25 tokens to deposit) or withdraw, to be honest, I thought at this point there would be more options to withdraw besides USDT on polygon. I do know they are working in the background to make more options available but at this point it’s the only option to withdraw your funds. For anyone familiar with crypto it’s not that big of a deal as you can just use a decentralized exchange (sushi swap) to swap the USDT on polygon back to USDT, USDC or Ethereum on the Ethereum network. This is probably the main reason why the grade dropped.
However the difficulties that you might have with figuring out a decentralized exchange are overshadowed by the fact that you have control of your funds at all times. One of the benefits of playing on Phenom is that it’s the 1st poker site where you don’t deposit into a centralized pool of funds where the company can block your withdrawals. When you create an account on Phenom, a wallet is created to your account and you send crypto directly to that wallet. When you sit down in a game you’re sending money from your wallet to a contract on the blockchain and when you are done in the cash game or tournament whatever funds you have after or won are sent back to your wallet. You can withdraw at any point and Phenom, still to this day, pays all the gas fees (there is a very small fee every time you send USDT from your wallet to the contract and back)!
2FA (Two Factor Authentication) is also an option for security and is highly recommended that you use it. That will be addressed in another section below.
Bonuses:
Original Grade: A
Current Grade: A
Speaking of bonuses if you would like to register for a Phenom account and don’t have one yet, register here and get a 200% deposit bonus (up to 4000 USDT) AND get 2 free hours of mix game coaching by recording ANY mix game on Phenom and sending it in to [email protected]
Register here for your deposit bonus! PLAY NOW
Every few months or so Phenom releases a deposit bonus where if you send funds to the site you will get a 100% or more USDT bonus released with a 3x or 4 x multiplier. Meaning for every $30 or $40 USDT raked you will have $10 deposited directly into your wallet. I would say that it is very close to the industry standard at this point. However the bonus you get by additionally holding the PHNM token in my opinion outweighs all other bonuses on all other sites. Here is their current bonus to celebrate their one year anniversary.
1st time deposit bonus above (code LMG) will always be a better option. But if you have already deposited the 1YEAR bonus is the next best option.
If you go back to the section in my last blog post talking about the Phenom token labeled “Phenom Token/Player Rewards/Rakeback” we go in depth about the token and what Phenom is trying to do with it. Give it a look if you need a refresher on the token.
Given the fact that there are going to be swings in the Phenom token price (token price is based on the past 4 weeks revenue of the site and not the open market) it gives players the ability to earn upside on their rake generated. By holding PHNM tokens in your wallet you actually have rights to weekly distributions and (in the future) voting rights. At the same time players earn additional USDT by holding PHNM tokens in their wallet. Every Monday the wallet addresses that hold the tokens earn USDT based on the revenue of the past week. Their target for the payout is around 5% annualized. You can see below that Phenom has paid out almost 4 million USDT to the community since launch!
For example…say you played a bunch during the time the PHNM token was worth $0.27 and earned around $1000 in rake back that week. If you held the Phenom tokens over that timeframe till it hit its peak at $3.71 that $1000 in was now worth almost $14,000 in PHNM token (currently at the time of writing it’s worth a little over $10,000)! Not to mention that you are receiving weekly payments in the form of revenue share if you are a token holder.
One thing I do have to address is the possible upside. When the token went from $3.71 to $3.14 I had several players contact me and ask if they should sell? While I’m not going to give recommendations on what to do with your money or tokens, I will go over the upside case. Start with market share. Phenom has a fraction (talking low low low single digits) of the online poker world at this point and their token over that time frame, from low to high, still had a 14x jump! It’s not hard to imagine that they keep innovating over the next few years, releasing new products, getting new partnerships, new signings, new games, new upgrades, that keeps them gaining market share. But that’s just poker. You have to remember that this is a crypto site and if Phenom chooses to do so there are other markets and areas that they COULD enter (casino, sports, etc.). Having that advantage gives the token price that optionality to the upside as well. Could the PHNM token have significant drops? For sure and it has. But I still think the best is yet to come for Phenom. Now past performance is not indicative of future results…but I’m a happy holder at this point as I continue to see them grow in all areas!
Finally as another added bonus, Phenom listened to what the players wanted and did something no other poker site would do, THEY LOWERED THE RAKE:
They made this decision at a time when the token price was rising post WSOP and could have taken in more revenue, but they took the feedback from the community and decided to lower the rake. In theory could this hurt the token price and the token holders? Maybe. But honestly to make a decision like this based on the feedback of the community probably does a lot more long term good than harm.
Player Pool:
Original Grade: B
Current Grade: B+
The player pool has continued to grow steady with the site. With the addition of new games and tournaments they have seen consistent growth. From not having many players at launch to 4K unique holders (players that have played a game and generated rake) over the past year the site continues to grow. Times when the site tends to get the most traffic seems to be the evenings on weekdays. I do wonder if it will pick up on the weekends when Phenom launches a full slate of tournaments.
With Phenom having so many different variants of poker and different variants of mix games, the games I see tend to be more on the soft side. It’s honestly hard to be good at 8-12 different variants of poker and with having that many games in the rotation, if you have familiarity with the games, you will start to see obvious leaks from your opponents somewhere. That’s why I started LearnMixGames (Rumble link here to see the archive of videos). To give anyone who wanted to learn to play mix games while at the same time give them a solid foundation so they weren’t just jumping into the games blind.
Honestly this is one of the more difficult areas for me to grade because they are only 1 year in and I don’t have a feel of where it could be as I’ve not played on any other sites in years. I would say that if the site continues to grow by multiple unique token holders the grade should be higher, but if the growth stays stagnant or slows I would lower the grade.
Game Selection:
Original Grade: B
Current Grade: B
When the site 1st launched there were only a few games and not too many limits to choose from. There were 300/600 mix game tables available but there was no action on those tables ever. The biggest game I saw consistently was a 20/40 mix game. However, as I write this now, I’m recording a game that is 100x bigger, with a Hall of Famer, as they are playing a 2K/4K 8-Game. While the nose bleeds aren’t consistent they do go every week and you can usually find 1-2 300/600 full mix games going at the same time and you can watch the best in the world and learn how they play for free!. There are usually 2-3 80/160 games going throughout the day as well as various variants.
Speaking of Bloody Noses…if you want to see some high end cash games on Phenom with expert review with players like Chris Vitch, Kevin Gerhart, and iteopepe88, check out this page!
For all of us plebes that like to play something a weeeee bit smaller. They still have a wide variety of mix games with about 2x to 3x different rotations of mix games they had at launch ranging daily from .5/1 to 80-160. I would say the consistent sweet spot is 2/4 8/16 or 10/20 and 80/160. There are random limits that go every day as well but with respect to consistency those are the limits you find. With respect to big bet games you find some small games and more mid limit PLO and PLO mix games.
Earlier this year they also added PLO5 and PLO6 (high and hi/lo), drawmaha’s, and double board bomb pots! The PLO variants definitely seem to be more popular during the day time in Europe. Run it once and run it three times (RIT/RITT) will be added to the games soon as well. But as always on Phenom there is something for everyone!
Honestly I’m probably being a little stingy with the grade as the progress over the last year or so with the development of the games has been quite impressive. But with that being said I would like to see Open Face Chinese because that has been on the list of requests since day 1.
Clubs (your own private club or game) is something that Phenom is also working on in the background as well. This will give you the ability to have your own private game on the site in a mash up of games and limits of your choosing. While details have not been released at this time, nor a timeframe, the ability to play with your friends using Phenom’s software is something that I imagine many people will want to use in the near future. If people are interested I would also consider starting a small LearnMixGame club where people can come play and get free coaching from using the hand histories in the club. Let me know if anyone is interested!!!
Software:
Original Grade: B
Current Grade: A-
One of the things I respect the most about Phenom Poker is that they decided to build their platform from scratch. They did not copy/paste like some of the other sites or purchase leased software. They wanted full control and understanding of what was going on and built that vision from the ground up. Not only that, they had to integrate the software with the polygon blockchain doing something that had never been done before for a poker site.
The grade has improved since the last time I wrote an article mainly because the software is so much better now. Not only visually but also game play is smooth and quite enjoyable. There are a few things I would like to see in the future especially on mobile but for now I’ll give them grace. At this time the only way to play on the site is on your browser. However, in the near future, they will be releasing a desktop client for both Apple and Windows products.
One thing I would love to see is the development of ways to make the game more interactive. Fun haters like BaseBaldy don’t like the throwables, but honestly it does make the game a little more banter friendly and can definitely lighten the mood. If you want to tell BaseBaldy that you LOVE throwables please feel free to harass him on his X account here: BaseBaldy on X. I also know Phenom is working in the background to make the avatars more interactive (so after all that traffic goes back to Baldy telling him all you reading this want throwables, his avatar will be able to bodyslam my avatar) which again should make the game even more fun and entertaining. Phenom has done a great job making the poker side of the site very enjoyable, now the fun side could use some work as well!
Older desktop (browser) version:
Newer desktop (browser) versions:
Desktop Replayer:
Older mobile versions:
Newer mobile versions:
Honestly if you have not tried the mobile version I highly recommend it!
While there have been several bugs along the way and at times that has definitely hurt the token price, the majority of the bugs at this point in time seem to be squashed. I do get occasional feedback about the game play and when I relay that message up the chain of command, if it makes a lot of sense to get something done, Phenom does a great job of moving some of those ideas up the stack to work on those quickly…
…so make sure to tell them to start working on those throwables…
…looking at you Baldy…
Tournaments:
Original Grade: N/A
Current Grade: C-
The last time I wrote an update I mentioned that Phenom needed to have tournaments launched. Like yesterday. While they have launched tournaments this is by far where they are lacking the most at the moment.
To be honest I think there is some merit for giving them a lower grade here, not because of the software or how the tournaments are run, but because of lack of players, the lack of more daily tournaments, the lack of bigger tournaments, and the lack of a tournament series. However I know this is technically still the testing phase and they have built something not seen before so I have to give them grace. With that being said their competition is way ahead of them and pushing tournaments out like me eating Altoids writing this so they need to make sure this next year is a phenomenally good year for their tournament development and release.
As of this writing they are putting 44 daily GTD tournaments on the slate starting next week which will increase their daily tournament schedule by a fair bit.
Right now with the way it is on Phenom with smaller fields, if you like to play tournaments with a relatively short structure (No 5 hour late ragging here…) and like OVERLAYS!!!! Phenom routinely misses them and you can find some great value in those events. I also believe that the rake structure is one of the better ones for tournaments anywhere you can play.
One thing they have done and implemented lately is a daily mix game freeroll that starts at 2pm EDT and 1am PST. I’m a big fan of this for a few reasons. One is that you get familiar with the Phenom mix variants. Secondarily you get a much more realistic sense of what people will ACTUALLY do against you in a poker game when money is involved. When you play with play chips you will be able to learn the game and rules fairly easily but overall strategy is lacking because a lot of your opponents are just there to have fun and don’t care about the results. Add some real money into the fray and the strategy drastically changes to something you might actually see at a WSOP event! You can come and play all the mix games, games that a lot of people reading this might not be familiar with, for free and learn them without having to put any money up. And for anyone that wants a free review of one of those tournaments just sign up here for a Phenom account and send the recording of the tournament to [email protected]
Security:
Original Grade: No Grade
Current Grade: B
Honestly, the security portion in my last post just slipped my mind. And while I believe Phenom is doing all the right things with respect to security and making sure all players are keeping up with the integrity of the game, there was an incident earlier in the year that does need to be addressed in this blog post.
1st off, I have been told that players have been kicked off and banned for RTA and collusion. So Phenom is monitoring the play at their tables constantly. 2nd, there was an incident earlier in the year where a phishing email was sent to several players. As someone who received it, I can verify that it was a good replica of something that Phenom would have sent. In the future however if you do receive one of these emails and even if you do happen to click on the link embedded, if you have 2FA enabled they cannot touch your wallet as you have the authenticator to give final permission on Phenom. So if you do have an account on Phenom please make sure to use 2FA.
With respect to staying safe, Phenom requires you to sign in every time using your email. You are then sent a numeric code to enter to log in. Once on the site you have the option to activate 2FA and I RECOMMEND everyone who is on the site uses it. For all transactions like registering for a tournament, sitting down in a cash game (these two actions are sending to the blockchain so yes they are considered a transaction), sending money, swapping PHNM for USDT, you are required to enter your 2FA to be able to move your funds around. With respect to cash games you will only be asked once every 24 hours as buying into multiple tables or rebuying would be a hassle.
Communication:
Original Grade: A+
Current Grade: A+
Phenom’s Discord link: Phenom Discord
Still one of their strongest attributes as the communication with the team is still as easy as it’s ever been. If you want to connect to their discord you can still ask questions with the founders and the team itself. No random support staff is answering the “calls”, it’s the team and the founders themselves. Whatever platform you choose to use they get back to you. YouTube, X, Telegram, Discord, (all social links attached) they respond in a very timely manner and make sure they get on any issues.
From day 1 of the launch they have emphasized that Phenom is owned by the poker community for the poker community. Earlier this year when the token pierce hit rock bottom there had been some issues with the software and the backend. To be honest a lot of players were upset, not only with the issues, but at the speed of releases and the lack of games/players. I honestly believe had it not been for their transparency and communication with the active players and supporters on Discord there was a chance that Phenom would have just failed right there
As I mentioned above, one of the most upvoted ideas from the community earlier in the year was to lower the rake and Phenom did just that. If the community is interested in an idea or has a brand new idea, Phenom will definitely entertain it. It’s honestly one of the more refreshing things about Phenom. Not just their ability to communicate, but to bring new things to the space with an attitude that if it’s good for the community, let’s get it done!
Closing Thoughts:
As someone who has played on the site since day 1 I can tell you with confidence that the second half of the year was a much more enjoyable ride than the first. There were a bunch of issues at the launch and the first few months, the token price hit its low, and there just seemed to not be much action on the site consistently. Had it not been for the community, the communication of Phenom, and the team behind the scenes, there is a chance I would not be writing this today.
However the second half of the year was amazing to be a part of. Huge signings, nose bleed action, new games, upgraded software, and a token price that went parabolic. It won’t be easy to keep the momentum going, but if the last six months was a preview of what could be for the future, buckle up!!
Thanks for reading!
Good luck at the tables! Play well! Bye Bye!
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