Who runs a standalone room
Operators who want a poker room of their own, with their own player pool, rake settings and brand, rather than a skin on someone else's network. Typical readers run a community that already plays poker, hold a licence in a market where poker is ring-fenced to residents, or run a casino brand big enough that its poker players would fill tables without outside help. If you only want poker as one more tab for existing casino or sportsbook players, read poker integration instead.
The direct answer: go standalone when you can fill your core tables from your own players and you need control a network will not give you. Join a network when you cannot.
Liquidity is the product
A casino game works with one player. A poker table needs several players at the same game, the same stake and the same hour. Every variant, stake level, tournament format and time zone you add splits the same database into smaller pools, and an empty lobby is the first thing a new player sees.
Regulators know this. France, Italy, Spain and Portugal signed a liquidity-sharing agreement in July 2017, and Portugal joined the French and Spanish pool in May 2018. In the United States, Pennsylvania became the sixth member of the Multi-State Internet Gaming Agreement in April 2025, alongside New Jersey, Nevada, Delaware, West Virginia and Michigan. The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board said the move expanded the pool of online poker players by more than 50% and allowed larger prize pools without higher buy-ins. Markets pool players because ring-fenced rooms struggle to fill tables. A standalone operator faces the same problem with no treaty to fix it.
Signals that point to standalone or to a network
| Your situation | Points to standalone | Points to a network |
|---|---|---|
| Player base | An existing community or casino database with active poker players | Poker players you still have to acquire |
| Market | Ring-fenced to residents, with no network licensed there that you can join | Open to a network that already runs tables in your markets |
| Game offer | A narrow offer: one or two variants, a few stakes, scheduled tournaments | A full lobby at every stake from the first day |
| Control | You need your own rake, rakeback, table rules and game ecology | The network's rules are acceptable |
| Integrity team | You can staff collusion and bot review yourself | You want the network to run integrity centrally |
| Time | You can spend months building liquidity before it pays | You need full tables at launch |
Two or more answers in the network column usually settle it. The common hybrid is a network skin at launch and a standalone room once the database is large enough. That hybrid only works if the player accounts and the wallet are yours from the start, so the move is a liquidity switch, not a migration.
What the platform has to police
In poker the operator is not a party to the game. GLI-19, the interactive gaming systems standard from Gaming Laboratories International, describes peer-to-peer sessions as environments where players play each other and the operator may take a rake, commission or fee. Fairness then depends on stopping players from cheating each other, and on a network that work is done centrally. Standalone, it is your platform and your team.
| Obligation | What GLI-19 asks | What the software must do |
|---|---|---|
| Seats | No player in more than one position unless the rules allow it; a random-seat option | Block multi-seating per account and device; offer random seating |
| House players | Shills and proposition players shown to everyone, with no operator profit beyond the rake | Flag house-funded accounts at the table and in hand history |
| Collusion | Detect chip dumping, soft-play, best-hand play and chat collusion | Hand-level analytics across accounts, linked devices and payment methods |
| Bots and assistance | Warn players where bots can affect play; detect software that tracks cards or predicts outcomes | Client integrity checks, behaviour scoring, a review queue |
| Session tracking | Record opponents for each game and spot players who join and leave until they find a preferred table | Seat-selection logs per player |
| Absence | An "away from play" status that skips turns and removes the player after a disclosed period | Configurable timeouts, handled as interrupted games |
| Reports from players | A way to report suspected cheating, collusion or bots | An in-client report tied to the hand ID |
Chip dumping is also a way to move money between accounts, so the collusion queue and the AML queue should see each other's alerts. Our anti-fraud and risk module is where we connect the two.
What a standalone platform contains
- Game server for the variants you run, with certified shuffling. GLI-19 has the lab review the shuffling and scaling source code, not only the outputs.
- Tournament engine: scheduled, sit-and-go and satellite formats, prize-pool rules, late registration, cancellation and refund rules.
- Rake engine: rake percentage and cap per stake, tournament fees, and the rakeback or loyalty model built on them.
- Player accounts and cashier: KYC, limits, self-exclusion and payments, shared with your casino or sportsbook if you run one.
- Clients: desktop for multi-tabling regulars, mobile and web for everyone else.
- Back office: table and tournament configuration, hand history search for disputes, integrity review, and reports that show rake and fees separately, as GLI-19's reporting section expects.
Licences that cover poker
Check the scope before the software. Anjouan and Tuvalu each cover poker in one licence. Cyprus does not: poker is a criminal offence for private operators under its Betting Law. On the Isle of Man, a Full licence runs your own pool. Accepting other operators' players onto your servers, which is how a standalone room later becomes a network, takes the Network Services licence at £52,500 a year. The Commission describes it as useful where it is desirable to pool liquidity and operate networks.
Who should not launch a standalone room
- A new brand with no poker players and a budget for acquisition only. You would be paying to fill tables that a network already fills.
- An operator who plans to offer every variant at every stake. The pools will be too thin to sustain.
- Anyone without people for integrity review. Collusion detection produces alerts, and alerts need a person to decide them.
Where standalone rooms fail
- The empty lobby. Too many games for too few players, so every table shows one seat taken.
- Rakeback bought too early. Generous rakeback attracts high-volume regulars before there are recreational players, and the regulars leave once the margin is gone.
- Integrity left to the vendor. The software flags patterns, but nobody reviews them, and the first public collusion case does the damage.
- Accounts on the vendor's side. The room starts on a vendor-held player database, and moving it later becomes a migration rather than a switch.
Questions to ask any poker vendor, including us
- Which lab certified the shuffle, under which standard, and when?
- Which collusion and bot patterns does the platform flag, and who reviews the alerts on a standalone room?
- Can rake, caps and rakeback be set per stake and per market?
- Who holds the player accounts and the wallet: your platform or ours?
- Can the room switch between its own liquidity and a network without moving players?
- What does a dispute look like: who retrieves the hand history, and how fast?
Frequently asked
What is the difference between poker software and a poker platform?
Poker software often means the game client and table server. A platform adds accounts, cashier, tournaments, rake management, integrity tools and back office. A standalone room needs the platform; a network skin needs much less, because the network runs most of it.
How does a poker room make money?
From rake on cash-game pots and fees on tournament entries, not from players losing to the house. That is why liquidity, not house edge, drives revenue: more hands dealt means more rake.
Can I start standalone and join a network later?
Yes, if the player accounts and the wallet are yours from the start and the network accepts your licence. For a brand without poker players, the reverse order, network first and standalone later, is the safer one.
Can poker run on the same account as my casino?
Yes, and it should. One account and one KYC record mean one self-exclusion and one set of limits. How the wallet changes for poker is covered on the poker integration page.
Do I need a separate licence for poker?
It depends on the jurisdiction. Anjouan and Tuvalu cover poker in their single licence; Cyprus prohibits it. Check the licence scope before choosing software.