Ep. 205: Restoring the winning edge for recreational poker w/ John Caldwell from i3soft

About this episode

John Caldwell discusses his journey from the music industry to founding i3Soft and the challenges in the online poker landscape.

Ep. 205 features John Caldwell, Co-Founder of i3Soft, a gaming technology company building next-generation poker and casino products designed to improve player experience, increase liquidity, and bridge the gap between poker and casino gameplay. Hear them discuss: John’s unconventional journey from the music industry (Atlantic Records, Stone Temple Pilots, Hootie & the Blowfish) into poker and eventually gambling tech Building PokerNews into the leading global poker media platform and later transitioning to PokerStars during the online poker boom The core problem with online poker today: long tournament times and a broken experience for recreational players The vision behind i3Soft, including AI-assisted tournament formats (“Skip It”) designed to shorten gameplay and restore balance between pros and casual players “Poker Casino” and the strategy of using poker-adjacent games to improve cross-sell from poker into casino products Challenges of selling a new category to operators, and why liquidity remains the biggest barrier in online poker The four-year product development journey, including a failed early build and eventual breakthrough to launch Funding i3Soft through a mix…

People in this episode

Guest: John Caldwell

Topics covered

• poker technology
• gaming industry
• player experience
• liquidity in poker
• entrepreneurship
• product development
• online gaming

Keywords

• recreational poker
• gaming technology
• AI-assisted tournaments
• cross-sell strategy
• online poker
• product development
• liquidity

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: i3Soft, PokerNews, PokerStars, Atlantic Records, Stone Temple Pilots, Hootie & the Blowfish

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