Grow your online club

This is the very first and most important choice. Each platform has its own features:

• PPPoker — historically the most popular global club app, with a huge international audience
• ClubGG — strong in the US, gaining popularity in Latin America
• Suprema Poker — created by Brazilians for Brazilians, with the largest local traffic.

It may not be obvious, but the main selection criterion is which league (union) you plan to join. The league determines traffic, guaranteed prizes, and club reputation more than the app itself.

A league is an association of several clubs into one network to increase the general player pool. Without a league, your tables will be empty: even if you have 50 active players, this is not enough for continuous cash games and major tournaments.

Benefits of joining a league:

• General player pool = constant action at the tables 24/7
• Higher guaranteed prizes in tournaments due to more participants
• Technical support from the league
• The league's reputation can protect your club in the eyes of new players

• Player acquisition and retention
• Processing deposits and withdrawals (can be automated)
• Crediting chips to players
• Planning the tournament grid
• Creating tournaments
• Opening cash tables
• Sometimes playing at the tables to attract attention to them
• Financial calculations (paying rakeback to agents and players)

Club host tasks:

• Player acquisition and retention
• Processing deposits and withdrawals (can be automated)
• Crediting chips to players
• Financial calculations (paying rakeback to agents and players)

League tasks:

• Planning the tournament grid
• Creating tournaments
• Opening cash tables
• Acts as a financial guarantor. If players of your club won money, the league will ensure financial parity from players of clubs that lost to your players.
• Designing and conducting promotions for players
• Creating content for publication on social networks and attracting players' attention

The hardest stage is the first 30–60 days. Empty tables deter even loyal players. Launch strategies:

• Freeroll for new players — a free tournament with a real prize (even R$ 200–500) for registration. This is the cheapest way to collect your first database
• Referral bonus: each registered player receives a chip bonus for each friend brought in
• WhatsApp group — create a separate group for club players. This is the main communication channel in Brazil: announce tournaments, publish results, create a community
• Agree with 5–10 regular players (friends and family) to "fill" the tables in the first weeks — live traffic attracts new players

• You know what types of games and limits your players usually ask for. Tell them specifically about those.
• Send links to specific tables so that the player sits down and starts playing immediately.
• Make a WhatsApp group and an Instagram account to promote cash games, tournaments with large guarantees, freerolls, and promotions run by the league.
• Post stories from the club's WhatsApp account, they attract attention.
• Discuss with the league, maybe they have special promotions for players in new clubs.

An agent is a person you recruit to attract new players. They work under your ID, receive a part of the rakeback from the players they bring, but all responsibility for their actions lies with you as the main agent. Sometimes, a club's rake can be generated more than half by players brought in by agents. The more agents you have, the better and the lower the dependence on a single one.

The key word here is "quality". Those who play long and pay on time. Often recreational players are more profitable for the club than professionals — look at your deal with the league. Agent motivation tools:

• Create a ranking system: the more volume the sub-agent supports, the higher their percentage
• Regularly share data on player activity with agents — this helps them work with the audience
• Introduce an active player bonus: if an agent's player generated more than X reais of rake per month, the sub-agent receives an additional bonus.

This is a real industry risk. Documented cases of club creators disappearing with money are not uncommon.

For protection:

• Never hold large balances with sub-agents — perform weekly or even daily settlements.
• Introduce a rule: a sub-agent does not hold more than the equivalent of one day's transaction amount
• Require sub-agents to provide personal guarantees (personal data, copy of document)
• At the first signs of unreliability — immediately block access to the club and notify the league
• Contact the league: most major leagues have a protocol for resolving such situations and can help with refunds or compensation

A club host's income is built on several sources:

• Rake. This is the main and most stable source of income. If the club is not in a league, the club receives all of its rake and then divides it with agents and players. If the club is in a league, part of the rake goes to pay for league services.
• Jackpot. Many clubs charge an additional ~1% of cash pots into a special fund and play it out among players who get into certain situations (for example, lost with a quad). This is a powerful retention tool, not just a source of income.
• Rebate. Some leagues introduce rebate — a system where the club whose players lost receives a bonus, and the club whose players won pays an additional fee. These bonuses help support losing players, and the club host can invest them in promotional campaigns for players. Be careful with Overlay on guaranteed tournaments. If you announce a tournament with a guarantee of R$ 10,000 and collect only R$ 8,000, you cover R$ 2,000 out of your own pocket.

Switching leagues or platforms is a serious decision that needs to be made deliberately. Grounds for switching:

• Delays in payments from the league more than 2 times in a row
• A sharp drop in traffic in the league (more than 30% in 2 months)
• Identified systemic problems with fair play that the league does not resolve
• Another league offers significantly better rake-sharing conditions AND has comparable or higher traffic

After analyzing failed clubs and success stories, one systemic mistake stands out: club hosts try to scale first and build an operational base later.

Specific manifestations of this mistake:

• Announce large guaranteed tournaments before gathering a stable audience → accumulate overlay debts
• Hire sub-agents without verification and agreements → lose money on fraud
• Do not keep records of transactions → cannot resolve disputes and lose player trust
• Compete on rakeback with large clubs, reducing their margin to zero → the business is unsustainable