In the competitive landscape of iGaming, “The Network Effect” is the ultimate goal – a phenomenon where a service becomes more valuable as more participants join. The WePlay Network serves as a primary example of this principle in action. Today, we break down the mechanics of their success with Dmitry Starostenkov, CEO of EvenBet Gaming (the technology provider), and Gasper Janezic, CEO of WePlay Network (the operational architect).
This case study explores how they solved the liquidity challenge and built a retention-heavy ecosystem that scales across diverse markets.
Q: Dmitry, from a provider’s perspective, what was the primary technical “pain point” WePlay needed to solve to trigger the network effect?
A: (Dmitry Starostenkov): Liquidity management. A poker network is only as strong as its active tables. WePlay needed a backend that could seamlessly aggregate players from different partners while maintaining individual operator branding and data silos. We provided a flexible API-driven infrastructure that allowed them to scale horizontally without latency issues.
Q: Gasper, as an operator, why was the decision to form a network more attractive than running a standalone room?
A: (Gasper Janezic): It comes down to what kind of operator you are. Standalone poker is a serious product for serious poker companies, and plenty of them run it well, EvenBet powers a good number of those rooms. The math shifts when you’re a casino or a sportsbook operator adding poker as a second or third vertical. You don’t have a poker player base on day one, you don’t have a poker operations team, and you don’t have years of brand recognition inside the segment. Cold-start liquidity is the killer there, not the software.
A: network removes the cold start. The day a partner integrates, their players walk into rooms that are already full, with traffic across the formats and stakes their player base will actually choose. We bring the player pool, the 24/7 poker support, the ecology team, the anti-fraud and anti-collusion layer, the network promotions calendar. Their team keeps doing what they’re already good at, which is acquiring and retaining their own customers.
Q: How does the “Network Effect” specifically impact player retention in the WePlay ecosystem?
A: (Dmitry Starostenkov): It’s about game variety and availability. In a standalone room, a player might leave if a 7-Card Stud or high-stakes Omaha table isn’t running. In the WePlay Network, the shared pool ensures that 24/7 action is available across all variants. This “availability” is the strongest retention tool in poker.
Source Reference: Network Liquidity and Player Life Cycle Analysis
Q: Gasper, how do you maintain a consistent “player experience” when the network consists of multiple different partners?
A: (Gasper Janezic): Shared liquidity only works if the experience on the felt feels identical regardless of which skin a player came in through. We enforce that at two layers.
The first is technical, which is EvenBet’s domain: same RNG, same client behaviour, same hand history format, same table dynamics. A player can’t tell, and shouldn’t be able to tell, which operator brought the opponent across from them.
The second is the operational layer, and this is where networks usually fall apart. We run a shared promotions calendar so partners aren’t fighting each other for the same player’s attention with overlapping reloads. Bonus rules, rakeback structures, and tournament guarantees go through our ecology review before they hit the lobby. We protect the shared player pool from being damaged by one partner’s aggressive acquisition campaign cannibalising another partner’s recreational base. Players see consistency. Operators see protected liquidity. That’s the deal.
Q: WePlay has shown impressive scalability. Dmitry, how does the EvenBet engine prevent “technical debt” as the network grows from hundreds to thousands of concurrent users?
A: (Dmitry Starostenkov): We use a microservices architecture. Instead of one giant database, we distribute tasks – hand history, financial transactions, and the RNG engine – across specialized servers. This allows WePlay to add new partners in days rather than months, ensuring the platform grows faster than the competition.
Q: Data security is a major concern in shared networks. How do you ensure that Partner A’s player data is inaccessible to Partner B?
A: (Dmitry Starostenkov): We implement strict data isolation protocols. While the “gameplay” is shared at the tables, the “player account management” (PAM) remains decentralized. Each partner retains full ownership and visibility of their own database, which is a crucial trust factor in the B2B space.
Source Reference: ISO/IEC 27001 Information Security Standards
Q: Gasper, what has been the most surprising lesson learned regarding player behavior within a networked environment?
A: (Gasper Janezic): That brand loyalty in poker is mostly fiction until you give players the action they want. Operators worry joining a network dilutes their identity. The data tells the opposite story.
When we onboarded a partner who’d been running standalone for years, we expected their core players to grumble about seeing unfamiliar avatars at their regular tables. What happened instead was a measurable jump in session length and weekly visits from those same players. They weren’t loyal to a closed pool. They were loyal to good poker, and good poker requires opponents.
The other one nobody budgets for: recreational players, the ones every operator chases, are far more sensitive to time-of-day liquidity than people think. A casino can have 50,000 actives on the books, but if a recreational logs in on a Tuesday at 11pm and the only available game is heads-up against a regular, that player churns. The network solves a problem operators didn’t realise they had at the volume they had it.
Q: Let’s talk about the “B2B Advantage.” What makes the WePlay/EvenBet partnership a model for others looking to enter the market?
A: (Dmitry Starostenkov): It’s the split between tech and ops. We handle the 24/7 technical stability and RNG integrity, while WePlay focuses on partner acquisition and marketing strategy. This specialization allows for a much higher “velocity of growth” than a company trying to do both in-house.
The WePlay case study: key performance indicators
- Scalability factor: ability to integrate new skins via API in < 7 days.
- Retention Metric: 20%+ increase in average session time due to shared liquidity.
- Security standard: GLI-certified RNG and decentralized PAM architecture.
- Market reach: multi-currency and multi-language support as a core requirement.
Q: Dmitry, what is the next step for the WePlay technical roadmap in 2026?
A: We are looking at advanced AI-driven anti-fraud tools that work across the entire network to detect bot patterns faster than any single operator could on their own.
Q: Gasper, what is your final piece of advice for those looking to replicate the success of the WePlay Network?
A: (Gasper Janezic): Pick the model that fits the company you actually are. If you’re a poker-native operator with a built-in player base and a team that lives inside poker operations, standalone is a legitimate route and the right tech makes that work. If you’re a casino or a sportsbook coming into poker fresh, joining a network puts you in profit faster and shields you from the part of poker that catches most newcomers off guard, which is the operational side.
Ask yourself one question before you sign anything: who is going to wake up at 3am when a tournament with 400 runners and €80,000 in the prize pool runs into a problem? If the honest answer is “us, with a team we haven’t hired yet,” you want a partner who already has that team on shift. Take the rake share deal, put your energy where it actually earns you money, which is your own customer base, and partner with people who already live inside poker every day. Poker rewards specialists. Be the specialist on your side of the table, and partner with the specialist on ours.
Conclusion
The WePlay Case Study demonstrates that success in modern iGaming isn’t just about having a great game; it’s about building a scalable infrastructure that thrives on connectivity. By leveraging EvenBet Gaming’s modular technology, WePlay transformed a poker offering into a powerhouse network. The lesson for 2026 is clear: to scale fast, you must build for the network effect from day one.
Read more: The Gamification Trap: Can US Poker Attract the New Generation Without Losing Its Core?