We have also thought about doing Royal Flush and 4 of a Kind bonuses on the ring games. Would anyone else be interested in this and would it encourage you to play more on the ring games? If so we can possibly get this implemented.
Yes to that. It could be just enough incentive to get all those freeroll abusers to play RGs and buy-in tourneys.
Other thing to consider are loyalty points, earned by playing raked games and based on rake contribution (to avoid abuse). You could then just reward player with most points earned (weekly?) or let exchange points for chips etc.
And if it's not too hard to implement, I'd like to see referral program. There's no harm in having that. If I have some spare chips I could do some small affiliate giveaway.
One thing I keep thinking about here is that the "soft rollout" of the site might have been a mistake. That is, many people have probably stopped by, seen the place abandoned and they'll never come back. I wonder if the OP had say, started advertizing a few weeks or a few months
before opening, building hype and expectation, then, on opening weekend, be sure to pay like 20 or 30 people to play all weekend long in ring games, obviously lots of parties and freerolls, then who knows, everyone's first impression would have been of an amazingly busy place, and they'd have returned the next day, keeping the place busy.
At this point, the place really only has freeroll vultures, almost no actual action between players. I'm not troling either, I like the site, I'm trying to figure out how it can be fixed.
I wonder if the same strategy could still be used, shutdown for a few weeks, build the hype for the reopen, make sure it's really busy when you open doors. There's a real critical-mass/bootstrapping problem that has to be overcome somehow.
To be honest, those vultures feel like they are bots sitting out.