P2P Poker brainstorm session - Page 3

Right now I am fairly confident that the system itself would work well. I don't know if we can get a large userbase.

"If you build it, they will come"

good luck making ads to attact fish & get them displayed with 0 rake

fish don't care about the rake they'll just play on ftp/stars/whatever and regs will keep playing there to play vs them

The current proposal does have rake.

There biggest selling point we would have is that the network is completely open. Anyone can write their own client: full 3d with unrealistically beautiful waitresses walking around in the casino saying "stick it alll in.. I want to see all of it in" whenever you move the bet size slider too hard and amazingly realistic backgrounds. Text-based client for the console. Clients that run on phones, inside your browser, on your microwave status screen or your graphic calculator.

Server side is completely open too. Got a great idea for an ad campaign? Join the network, run the campaign, bring in the players and profit.

By opening poker up like this where anyone can host a server or make a client and join the existing community, you have a strong culture of competition and creativity that will give us a better experience for a fraction of the rake.

Fudyann did a good job of giving some examples of the potential of an open source poker system. It's highly likely that a project like this with any popularity at all would quickly surpass all other poker clients in design and functionality. All the external programs people use like TableNinja and HUDs can be built in. As far as advertising goes I think a great software low or no rake site would sell itself in many cases. Also viral marketing of free tools like facebook and twitter have made many upstart companies successful very rapidly.

avatars using webcams instead of pics would attract fish lol

So, next problem: how are we going to implement transfers of money across servers? We cannot use a real bank because there are too many transactions, transactions cost money, and it would bring legal burdens, We need a virtual currency of some kind that is reliable and easily converted to ordinary currency. Bitcoin has been mentioned, I will look into that. Any other ideas?

The good thing about using a virtual currency like bitcoin is that it's 3rd party and things like deposits/withdrawals by the poker sites are just with the virtual currency. The problem is the stability of the currency (since such a relatively small amount is traded it can easily be manipulated) and also that the users themselves have to go through additional steps of purchasing/selling it. Ideally though we wouldn't need a 3rd party system and could somehow handle everything ourselves. I've been wrapping my head around this for a couple days now and haven't gotten anywhere. I'll pose the issue to some of my friends in finance and see if they can come up with anything.

hmmm... we could technically have the user deposit money, in USD, on a server and have the server do the conversions. but that opens up a whole new can of worms. instead of having your whole bankroll on the server it would be more robust if just your current bets and raises are escrowed.

That in turn requires the user to arrange for a virtual currency =( Maybe let the user decide what he wants. If he trusts the server, server does it, if he doesn't, server only escrows for current pot.

Also agree with your point about the stability of something like bitcoin.

On October 17 2010 20:39 Fudyann wrote: So, we'll have a similar system to email. There are a ton of mail domains and mail servers, we'll have a ton of poker domains and poker servers. When Alice@poker1.com requests to join a headsup table Bob@poker2.com is waiting on, the server at poker2.com decides if it trusts the poker1.com server. If it does, it gives Bob a guarantee that should poker1.com cheat, the poker2.com server will compensate Bob for the losses. This is making use of the fact it will always be able to prove what the real result of the hand was using cryptography.

How? You have to have a central authority which resolves "disputes", which accepts the cryptographic exchange as a proof and has the authority to force a decision upon both poker1.com and poker2.com

Poker1.com makes a similar judgment of poker2.com and makes a similar guarantee to Alice. If Alice cheats, poker1.com will compensate poker2.com for the losses, and if Bob cheats, poker2.com will compensate poker1.com for the losses.

The parties who make GUI-s need to be trusted. You can control the card shuffle etc. on protocol level using cryptography but you cannot control what GUI displays to the user. The GUI may show the user as if the hand is still going on while in fact it folds the hand on behalf of the user?

Trust-related, how do you ensure that the clients do not establish a side communication?

Next, for every hand dealt, poker1.com and poker2.com engage in a cryptographic protocol that allows neither to influence the card dealt, but allows both to verify if either cheated. The players engage in betting rounds, new cards are dealt, until it is time for showdown. Both players reveal their cards Suppose Alice@poker1.com won the hand. Poker2.com can verify that Alice@poker1.com indeed won the hand, sends the money to poker1.com, which passes it on to Alice.

If poker1.com and poker2.com ask a very modest rake, they will make enough money to compensate the players in the event of cheating and make a good profit besides. If poker1.com is charging too high a rake, Alice cancels her account with poker1.com and signs up with poker3.com. Since poker3.com is just starting out, it can ask a reputable organization like poker2.com to escrow for it until it has built up a reputation of itself.

Isn't the last part just like the skins/networks like iPoker or whatever network it is (where they vary effective rake amount by offering rakeback deals). Only they don't have the authority problems above.

Overall I like the idea, but once you have rake it becomes hard to understand why it should be successful. There are many poker rooms with less rake than PS/FTP but they are so much less popular. What makes this thing better than them, what's the unique selling point?

If I set up a new poker room, I start with 0 users. In our network, you join the existing network. So people can experiment with ideas without having to split the poker community to make it work. That is the unique selling point, and that is what will lead to better quality experience for a fraction of the current rake.

Don't most of those networks have common player pool?

What is the cost of entry? Can you join that network right now?

So the player pool is shared.

If you want to implement a new poker client etc. you still have costs,
and the fee (if any) for joining an established network is part of the investment you have to get things going. And you are paying for a service, namely-that of the centralized trust/authority system which handles a lot of messy stuff. In your model, it is not clear who does all this.

On October 19 2010 16:55 pluzich wrote: So the player pool is shared. If you want to implement a new poker client etc. you still have costs, and the fee (if any) for joining an established network is part of the investment you have to get things going. And you are paying for a service, namely-that of the centralized trust/authority system which handles a lot of messy stuff. In your model, it is not clear who does all this.

Well it should be decentralized. If there's a node system you could randomly have a control assigned. As long as there's enough nodes (servers running a room) the network will always remain up and power remain even.

Pluzich: I'm trying to understand but I'm not sure what services exactly you think would be centralized. Nobody gets "control assigned". There is no "authorization stuff". In that sense, the network is completely decentralized.

It's still semi-centralized because we need to give some nodes the chance to build a reputation strong enough for escrowing.

On October 19 2010 05:21 Fudyann wrote: So, next problem: how are we going to implement transfers of money across servers? We cannot use a real bank because there are too many transactions, transactions cost money, and it would bring legal burdens, We need a virtual currency of some kind that is reliable and easily converted to ordinary currency. Bitcoin has been mentioned, I will look into that. Any other ideas?

This sounds like a good question to pose to slashdot.

On October 19 2010 18:09 Fudyann wrote: Pluzich: I'm trying to understand but I'm not sure what services exactly you think would be centralized. Nobody gets "control assigned". There is no "authorization stuff". In that sense, the network is completely decentralized. It's still semi-centralized because we need to give some nodes the chance to build a reputation strong enough for escrowing.

I'll break it down.
poker1.com has 100 players who are suspected to cooperate in DoNs. Some players from poker2.com say this is the case and demand money back.
poker1.com does not see enough evidence, poker2.com does.

Would you expect some random group of nodes to resolve such things?
Note that things can get arbitrarily complicated and you'll need lawyers etc to be able to make informed decisions.

On October 20 2010 06:29 pluzich wrote: Show nested quote + On October 19 2010 18:09 Fudyann wrote: Pluzich: I'm trying to understand but I'm not sure what services exactly you think would be centralized. Nobody gets "control assigned". There is no "authorization stuff". In that sense, the network is completely decentralized. It's still semi-centralized because we need to give some nodes the chance to build a reputation strong enough for escrowing. I'll break it down. poker1.com has 100 players who are suspected to cooperate in DoNs. Some players from poker2.com say this is the case and demand money back. poker1.com does not see enough evidence, poker2.com does. Would you expect some random group of nodes to resolve such things? Note that things can get arbitrarily complicated and you'll need lawyers etc to be able to make informed decisions.

Well the easiest and most expensive solution would be to hire a neutral 3rd party with non-disclosure agreements that handle investigations with all the data sent to them.

Reputational enforcement. Let go of the idea to go to court to resolve these questions. All poker hands can be logged by players from poker2.com, they can make the information public, and people will start blacklisting poker1.com until it does something about it. The incentive is very clear for poker1.com is to show it has banned the colluding players and is now clean.

Edit: Poker1.com can of course sue the players for damages in traditional courts, but that's between poker1.com and its players. Perhaps some poker rooms will instead ask players for a sum upfront that will be forfeited if they break the terms of service.