I'm not interested in threats.

If the community can come together and develop a p2p client as a group effort, I would be interested in donating my time.

Being a jerk towards a mod ... while tempting at times, is not something I can condone.

Unless he's banging your wife. Then, I can totally see your point of view.

I have now been banned 5 times for posting in this thread. Someone please quote this so the information is saved.

There are two new projects that have started up that look very promising:
1. http://bitfrog.io/
2. http://www.bitnplay.eu/

Two projects already mentioned:
1. http://qixcoin.com/
2. https://nxtforum.org/stark-industries-%28nxtdice%29/

All for-profit projects, so it's not ideal poker like we would like (rake free), but even a for-profit decentralized poker network is better than a for-profit centralized one IMO. Provably fair, provably solvent, FAST deposit and withdraws for Americans (instant in most cases), can't be banned or brough down by a government that decides they want their cut, I'm probably forgetting something....

Spread the word, two plus two is scared of this information getting out- cut off the hand that feeds you sort of deal. They make a lot of money from centralized poker sites advertising, subforums, etc... Ironically the guy that keeps banning me Bobo Fett is listed as the "advertisement man" on his profile. Coincidence? I think not.

PLEASE QUOTE THIS... if not no big deal, I will create a new account when I get banned and deleted... they can't stop me short of screening all new registrations. Even then, they won't be able to tell its be until I make a post. IP bans don't work vs me.

IF you work for the poker media, contact me at everwhat777@yahoo.com and I will help you write a very detailed interesting story that American poker players would love to read, as it literally liberates the game of online poker for them.

Okay, I emailed you. Update, the email bounced back as undeliverable:"This user doesn't have a yahoo.com account (everwhat777@yahoo.com)"

I nevertheless appreciate the information about developments of decentralized igaming using blockchain technology. I do plan to discuss the topic, including poker utility, at the iGaming Super Show next week. (The igaming media will be at the panel(s))

I cannot grasp that whatever you have to share triggers some mass satori moment that is being "suppressed" by the centralized poker world or its minions. (I agree that the potential disruption of numerous industries by decentralized markets is pretty huge, and drawing opposition in some quarters.) However, form can trump substance when you are posting on someone else's turf. So, send me a response email to share your insights and background..

FWIW, I've known Bobo for a few years and Mason and Mat for a lot longer. They are a pretty pro-market bunch. I can guarantee you there is no supression or "fear" of losing advertising revenue from "centralized" poker operators involved in whatever banning or such has gone on.

there are def many posts that are being deleted.

bitfrog in this list looks quite interesting.
I personally don't like the fact that u have to buy the right to mine the rake, but it looks promising. It seems to innovate the blochchian further to make it work for poker.

BitNPlay i dont understand. it looks like p2p solution that charges rake for the owners? of the network. At that point I don't see the advantage over stars except that it might be cheaper to run and thus lower rake.

Crazy stuff!!!

Sorry, I do not see how they (bitfrog) have solved anything as yet with resect to game speed or provably fair:

"There is no single host; instead, everyone helps to maintain the game rule. When other players are playing the game, you will be part of the team to verify game results and transactions. Only after your confirmation will the result and transaction become valid."

Game Speed:

Really, a "confirmation", or two or three, with respect to EVERY card dealt, every bet, every call, every action that contributes to an outcome ?

Who will have time/patience to actually play the game ?

Potential for collusion..... Say what ?

Yeah, the "other players playing the game" will vouch for the fairness of a transaction/outcome, which then becomes irreversible. Anyone see something wrong with that model ?

This is a clever capital-raising attempt (to be charitable) to give them funding to work on a solution ?

Well there has been the concept of mental poker that has theoretical solved this. however i have not seen it in action just yet.

with mental poker the communication and the shuffle is solved and this should allow us to play the game. however the whole transaction part is not solved yet.

i don't understand the bitfrog solution just yet either. we will see. but it seems they are tackling some question that are not yet solved by mental poker.

what i find weird is that they are claiming to solved the "poker is rigged" aspect. that just does not add up.

Anyways.. I would like to move this topic along in the direction it needs to go. I feel like we have been talking about the same thing for the last 8 pages now. I think everyone realizes now that playing a game of mental poker is technically possible. You can play a game of Mental Poker, and you can prove the validity of the shuffle, deal, actions, and show down. However, although it is possible, it is a challenging problem to create an efficient Mental Poker Framework to provide a fluid real-time game of poker like people are used to on centralized sites.

As of 2011, the fastest Mental Poker Protocol I can find (written and patented by Sergio Lerner) took 14.64 seconds to confirm the validity of the shuffle and, more worrisome, it took 27.6 seconds to confirm the validity of a showdown. Obviously this slow of a speed would greatly hinder the game flow of a hand of poker. Consumers will not want to wait 30 seconds after each hand to find out who wins if it goes to showdown, or 14.64 seconds to shuffle. I direct you to his patent to learn more about the MPF- https://www.google.com/patents/US201...ed=0CDMQ6AEwAw

I had some short correspondence with him the past couple of days. I was mainly wondering about his project Qixcoin and if it is still under development, because it didn't seem like much had been done on it in a while. Although he had since moved onto other projects, it seems I have convinced him to pick the project back up. He has told me he is forming a team to finish Qixcoin. I think this is an important development because he spent years researching, developing, and experimenting with Mental Poker Protocols and I consider him to be the utmost expert on the subject (or at least the most knowledgeable person on the subject that I know of). Due to his prior efforts and expertise in with Mental Poker, I feel like the Qixcoin project is ahead of the pack compared to most if not all of the other projects.

I am getting side tracked, but I also asked him if he had improved upon the efficiency of the protocol since his patent was filed, and it seems that he has. He stated "Regarding performance, I solved each and every performance problem of MPF, and now it's 100% practical. You can shuffle the deck in less than 10 seconds, and you can obviously shuffle future decks in background while you're playing the first game. And also it's the only protocol that provides "drop out tolerance" which I think is a very important property for practical play."

This is very good news for this movement. Many people, including myself and others I have spoken to off the forums, had concerns on whether a MPP could be efficient enough for real time game play- at the same speed people are accustomed to on centralized sites. It seems that it is possible, which is great news considering this is one of the remaining issues. He did not tell me how he did it, and I don't really expect him to seeing as though there is now competition for him. That made me wonder if there was any new literature out on Mental Poker Protocols that might shed some light on making the protocol more efficient.

I found a research paper published this year that may have the answer, unfortunately I'm having trouble finding a free copy of it. If anyone can locate a free copy of this research paper, it may shed some light on the subject: http://dblp.kbs.uni-hannover.de/dblp...q=Mental+poker (it is the latest entry- 2014)

I'm not sure if this is part of the solution yet, but at least we know now than an efficient MPP is possible. I'm going to continue my correspondence with Sergio in hopes I can shed more light on the efficiency issues.

Collusion seems to be the main concern now, I have a few ideas but they need a bit of refining.. I plan on posting those ideas soon after giving more thought to the problem. I am convinced that a decentralized poker network can combat collusion just as well as a centralized one, it just takes a little thinking outside the box. As many have suggested, heads up poker, rush poker, and multi table tournaments can pretty much thwart collusion, but I see this as a half-assed solution. If we can't play cash games with 3+ players at a table or single table tournaments, then I'm afraid this will never catch on like it possibly could if the issues of collusion can be solved.

I would still caution against investing into the crowd funded projects until an answer is publicly determined of how Sergio was able to improve on the efficiency of the protocol. I am not sure the crowd funded projects have this solved, which could lead to them developing an unusable product.

is there any example of this working?

There is a C++ Library that has all the tools one would need to create a prototype, but I would consider it more applicable to academia than a functional working poker site. It was released in 2005, and some advancements have been made in efficiency and security since then. I don't think this implementation accounts for "drop out" tolerance, IE. if a player disconnects, the implementation will fail. This has since been fixed in a couple of protocols. I would venture to say that this implementation is way too inefficient for online poker anyways due to it being based on an older protocol.

If you are still interested in it, here is some more information:
Documentation: http://www.nongnu.org/libtmcg/libTMCG.pdf
Website: http://www.nongnu.org/libtmcg/

I think Sergio must have one, because he was able to calculate the efficiencies of different protocols, but he has not made it public.

Mental Poker is a very complicated problem, it has been studied in academia since 1979, and has been improved a lot since then. Cryptographers like the challenge that Mental Poker provides, if you search for research papers containing the words "Mental Poker" you will find a ton of research has been done on the subject. A lot of improvements, some improvements have been found to have security issues, so improvements are made on the improvements... The current state of Mental Poker protocols are the culmination of over 30 years of research by cryptographers in academia, and it is still not perfect. I think that highlights the complexity of the problem.

I guess I can't respond to PMs yet, but thanks Bobo for explaining your side of the story. I think it was partly a misunderstanding, and mostly my fault for getting around the temp ban. Thanks for allowing me to stay here and post.

Three buzz words anyone thinking of developing a decentralized poker network should research are Ethereum and Turing Complete. I have been told Ethereum can speed up the development of the network. Furthermore, the only cryptocoin designed specifically for this (that has made technical information public) is turing complete- and I don't think it's a bad idea for a Mental Poker engine to be so.

Can someone please review what I have wrote. This is my idea of what a decentralized poker network should look like. Things will need to be done differently for decentralized poker to work. Here is my vision of what features, business structure, and collusion/bot/multi accounting features a decentralized poker site should encompass. My goal is to solve the problem of detecting collusion in 2+ player single table games and SNGs/MTTs with less than 45 players, and bots/multi accounters.

It includes radical changes to the current online poker model, such as revealing all hole cards after about a 15 minute delay, HUDs built directly into the poker client, and a collusion/bot/multi-accounter dashboard to catch cheaters and review play before players cash out. As I said... radical changes must be made. If you are still following...

I'm not saying this plan is bulletproof yet, if you will notice its labeled v0.01, I feel like there might be a glaring issue with it somewhere. I would not be surprised, I need feedback on all of it. Please give me your opinion on what I did right, what I did wrong, and what I should add or improve. This is a large hurdle for making a decentralized poker network possible- stopping cheaters.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rhvqsa702k...0See%20It.docx

Gzesh please let us know what is percolating in Amsterdam. I am from the flyover states and have been working with the former director of the interactive gaming council, as well as some (forced) expat players and programmers. Here is where we are:

problems solved:
escrowing of in-play funds (tourneys) without payment processors
provable randomness
mental poker real-time processing
automatic and nominal transaction fees (no rake)
collusion requires supermajority of table and tables are randomly assigned within game type

problems that will be solved in the next quarter:
globally reviewable hand histories/game results
legal defense for US players

remaining problems:
decision on business model for poker client side software improvements (paid download? ad supported)
Forced updating of software
integrity of game with disconnected host
cash game processing/immediate access to funds when standing up
marketing/increasing comfort with cryptocurrency
Any sort of oversight for multi-accounts, laundering, account theft, problem gambling, banning, etc.

Wanting to find answers to a few more of these problems before moving forward with fundraising. Any ideas and opinions welcome

Let me preface this by stating that a decentralized system will work great for sports-betting and casino gaming channels but I am less confident about the delivery of a competitive poker product to the market.

Re : "collusion requires supermajority of table" .... how does your answer solve for "two guys with cell phones" ?

Re: "legal defense for US players", that has not been an issue for players except for Washington State. However, the answer for the "operator", however decentralized is not a "problem", rather it is a reality that a business is open to legal risk for sure, even if it has no "server" or game being operated by it directly. Cf. Recent DGE Letters to Online Gaming Marketers.

Re "real time processing" of game actions, the problem is speed, not whether it can be done in "real time". The speed in the literature I read thru so far is WAY too slow to compete with any centralized game engine. BTC in/out and BTC denominated games were discussed by me with some new ventures in Amsterdam, none of them see a reason to tackle a decentralized game engine so long as they can do better than SWC at processing bitcoin in/out and running decent game software.

I DO know how something along the lines of Ethereum projects can solve trust as to payments/funds ,and a certified RNG and published hand histories can provide a market check using something like PokerTracker.

Given the likely ability to get a recognized gaming license outside the US, a bitcoin-denominated site, with decent game software and run with a fairly transparent hands reporting system could lock up much of the bitcoin-affinity market, such as it is. (Folks left Stars in the US because they were forced to do so, it was never a matter of trust of the site.)

I also know how to leverage the cost savings from using bitcoin processing as well.

I am pretty certain there will be new "centralized bitcoin friendly", licensed poker coming from both traditional and new operators. Maybe even in the US licensing jurisdictions if the operators there have a mind to seek approval.

Feel free to contact me for suggestions, but I still do not see the competitive balance weighing in favor of a decentralized game versus a centralized game that takes/plays in bitcoin.

The issues for poker are speed/smoothness of play and the under-appreciated function of a "House" to police collusion and decide any disputes or adjustments when things get off the rails, as they WILL at some point. At the end of the day, provided they can get instant cash deposit in and cash withdrawals out, I think most players still want a cop they trust watching the game and addressing disputes versus riding the rails with no one at the throttle.

Good post ^

At least there are some competing options. When legislation and protectionism closed some doors, BTC poker opened another one. It works well now. All that is needed is wider use.

The PokerStars sale may increase competition in the U.S.

The people promoting decentralized poker software appear to be overplaying their hand.

No, not necessarily. It is a complicated problem, but I don't think Gzesh completely understands mental poker on a technical-developmental level, as he is a lawyer and not a developer or a cryptographer. I don't mean any offense by that, I just don't think he understands that the efficiency problems have been worked out behind the scenes. All literature on Mental Poker is pretty much old research (what he is forming his opinion off of). I have been assured by inside sources (which are much more knowledgeable on mental poker and programming than either Gzesh or I can pretend to be) that the efficiency issues have been solved.

Policing the games is pretty much the only thing to be solved, but sadly no one has any interest in helping me come up with a solution. I am the only person that has put an effort towards it and no one will offer any opinions on what I wrote, although it seems what I came up with could work. I wanted to help with this, as the developers designing decentralized poker networks are not necessary that familiar with poker, how a network should be ran, and how to detect bots/collusion/multi accounting. They need feedback from poker players, but no one cares here so it's a lost cause. This is NVG after all, and not many people understand all of the benefits a decentralized poker network would provide. They haven't even all been listed in this thread.

Anyways.. I gave up on talking about it over here on p2p, as the mods banned everyone that was actually contributing to the thread, or people saw everyone getting banned and stopped posting here too in fear of getting banned themselves, or people just don't understand or care. There continues to be work done in the crypto currency world on solving the issues at hand, and I am certain this will become a reality at some point. Maybe not as soon as we had hoped, but it will happen.

It would be great if you could stop repeating this incorrect nonsense.

There have been a total of two people banned repeatedly in this thread, and one of them was you, who we've allowed back for the time being, so that means there's been one person banned from this thread. I actually don't think any of his bans were for anything he posted in this thread (especially posts relevant to the discussion), but for continually derailing other threads, spamming links to his own website, evading bans, lying about who he was, and making up accusations about 2+2.

So wherever you choose to discuss this, stop blaming 2+2 for shutting down the conversation when we've only booted one person who had gone completely off the deep end with his 2+2 accounts.

My apologies, I didn't mean to make it sound like that was the only reason. I realized how the statement could of been taken the wrong way before you posted your response, and added more reasons to the end of the sentence.

It is my honest opinion that the banning situation did have some affect on the conversation about the topic here though, as it dropped off very quickly around that time frame and no one will discuss it with me anymore on here. I have moved on to other forums where progress is being made.

I think the bigger issues are that people don't fully understand the numerous ways that this would improve online poker, and the fact that pretty much the only reason people come to NVG is to gossip, insult each other, drool about pros, and look at stupid photoshops.

i agree with this assessment. decentralized sports betting is already a technical reality with counterparty. its still not user friendly so we will see how long it will take for the public to accept it as a solution.

when it comes to anything real time i think bitcoin just does not help all that much due to its very slow speed. bitcoin is essentially a decentralized data store that is very slow because any entry into it requires consensus.

we either need a real time version of bitcoin or a different solution of bitcoin for it to work in real time applications or simply other solutions than bitcoin.

central systems also have other advantages over decentralized systems. all that said i think there are a few problems for dpoker to work that need to be sorted out.

Re: efficiency

You guys are thinking about it the wrong way.

There is no reason why the poker network has to built on top of Bitcoin, or any specific crypto currency for that matter.

The poker network can be it's own real-time network. You then would simply record hand histories, and the proofs that ensure the integrity of the game, on the block chain of a crypto currency (Bitcoin or not Bitcoin, it doesn't really matter.)

Even with a real time network there are some efficiency issues, but there are workarounds and I've been told it's already been figured out. There are several competing projects so everyone's being pretty secretive as to this point due to competition.

Re: centralized sites being better at detecting cheating, etc.

I believe if it can be done on a centralized poker network, it can be done on a decentralized one as well. I am specifically trying to come up with a solution to this problem. Can you please give me some feedback as to what I've proposed? Here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/m9z8iw29eu...0See%20It.docx

FWIW, I was in the poker software business for many years, an co-owner of a poker software company, which built, launched and continually revised a working poker software product in real money. I admit that managing software developers is like herding cats, but I got a pretty good understanding of the need for speed, as wel as the possible disconnect between developers and the market demands.

No, I certainly do not know a lot about the solutions offered by "mental poker", but I do not discount that a "olution" in programming terms may not be a "solution" in market requirements.

We will see, hopefully the solution fits the market.

I'll try and take a look.

.... and, yes, there are projects in development, for sure.

Hi lookingforfish2,

I have read you proposal with great interest as well as your posts. there are very few that really speak about this topic with much background.

I have been thinking about decentralized poker and if it is possible. I have seen the mental poker proposal but don't understand it in detail.

in my mind there are two challenges:

1. have a way to play poker in a decentralized way.

2. Ensure integrity of the game

1. Supposedly mental poker solves this, however I need to see it in action before I believe it. With this we could at least play HU

2. This is what your article addresses.

a) In d-poker we have a few issues. IF we just assume its decentralized like bitcoin or file sharing program anyone can connect. This is awesome for someone that wants to cheat especially with bots. Collusion is another thing that is very easy if I can just connect many time. Even if there are 100 user I can just create 1000 entries and dominate the field this way.

In my opinion Identity is a key thing we need in poker. Even with anonymous tables we must trust that some guy can't just login 100s of times and collude this way.

I think most of the solutions you have outlined are workarounds that do not work. The key thing about a centralized site is that they today have a pretty good idea of your identity. Behind every account is a bank account/credit card that automatically has an ID attached to it. In order to create 100 accounts online you need to have access to 100 actual IDs from real life. Not so easy!

Quite different with bitcoin or any other internet ID (like facebook). We simply have no way to ID somebody online.

I believe the only way to solve d-poker is to solve the issue of online ID. Some of the things you are describing go into this direction but I think everything you outline can be gamed.

I also have a few issues with some of the proposals you describe. I don't think that paying a large group of people to police the game and then rake the game to be able to pay these guys is great. I think I central site is likely more efficient at doing this. I also don't think rake is a good thing in the first place, if we need to rake we might as well stay with the status quo.

I do not like to make every hand available publicly. I think its a bad idea if everyone can be data mined (especially with bots etc).

Also if you create these accounts and history, this will create incentive to just create account after account if you want to cheat. It will be very hard to prevent this unless we draw a connection to real life - or create a true ID online.

So I think there a many holes still left. I would love to discuss these concept with you further if u care.

Thank you, this is some of the most thorough feedback I have received.

1. Yes, Heads Up poker is much simpler due to not having to worry about collusion. Rush Poker and Multi Table tournaments are a possible solution as well. Mental Poker is pretty much solved, there may be some efficiency issues left to work out, but I have spoken to an expert on the subject and I believe the problems can be worked out (if they haven't already.. again they're being a bit secretive on this part for now as it's kind of like the secret sauce.)

2. This is just a rough draft, I just published it for peer review, so thanks for taking the time to look it over.

I completely agree with you here. When I wrote the first draft of this paper, I was trying to come up with purely decentralized solutions to the problems. Unfortunately with today's technology, stopping multi accounting is not really possible in a decentralized manner. I agree my suggestions are mostly work a rounds. Someone suggested the most obvious answer to the solution, as it has been done for years on centralized poker sites, outsourcing identity verification whom would check a government issued ID and a utility bill. I have since added this to the paper.

An ideal solution would be decentralized, and perhaps it could be made to be that way in the future as technology advances, but right now outsourcing identity verification is the only way forward to stop multi accounting in a decentralized poker site. This adds an element of centralization, but it still has pretty much all of the benefits a decentralized poker network would have. Such as being provably fair games, a provably solvent poker network (no operating funds/player funds commingling), quick withdraws and deposits (depending on how collusion is solved), and I am convinced the rake would be a fraction of what is is with centralized sites. Heads up games could easily have no rake since the games wouldn't need to be checked for collusion. Furthermore, you wouldn't have to check multi table tournaments and multi table sit and gos as closely as single table cash games and sit and gos. I am convinced rake for those game types could be made to be much lower than what currently exists as well.

So, I am no longer that worried about stopping multi accounting- I feel like outsourcing identity verification is a sufficient solution.

Thanks for your feedback here, I agree what I have written is not a perfect solution. I am convinced that even though rake will need to be charged, it can be much lower than centralized poker sites due to there being less overhead. This is part of the beauty of p2p networks, just like Bitcoin can send money around the world for much cheaper than large money transmission services or bank wires.

The sad truth is that someone needs to police the games and check for collusion. You can create an algorithm that catches the more obvious colluders, but some forms of collusion are very subtle. Even the biggest poker networks (stars etc.) after years of refining their algorithm can't rely on it and need actual humans to review hands. It is a necessity to combat collusion.

I suppose this could also be outsourced, however I feel like that would be kind of shady. For this to work properly I think it needs to be as transparent as possible. No one could ever know if the outsourced company that checks for collusion is actually doing their job, or creating huge databases of hand histories, etcetra.

That brings me into you next concern:

All hole cards need to be viewable by someone to fully combat collusion. Pokerstars' collusion team can review all hole cards, and any other poker room for that matter. It is unfortunately a necessity as collusion detection algorithms are not perfect and some forms of collusion can be subtle. Furthermore, a decentralized poker network is handicapped in that centralized sites keep their collusion and bot detection algorithms private since it makes it harder for people to game the algorithms. In a decentralized site, that is not possible, even if it were I'm not sure it's a good idea. Are people supposed to just take our word that everything is under control? I think transparency in a decentralized poker network is key. And with the algorithms public, people could make minor tweaks to their collusion and/or bots that avoid detection. Human intervention is required to fully combat collusion and bots the best way possible. Since it's a necessity, we have two options (one of them I touched on earlier):

1. Outsource collusion detection - I feel like this would create a shady element of the poker room, and we already need to centralize the identity verification, so this would create another centralized part of the network. Anywhere there is centralization can be a weak point when it comes to fairness and security. In order to be as transparent as possible, I suggest using method number two.

2. Make all hole cards public and let the community police for collusion. This way you do not need to worry about someone(s) data mining, as everyone will have access to the hand histories. I suggest creating a marketplace to allow people to judge for collusion in reported hands/players, or hands/players that tripped the cheating detection algorithm. All hands should be reviewed before a player is allowed to withdraw funds. If not then someone could cash out and crypto currency transactions are non reversible, so detecting collusion before funds are cashed out is very important.

2a. I'm not sure if you missed this part, as you brought up being worried about data mining, but I am suggesting integrating HUDs into the poker client. This makes it a non factor that people could data mine from the collusion detection market, provides a certain amount of convenience since most people use HUDs anyways, and eliminates one reason fish don't like online poker (because of people using HUDs against them.) Everyone would be on a completely even playing field.

2b. I realize that revealing hole cards after a set amount of time and implementing HUDs into the poker client are radical changes to current poker networks, but I feel like since we're making the future of online poker, that some radical changes have to be made. It may seem odd now, but I feel like most people will like the convenience that comes with having an integrated HUD, and the peace of mind they're not being cheated/colluded against by being able to see hole cards on a delay.

You gave me some good feedback, please continue to do so. Tell me your opinion about what I have said here as in the explanation for the things you didn't like.

Thanks