Cost/time to develop poker software? - Page 2 - Computer Technical Help

I was recently working on a web app that had far less features, complexity & security than a poker app, and there were about 4 years of coder time put in on the project when I left the company. That's full time, usually working much more than 40 hours week.

I wouldn't even attempt to build something like that with a team of less than 10 developers, I'd tell them one year and expect 18 months, and developer salaries alone are going to be well over a million dollars. On top of that you need to pay management, admin staff, QA (you'll need a lot of QA), a security expert and a business guy. Then there's equipment costs and other overhead.

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06-05-2011 , 01:43 PM

#27

sorrow

old hand

Join Date: Apr 2008 Posts: 1,531

Slight derail

https://betco.in/ - Open source bitcoin client/server poker software.

Look pretty raw at the moment. Looking at trying it out at some point.

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06-05-2011 , 06:23 PM

#28

daveT

S.A.G.E. Master

Join Date: Jun 2005 Posts: 23,955

According to Bigger Deal, it took party poker 15 months to create its poker branch. The developers didn't even know why the puck had to go around the table. They commissioned Mike Sexton to go to India and explain everything to them.

http://books.google.com/books?id=dJj...sexton&f=false

the book helpfully mentions that he also spent four months in the Dominican Republic training the customer service team. That extra is something vital to a poker site.

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06-06-2011 , 11:45 AM

#29

redCashion

veteran

Join Date: Feb 2006 Posts: 2,443

I've sometimes thought that there would be value to getting a bunch of poker professionals together to spend a year or two making a product like this and launch it for only play money. And then in X years when poker gets regulated, you jostle to become the next Tiltware and license your software to one of the American casinos that wants to get in on the game.

Yeah, building up any kind of reasonable user base with just play money games would be hard. But you would at least get feedback from users and be able to iterate changes.

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06-06-2011 , 12:35 PM

#30

egj

grinder

Join Date: Sep 2004 Posts: 673

betco.in seems to be built on top of software from:

http://pokersource.info/

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06-06-2011 , 02:09 PM

#31

msim

banned

Join Date: Apr 2011 Posts: 538

Quote:

Originally Posted by MrWooster

Your best option would be to buy into a franchise... For example, all iPoker sites use the same software from iPoker, just branded to their company. You pay a fee to iPoker to use their software / services.

The same goes for all other poker networks (networks as opposed to individual companies like Stars and FT)... merge, microgaming, cake etc...

I have no idea how much a franchise would cost tho, but its certainly going to be a lot cheaper (both in the short and long term) than writing your own software.

this n this

if you ask this q on 2p2...

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06-06-2011 , 03:31 PM

#32

RoundTower

ɹǝʍoʇpunoɹ

Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 14,563

Quote:

Originally Posted by redCashion

the big casino companies (Caesar's, MGM, Wynn) already have deals sewn up with some of the major sites to license their software if it becomes legal/profitable. These guys aren't going to be scrambling to make a business deal after the legislation comes into force, they think way ahead.

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06-07-2011 , 01:10 AM

#33

bmike7

enthusiast

Join Date: Aug 2010 Posts: 58

Quote:

Originally Posted by redCashion

I have an idea for a play money site that would attract a huge user base (and be profitable, legally), but 1) I don't know how to program and 2) I don't have the money to start a project like this. But if there were other people interested in pursuing this, then who knows....

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06-07-2011 , 06:22 AM

#34

wellju

BSOD and racetrack Ninja

Join Date: Feb 2010 Posts: 5,247

It seems you can get it for 500$ as well.

They're not talking play money from what I can tell.

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06-07-2011 , 07:11 AM

#35

jukofyork

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Sep 2004 Posts: 11,749

Quote:

Originally Posted by wellju

It seems you can get it for 500$ as well.

They're not talking play money from what I can tell.

ROFL - in 5 days too!

Juk

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06-07-2011 , 07:13 AM

#36

bmike7

enthusiast

Join Date: Aug 2010 Posts: 58

Quote:

Originally Posted by wellju

It seems you can get it for 500$ as well.

They're not talking play money from what I can tell.

Lol I pick the guy that can do it for $425 in 7 days!! he will give me "good performance"

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06-07-2011 , 07:50 AM

#37

jukofyork

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Join Date: Sep 2004 Posts: 11,749

What's funny is I thought the poster might be serious and use the ridiculously low quotes to weed out the idiots... BUT, then I saw "Budget: $250-$750 USD"

Juk

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06-07-2011 , 08:47 PM

#38

Zurvan

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Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 36,262

Quote:

Originally Posted by jukofyork

What's funny is I thought the poster might be serious and use the ridiculously low quotes to weed out the idiots... BUT, then I saw "Budget: $250-$750 USD"

Juk

The people that make those posts are the ones that bitch endlessly about how useless programmers are, and how they're always trying to "rip them off".

It's a pretty solid filter for idiots

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06-08-2011 , 12:28 AM

#39

ChazDazzle

adept

Join Date: Aug 2005 Posts: 947

As a reference, this industry insider speculates that FTP's software alone might be worth the ~$150m it owes US players
http://www.infiniteedgegaming.com/bl...%99s-last-out/

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06-09-2011 , 10:47 PM

#40

modulations

stranger

Join Date: Oct 2010 Posts: 13

PokerTH is another opensource project. They've been working on it for years and it's good but nowhere near perfect.

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06-14-2011 , 11:21 PM

#41

Johnny Douglas

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Join Date: Apr 2008 Posts: 8,480

Quote:

Originally Posted by wellju

It seems you can get it for 500$ as well.

They're not talking play money from what I can tell.

Seen a few of these, had one last summer that was $1000 to clone FTP (they cited FTP's feature list).

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06-15-2011 , 11:28 AM

#42

Mr_Burt

stranger

Join Date: May 2011 Posts: 14

A basic poker site to play with your friends can be done in a couple of days. Been thinking about doing it for long. Could for example be used to play heads up with "play money", and then paying (with real money) in private. It would be easy to have a built in statistics on what you owe or someone owes you.

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06-15-2011 , 12:00 PM

#43

MrWooster

veteran

Join Date: Mar 2007 Posts: 2,984

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr_Burt

A basic poker site to play with your friends can be done in a couple of days.

I would be impressed to see it done in a couple of weeks!

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06-15-2011 , 01:44 PM

#44

anononon

Guest

Posts: n/a

$425 on eLance? Let's do this ****. Who wants to split it with me?

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07-29-2011 , 12:17 AM

#45

matt nover

adept

Join Date: Nov 2006 Posts: 902

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr_Burt

I would like this, anyone develop anything like this? obviously doesn't have to look nice at all

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07-29-2011 , 09:55 PM

#46

sky4ever

journeyman

Join Date: Mar 2011 Posts: 259

Quote:

Originally Posted by MrWooster

I would be impressed to see it done in a couple of weeks!

Basic means it would only support holdem, reloadable playchips,etc. If you'd be impressed seeing that done in a couple of weeks, you obviously don't know much programing.

I'm not saying it's a piece of cake but an experimented programmer alone, can do this in a couple of days.

L.E. There are tons of free resources out there on the internet (the most important being fast hand evaluation algorithms).

Last edited by sky4ever; 07-29-2011 at 10:07 PM.

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07-30-2011 , 11:43 AM

#47

gaming_mouse

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Join Date: Oct 2004 Posts: 13,786

Quote:

Originally Posted by sky4ever

Basic means it would only support holdem, reloadable playchips,etc. If you'd be impressed seeing that done in a couple of weeks, you obviously don't know much programing.

lol

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01-13-2012 , 08:25 AM

#48

AntiHer0

adept

Join Date: Dec 2010 Posts: 1,167

Quote:

Originally Posted by MrWooster

I would say minimum 6-8 months from start to finish, including planning, development, testing etc... PokerStars and FullTilt software especially, are very sophisticated.

Cost wise, lets say the company charged $500 per developer per day, thats around $500K to $1Mill USD.

Complete guestimates but its certainly not going to be cheap.

sorry to bump an old thread but I thought itd be better than starting anew.

So you think around 5-6 developers would be needed to complete it in this timeframe?

Reason I ask is I'm about to start uni doing a double in computer engineering / computer science. I only really know AHK and a bit of VB.NET and C#, but during the course I hope to master the latter two and whatever else is needed.

What would be the best language to work with a team on a poker client? I have a couple buddies starting the course with me and we want to work on it part time while playing poker and studying.

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01-13-2012 , 02:50 PM

#49

MrWooster

veteran

Join Date: Mar 2007 Posts: 2,984

I would guess that most poker clients are written in C/C++ with some sort of framework.... but really not sure.

VB.NET and C# are probably not the best choices, especially if you want software that is cross platform.