Thank you and let me answer your questions as best I can.

1. I am not able at this time to reveal the specifics of the Deck Matrix only because of the proprietary nature of some of it's fundamentals and it's ability to give us the scalability needed to supply and online gaming operation. Please do not take it as being evasive, we have spent five years to build these systems and a substantial amount of capital and need to protect the nature of this innovative solution. Having said that, I will be very forthright with a complete explanation of its workings as soon as our patent attorneys advise that we can do so. In any event there are four patents that our public record at the U.S. Patent office and anyone is free to read those documents. The matrix system itself was subjected to a thorough examination by the independent gaming laboratory testing the system on behalf of the Gambling Supervision Control Board.

2. We have contracted with several independent companies that specialize in player identification and have enlisted the services of industry expects and professionals in collusion detection and well as incorporating analytical software that generate reports indicating various paterns and activities associated with colluders. We also have very strict policies regarding collusion including permanent removal from the site and if collusion is proven to have happened the players involved will face severe penalties up to and including forfeiture of all funds on deposit. A number of steps would of course have to be taken and the collusion would have to be proven beyond any reasonal doubt but I think the most effective deterent is the risk of the players having to face meaningful penalities for cheating and that is what collusion is. I also know from years of playing that players are the best sources for detecting collusion because poker players are for the most part very knowledgeable, intelligent people and very quick to pick up on these things happening.

3. When you can take a hand tracking program into a casino, the WSOP, or any other live poker venue and record and track game play, then we will allow them on our site. Poker is a game where invidual play individuals. Input from players and some gaming publications indicates the online players are split about 50/50 for and against on this issue, so whatever we do will not be satisfactory with half the players. As that is the case, if we were to allow such tracking software, I would also require players using such data analysis to be identified on the table so those not using it could make a decision regarding playing against these identified players.

Gene

Glad to see you address some questions.

Gene,

Thank you for being willing to answer questions here.

The patent application provides a lot of information. Please address some of the questions it raises, which have been brought up repeatedly in this thread.

1. Your deck matrix system, although obviously necessary logistically, seems to negate the original promise to deal a real deck of cards as shuffled, with one deal per shuffle just like a live game. You are apparently dealing a computer generated variant and not the original shuffle. Your patent says you might use up to 2704 variants (or 52 variants times 52 possible cut points). So the original shuffle is merely a "seed" for the computer to create more decks and no longer dealing real cards as shuffled. This is contrary to your marketing. Please comment on this.

2. If you are creating up to 52x additional variants of each cut point by fixed algorithm (which is what your patent says) to give you the needed 2704 decks per shuffle, then that is a predictable and exploitable pattern. How will you prevent someone who is observing multiple tables over time from figuring out one or more of these fixed repeating algorithms? If on the other hand, you are randomizing these deck variants rather than using fixed algorithms, that would be secure but would mean you are are in fact using a form of RNG contrary to your marketing. Please explain.

3. Since you are no longer going to deal each physical shuffle only once, but are in fact creating variants by secret algorithm, how does this make it any less likely that your deal is manipulated than at any other online poker site? I'm not suggesting that any site is rigged and I don't believe you have any intention of doing so. But if you are not going to deal the physical shuffle as it comes off the physical machine, then you have opened the door for any kind of manipulation to be done by any insider. How can you still prove this is not the case, if the video capture of the physical shuffle will not in fact show the order of the cards that ends up being dealt to the table? It seems the deck matrix idea opens that possibility and removes the very thing you have based your concept on. Even if your audit process says how the deck variant was created for that specific deal (reversal, odds/evens, etc per the patent) it still won't be apparent how a particular variant was selected for that table at that time. This could be random, or it could be by algorithm, or it could be by a rigged profiling system (I'm not suggesting it is). How will you show otherwise? Your entire concept is based on showing the provenance of the deck, so this seems essential.

4. This is really the critical point. You will be storing up many virtual decks to meet table demand and not using the physical shuffles in real time. Thus you will have a selection of many decks to choose from when one is needed at any particular table. How are these decks selected? In my opinion there are only two possibilities. The first is that you use some randomization method, i.e. an RNG. That is what you emphatically say you don't do. And the other choice is that they must be used sequentially as produced, and this must be somehow provable. Otherwise your method actually makes it easier to manipulate the outcomes than a site using a regular RNG method, not less likely. What's to stop you or another insider from choosing a stored deck according to any criteria you want to use? You know in advance the order of every deck. That doesn't provide any more confidence to players than an ordinary RNG, and some would say it provides less.


I trust you will provide candid answers. Thank you.

Thankfully we have smart people itt.

Gene I wish you the best, but it does seem like you are being evasive. When are you going to be able to discuss your product fully, in depth and without fear?

If you want to deal in the same way as a live casino, then there are many things you must factor in.

1. Some of the dealers must expose the bottom card before shuffling. They must then riffle the deck several times, but must leave the same card on the bottom of the deck. They must then cut the card to around the halfway point before dealing; thus ensuring a higher probability that this card will flop.

2. They must always put the winning hand on the bottom of the deck, prior to exposing the base card. This also ensures the ace is far more likely to hit the board than in one of those crappy RNG on line hands.

3. Players must be allowed to act out of turn.

4. There must a random mistake factor, where perhaps the board is misread ortoo much rake is deducted.

What other effects will you need to simulate a live game?

Hello Gene,

Thank you for your entry into this thread. I hope that you will be able to answer the questions we have about your innovative and interesting concept. I believe that spadebidders questions are truly the most pertinent and deserve close attention.

From the FAQ's at your website, I have taken the following text:

It is my understanding that the driving force behind your RealDeal concept is that the current RNG systems used at all other online poker sites are inferior to your new method, which is to replicate the "honesty and fairness" of the shuffling process which we see done infront of us when we play in a real-world cardroom.

In my opinion, the basis of fairness or unfairness as it relates to the dealing of a deck of cards is wholly concerned with randomness. That is, the absence of pre-defined sequence or manipulation of the shuffle. If a player was to choose your site over another, it would be because they have found reason to doubt the ability of that other site to ensure it's deal was random and without manipulation. In addition, that user would need to find more assurance in your method of delivering randomness than the RNG method; otherwise your site is no different to any of the other poker sites already in existence.

So in order to evaluate RealDeal against its competitors, I feel it is necessary to consider two main things: 1) randomness and 2) manipulation. The problem is that it is totally impossible to illustrate any advantage for RealDeal over its competitors as it relates to manipulation. The dealing system as you have described, though certainly impressive, would be simple to manipulate by faking the necessary data such as video or computer records of the shuffle, substituting the deck, changing the deck matrix data, faking the accreditation, etc etc. I am not suggesting that any of this would be easy, but I do not see how it would be any more difficult at your site than any other given sufficient malicious insider intent.

Your site of course is licensed and regulated but so are all the RNG sites. It is no less likely that fraud or manipulation will take place on your site than any other.

What about randomness? I personally do not have any problems accepting that the RNGs on well established poker sites are random. I have read the material about your Cut'n'Shuffle material, but actually found it less assuring than the similar statements found on Full Tilts website:

The text also includes certification from two separate agencies with downloadable certificates. Why should I feel that your shuffle is any less taintable than Full Tilt's? I do not see anything in your literature to suggest anything like the level of sophistication offered by modern RNGs. In fact I feel that the usage of mechanical methods is prone to error and I find the transfer of real world mechanical methods into data which is then processed in a digital sense to be less reassuring, not more.

Furthermore, I feel that though you are dealing from a deck of cards, you are being somewhat clandestine about the methods used to actually submit the sequences of cards to the table. It is very difficult not to look at the DeckMatrix system as another RNG, which seems to put into doubt the entire RealDeal philosophy.

I hope you can put some of these concerns to rest.

Thanks

What other considerations are required to organize an internet poker game?

For those guys who don't understand what an internal check system could mean when a internet poker hand is dealt:

One major point of an internal check system is the division of work. The work job "dealing an internet poker hand" should be divided into small parts and every part of the job should be allotted to a different worker (system). No one person (or system) should be allowed to handle the complete job. This means i.a.:

- The card shuffle system must not know which players get a certain deck or which player gets a certain hand. The task of the card shuffle system is the shuffling of the cards, nothing else.

- Since the card shuffle system works as a mechanic process and is therefore a bottleneck something like a deck matrix system is obviously necessary to accumulate a number of decks because of logistic reasons. The task of this subsystem should be to store decks, nothing else.

- The task of the deck dealing system is restricted to deal the cards and must not know which cards sequence is in a certain deck or in the deck matrix system when it chooses a certain deck (according to a reference number or whatsoever).

- Only one player can decide where the cards in a specific deck start.

- The Game Check system must only verify and certify that the game play and the results were accurate (that means i.a., that the deck dealing system dealt the cards exactly in the sequence as in the deck selected from the deck matrix system).

It is crystal clear for me that in such a system additional security checks are required. However, if an auditor knows for sure that there is now way to manipulate such an internal check system it is an easy job for him to verify that one single game was fair and accurate. If one person (or system) is allowed to handle the hole job, then the hole work job could be subject of a major fraud.

You would need at least one player every other table that is falling asleep because hes been there for 3 days.

For sure I would be able to berate and yell at the dealer because they are the reason I keep losing.

Seat changes.

"Deck change on table 420 please!!" Thats alway a fun waste if time.

How could you simulate grease on the back of the cards from the fat guy at the end of the table eating hot wings and sweating?

An online poker RNG uses hardware and software to generate random numbers, which are assigned to certain cards. This produces a random sequence of cards the same as all 52 cards stacked one of top of another just like in the real world. The cards are then dealt. This obviously is not exactly how it happens in a techincal sense, but this is the spirit of it.

In a real world casino, the dealer shuffles the cards. Everyone accepts that when done properly, this process produces genuine randomness. Thus it is correct to say that in a casino, the dealer is the RNG. His or her actions produce a random sequence of cards stacked on top of one another.

RealDeal uses a machine to shuffle cards. This machine produces a random sequence of cards and stacks them one on top of another ready for dealing.

So how is the RealDeal shuffling machine not a RNG?


From here: http://realdealpokerforum.com/attacking-real-deal

That sentence seems to pretty accurately describe any other poker sites RNG - a machine pumping out randomly ordered cards.

Sorry about the double post, but the conclusions drawn about the online shuffle in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMLst_Brvz4&NR=1


are categorically incorrect. It states that the online shuffle is "flawed", but the only flaw I can see is that it is not done in the same method as the real world shuffle. The only important factor is the randomness of the deck, which remains.

It also states that in an online shuffle, the "whole deck remains in play". This is actually pretty shocking. I am surprised that a company that wishes to be taken seriously would say something so logically banal in their promotional material.

The demonisation of the online shuffle in this video is blatantly ridiculous and the conclusions drawn are no less so. This video is a farce.

Really? How much are PokerStars paying you to come out with this tripe?

What a very well thought out rebuttal.

the video was a level right?

No

countdown to "Absolutely Real Deal Poker"

Real Dealers shuffle the decks and you can see them via webcam.

Pots and everything else will be calculated with an Abacus.

lol, sign me up

One Maltese pokersite offers this already.

It is to be feared that some pokereagles are afraid to suffer serious turnover drops.

Welcome in this real world.

I have not read the entire thread, obviously. However, I did watch the video.

Is the only argument against traditional online RNG poker the non-use of burn cards?

If so, that's silly. Cards are burned randomly, therefore I don't know what will come next. This does not affect my calculating of outs/odds.

Thus, it seems as though Real Deal is catering to those who think RNG is rigged.

It's absolutely what they're doing, they just won't say so directly, probably out of fear of lawsuit. After all, slandering the competition with false claims can probably lead to something like that.

They certainly didn't seem to have much problem publishing stephenmeares' manifesto though a while back which talked about all the laughable garbage you always hear about action flops and cashout curses.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVFJtm7VTys

Some people believe that and hate it to invest $475 in order to test it.

real deal start the cash games please we are sick of the wait

They wouldn't put it that way.

The type of paranoid donkey who thinks the deal must be rigged sees himself as someone who simply wants an honest game.

Rigtards don't really think of themselves as paranoid.

So watching this terrible video and I'm genuinely confused. He said there are 3 ways of doing this, one way is having a warehouse full of machines doing deals in real-time, and that method would be too expensive. A second way is that there is a finite combination of cards in a 52 card deck (huge huge number) but that recording them all would take up too much server space. He said he isn't doing either of these, and has a third system that no one has thought of. I'm wondering if he will just have X amount of machines going 24/7, and saving up "deals". Therefore he would have all the "deals" on camera and digitized, it would also be the most cost effective way of doing it that I can think off.

Quote from a different video "with 3 machines we can deal 48,000 decks a minute", I don't get it.

No, they have answered this question elsewhere. They are using 3 machines, but those can't produce nearly enough output to run a site. If they stored up the output for a month, it would last less than a day. So what they are doing is taking each shuffle, and creating up to 2704 variants of it, thus multiplying the machine output. 52 variants are for all possible cut points, and then up to 52x of those are by some secret algorithms. So they shuffle once, and create 52 decks from that, and each of those can be cut 52 ways (actually only 44 as implemented, it appears).

So the idea of a unique machine-shuffled deck for every deal, is out the window. They've admitted this, just not in a straightforward way, because it directly contradicts their marketing hook.

The patent application confirms everything I stated above.

LOL @ that video. They can't really believe this nonsense, can they?