I think in any country stuff depends on local laws.

For example in Japan gambling is not generally allowed but pachinka palours offer soft toys as prizes instead of cash - there is an ostensibly separate business which rebuys soft toys for cash. The same trick would not fly in many/any other countries.

There are places in the US where a genuine home game between friends, or for example a friend vs friend sportsbet, is legal even though casinos and bookies are not.

My first assumption would be that any business putting players together into games would be in the same position as someone charging time or entry into a place where a self-dealt game is going on - if not under existing legislation then legislation can be clarified to ban it.

Something genuinely p2p, so for example Tom and Daniel don't play their challenge on a site, they just fire up their p2p clients, and play automatically with the crypto transferring between them after each hand might well be legal in the same way as friend-vs-friend sports betting in a whole raft of places that currently don't have online poker, but with no game runner to pay for advertising, guarantee tournaments (or herd large numbers of players together for them) it would be an interesting sideshow rather than "the future".

Generally though the location of the server if any is not key - there (appears to be) is no law in Malta against serving people from anywhere at all. More restrictive jurisdictions don't just say "server in Malta, guess we can't do anything", they claim the right to regulate/tax/ban people anywhere selling gambling to their residents.

What does that mean to you, "technically illegal" ?

"Judge: George Jung, you stand accused of possession of six hundred and sixty pounds of marijuana with intent to distribute. How do you plead?

George: Your honor, I'd like to say a few words to the court if I may.

Judge: Well, you're gonna have to stop slouching and stand up to address this court, sir.

George: [stands] Alright. Well, in all honesty, I don't feel that what I've done is a crime. And I think it's illogical and irresponsible for you to sentence me to prison. Because, when you think about it, what did I really do? I crossed an imaginary line with a bunch of plants. I mean, you say I'm an outlaw, you say I'm a thief, but where's the Christmas dinner for the people on relief? Huh? You say you're looking for someone who's never weak but always strong, to gather flowers constantly whether you are right or wrong, someone to open each and every door, but it ain't me, babe, huh? No, no, no, it ain't me, babe. It ain't me you're looking for, babe. You follow?

Judge: Yeah... Gosh, you know, your concepts are really interesting, Mister Jung.

George: Thank you.

Judge: Unfortunately for you, the line you crossed was real and the plants you brought with you were illegal, so your bail is twenty thousand dollars. "

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0221027/...=ttfc_ql_trv_4

It needs to be hashed out dialogue just like law evolves as back and forth arguments. I've gone through it, fairly exhaustively as layman researching. It's quite interesting, poker and gambling were at the forefront of expansion of frontiers like Americas early history and so it always functioned on the edge and thus was very significant in regard to the evolution of law.

It was played on paddle boats to overcome legal jurisdiction.

Gambling was relevant to the introduction of telegram wires evolved law as "organized crime" was profiting off the communication:

But note that the law can't simply be against the peoples wants and desires. The constitutions protect us from arbitrary law. Here organized crime was cited, not gambling specifically.

I don't want to argue with anyone that doesn't accept that principle and just wants to repeat that governments are bad.

The other point that we must remember is many poker sites today serve american players through bitcoin. And there is not really any repercussion. Years ago this wouldn't have been acceptable to suggest even thought bitcoin gives the technology to do so. Micon was arrested with hardware operations in Nevada. Seals with clubs is operating somewhere in euro last time i checked (can't be bothered). It is not under threat of US law-they would have a hard time claiming jurisdiction and getting extradition. It's not like they are going to make major law changing cases just to get a few tiny operators residing in countries that don't have anti gambling laws etc.

And I realize this can be countered and I think its a discussion on the right track.

But furthermore, the US doesn't have jurisdiction on a p2p network, so in specific regard to the servers, the situation goes from having a tangible piece of incriminating evidence to seize, to not having any such evidence to seize.

This is what I ultimately mean by "no jurisdiction". So the nature of the legal landscape is drastically changed...

But what is more important, is overall, there is a MUCH greater economic majority that is growing daily, that is quite happy about playing crypto poker. Its getting user friendly and its not taboo, and its quite useful for Americans (for example). And bitcoin is not illegal. So we should expect the laws to begin to favor the landscape that is growing anyways.

It's not a chicken egg thing, they advance together, technology and law...and we get more free as a result.

I'd agree he is no troll (though earlier ITT i thought he was just trolling galfond, and stated as much, I think I was wrong but still have no idea what his end game is here.

he does need to research more about player acquisition / marketing and read up on technology adoption curves.

he is also seems woefully naive of current gaming laws and how they work.



just wanted to let this sit out there and bake in the sun a little !

and lets not forget this is NVG. sooooooooo.

But note that the law can't simply be against the peoples wants and desires. The constitutions protect us from arbitrary law.


But note that the law can't simply be against the peoples wants and desires. The constitutions protect us from arbitrary law


But note that the law can't simply be against the peoples wants and desires. The constitutions protect us from arbitrary law

But note that the law can't simply be against the peoples wants and desires. The constitutions protect us from arbitrary law.

That's completely different than your original premise that "it must be possible" to create "a p2p poker solution which could be played in any country without breaking any countries laws and become the number 1 massive worldwide site".

I'm a player and I want a better game.

I'm well read on these subjects. EASILY more than yourself. I doubt anyone else would deny this.


I'm well studied on the philosophy of this, and I am not naive. Again FAR more than yourself. I already showed this.


You are trolling and its obvious. And you have quoted the CRUX of the American constitution. I dare you to deny the truth of it after already making fun of me.

fair enough. only suggestion for you here is to just let it go and move on. The good old days are not coming back

I do though applaud your passion toward bringing something forward that might maybe possibly enable some change . Perhaps you could to take your blockchain skills and passion and go focus on another market, like finance or supply chain or medical or ______.

herein is probably the #1 reason you and I just cant get in synch

you want to talk about philosophies and altruisms, and I want to talk more the harsh day to day realities of actually operating an online site


lighten up francis. You cant expect to be here in NVG, doing what you are doing and not get NVG'd from time to time.

your quote was ridiculous. I just used NVG color up norm to point out silly statements (maybe thats BBV norm, cant rem )

If you think James Madison and Thomas Jefferson are gonna help you get a real money p2p or non p2p site up and running in the US, then you are more naive than I thought.

We are in the midst of a revolution and you are blind. Think about the landscape a few years ago when the players were distraught because they had no recourse. Look at all the emerging sites and projects today.

Why would I head in a direction I don't have a passion for?


I am not altruistic and I don't think you know what the word philosophy means. There are no "harsh realities". I am extremely up to date on the current landscape. You don't realize there are multiple sites arising that will serve the entire world. Many more that will comply but compete with the current legacy sites. And more that will range in between.


You accused me of trolling multiple times. Nothing could be further from the truth. YOU ARE trolling, literally.

Again, I dare you to deny the truth of it especially with an ACTUAL lawyer in the thread. The only counter arguments you have offered are ones that support my claim and trolling.

PTLou, deny the constitution exists to serve the people.

I cannot deny that in the same way I cannot deny

Raindrops on roses
And whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favorite things

I fail to see the relation between these two, since they are opposite of each other. A p2p poker solution, being distributed across poker players, will not have a site, being a central point of failure.

I have read this topic with much interest. It seems the idea of decentralized poker is alive and well, and with good reason.

With regards to initiatives to decentralize poker: In addition to VirtuePoker, CashPoker and CoinPokerPro, a new initiative has launched. But it will not run on Ethereum. Instead, it is a pure Bitcoin fork and will use the Lightning Network to get the instant chips transactions to work. There is not more to say, unfortunately, other than that a whitepaper concerning the mathematics behind RNG, player disconnects and the cryptography securing poker tables is in the making, and is currently being peer reviewed by professors of mathematics departments.

I think you're being a bit of a nit here, but regardless, you're directing that response to the wrong person, as those aren't my words.

Rip Stars? haha

Yes, I incorrectly used the word 'site'. Obviously it wouldn't be a website. I'm not sure there is a word you can use then, "worlds biggest collection of players playing against each other from their computers"? As for the legal thing, how can it be illegal if using a cryptocurrency? You're not making a deposit in the old fashioned way with $ from your bank account to a website. The cryptocurrency could be somehow held in escrow and distributed to the tournament winners.

I have a hard time to believing that the online poker market will be set on fire by peer reviewed whitepapers on mathematical p2p RNGs or metaphysical discussions about what a "law" is or what a "govt" is in the new world of blockchain.

Seems to me that online poker market will for the foreseeable future be defined by spin n go type rec focused fun oriented rake vacuums provided by existing brands with lots of marketing dollars using current technology under currently published gaming regs and jurisdictional laws..

Many hate this and know legacy sites have destroyed the game they used to love and/or their livelihood. I have empathy but don't really care (lol did I just say that). I understand that you feel the alt block sites will bring your poker world back.

alt-block sites will certainly spin up using the new tech. what sort of player base they can attract and what sort of laws they will have to ignore to operate remain to be seen

Cool story bro but what I mean by 'technically illegal' is that although the authorities could write a law saying 'it is illegal to play poker in your home on a computer against other computers' they would have no way of enforcing it. Like another poster said: "in specific regard to the servers, the situation goes from having a tangible piece of incriminating evidence to seize, to not having any such evidence to seize."
Maybe they could send the FBI round to every individual persons home suspected of playing poker eh?

Fine, to this day poker is still played on boats - for example there is/was a round of the Polish Poker Tour played on a ship on the Baltic - poker not being legal in Poland the PPT plays all its rounds in neighbouring countries or on boats; the Polish government doesn't generally claim the right to ban Polish people from gambling outside its own borders.

You would be fine serving a player who was playing on his laptop from a ship in international waters, the issue is whether or a gambling business could legally serve a player who was sitting in his parents' piwnica in a village outside Warsaw.

@8ROM Most of the p2p plans we are talking about still have someone running the lobby, advertising etc, and presumably taking a cut of the money at some point. That's the person who would be charged with running a gambling operation. Genuine p2p with no company, no lobby, no advertiser, no rake, may well be legal in some places that organized gambling is not depending on the local laws of that jurisdiction.

Exactly. There is no way, other than to target each player individually, to shut down a decentralized poker platform. Besides, peers will be anonymous, so there is really nobody to track down. On top of that, certain bitcoin tumblers exist, also mathematically proven, to make your funds untraceable.

Picture this: You buy bitcoins at a certain exchange (where you probably will need to identify yourself). You want to play poker, but you don't want people to track your winnings, or you just don't want anyone to know you're playing poker at all since it's nobodies business. You send your bitcoin through a tumbler and you end up with an address untraceable to you. You start playing, you start winning. All the bitcoin winnings are again tumbled back into another address, which (for now, at least) you probably want to revert to fiat. Use the tumbler again, and no one knows how you got amount X of bitcoin.

For the record. I am not endorsing this, I'm just mentioning the possibilities.

According to you (or others), what would be the incentives for most of the players, currently playing on "existing brands with lots of marketing dollars using current technology under currently published gaming regs and jurisdictional laws", to switch to an anonymous, decentralized poker platform? What would be needed?

QFT.

Now that is a great question !

But like many great questions start before they get refined... it depends.

Are you talking about a p2p based site that figures out a way to operate under a gaming license and oversight of gaming commission or a rouge type site under the oversight of nothing?

I'm still confused why the word 'site' is used. 'site' doesn't exist. Okay, there probably will be a website explaining how to install this p2p poker application, but players will not play on a website.

And consequently, a gaming license wouldn't be needed, since there is no company to license. No building where a license would be send to.

Then your last point is a thing we can't ignore: oversight. Not the government oversight using commissions etc., but the oversight to fair playing. It probably will be needed and I have yet to read the whitepaper from VirtuePoker to see how they want solve this. But it's something that needs to be solved, since I have a feeling people will not migrate when this is not solved correctly.

The Virtue Poker whitepaper does address oversight with their "Justice system" on p. 25.

It's an interesting concept.

You are ignoring reality. The online poker industry is already filled with operators serving american players via crypto sites, its common and standard now.

We have a range of options available served by different projects. Ultimately as the core layer grows to what it will be much of the things you name will be decentralized as well.

In regard to the bold, that is not the correct perspective. Laws have jurisdictional limits and they don't extend indefinitely and the limits are not defined by the governments want to enforce them. There is no government in the world that has jurisdiction on a p2p network that runs across the internet. I learned this from many essays created by the lawyer behind bitcoin.

We already saw the ethereum team crowd found their now 30 billion dollar project. There is simply no way to claim jurisdiction over its creation or operation. I've already been walked through the philosophy.

I'm not guessing.

I wouldn't underestimate the probability of the participant rather than the provider(which in pure 2p2 cases doesn't even exist) becoming the object of the law enforcement agencies' jurisdiction in a decentralized p2p gaming environment.

As more and more states are passing/drafting gaming legislation protection of licensed entities will become more and more important. While it might not be worth it to go after the individual participating in unlicensed gaming at the moment that will change once the licensed market is created. And while there probably will be ways to participate in 2p2 gaming anonymously that kind of participation will lack mass appeal if it is proclaimed illegal. Also, as far as enforcement goes, only a handful of cases will be enough to disrupt mass participation.

While technology is definitely promising to ultimately offer a fair game with lesser rake, IMO it will be hijacked by the special interest with the law enforcement behind it. Technological/legal innovation will be(is being) impeded by the special interest until the special interest is controlling it. Even though it potentially lowers the cost of entry for a new provider, other, legislative hurdles will be there such as limited number of licenses that will actually be already accounted for or a requirement to have established presence in a traditional market in order to qualify, etc.

That's not how law works. The government CANNOT just make laws against the citizens and it has no reason to. There is no way to enforce such arbitrary laws, and I reckon in states that try to have laws against the individual gambling online there have been few or no cases enforcing such laws.

It's extremely easy now to set up a vpn and play poker via crypto. And it is the PEOPLE that ultimately decide what law is. Governments are made up of the citizenry. When the citizenry sees such actions as common there is no leg for a government to stand on to go against it.

It is already prevalent. You are each just functioning on "government is bad, they do what they want, they can make whatever laws they want, government thinks poker is bad, governments can and will ban poker etc"

This isn't at all how law works. This is how someone who has no understanding of law THINKS it works.

The landscape has changed, because technology has evolved and technology outpaces law in this regard. We see this clearly over our history.

fair enough... lets all agree on some common definitions. this will make communicating much easier.

TheNooseProtocol
An open source, p2p based protocol shared with any and all that makes operating a poker site more secure and less expensive.

P2P Site.
A person or entity that uses TheNooseProtocol to organize/operate real money online poker games under some sort of brand with some sort of marketing strategy.

Are you suggesting that P2P Site is not needed and games are just going to organically spawn when TheNooseProtocol is let loose?