You called me out for spamming after repeatedly asking me a question that was answered many times (ie Can we build this protocol for free). Now that I show a working demo, you completely drop all the significant aspects of the dialogue and jump to an equivalent of "Are we there yet".

I can't please you.

Please don't troll me. And please don't spam this thread with ignorance, SOME people are finding the discussion interesting, relevant, and significant.

totally agree with this.

cleared up a few things that were still a bit fuzzy for me.

The Justice System or so checks for cheating and botting (and so on) and the difference to centralized or so is that the cheats do not need to make regular cashouts to limit loses when they finally are revealed. They will then need a new account etc., and how difficult that is, makes a difference.

As licensed (country) and proved cheating, they would face the law of their country also, but the efforts in proving have so far failed. It is the poker site that will decide; that is somewhat one-sided. At least one does not lose money when a wrong decision is made.

^^

i can understand your words, but not clear on the point you are making?

Are you saying decentral bad for detecting bots and stuff, and centralized better, or the other way around or neither?

Hey,

Before answering some of the questions that have been posed of me directly here, I think it might be worthwhile to more properly clarify my role with CoinPoker. My focus as an adviser to their team is on helping them confront some of the challenges around player v player cheating. That is, I'll be using my experience in contributing to the public investigation into Absolute Poker & Ultimate Bet, and my experience of working for many years in various leadership Security roles at PokerStars and Full Tilt to try to mitigate the risk of cheating in the game itself.

I'm certainly no expert on the underlying mechanics of blockchain - other folks are focused on that.
Again, I'm no expert on the underlying blockchain mechanics, but I was impressed with the first public version of their limited, free-play, version of their software. That shows a significant development effort to deploy that actual product.
I think that both centralization, and decentralization, have their risks. In my experience in online security, a friend (who has previous experience working on behalf of the US Department of Justice at online gaming) talked about how there are very rarely any silver bullets that solve everything, there is no perfect "wall" that stops all threats. Instead, an effective security system has a series of "nets" that work with multiple layers to stop different threats. An effective system needs to be reasonable, to recognise that there's a real cost of false positives as well as false negatives.

As I've previously posted online here, one of the challenges for decentralised poker is how to handle a game where cheating has taken place in the past. Since it is very hard to prevent 100% of cheating from happening in the future (there are things that can reduce the risk in the future via game design - for example, you could only offer heads-up games to prevent all collusion) there needs to be a policy on how to handle, for example, collusion that you've detected after-the-fact*. That's something that is going to need to be worked through, and considered carefully - but as part of a broad-based and comprehensive strategy. These things don't happen instantly, but rather, require consideration, thought, analysis, debate, and so on.

*If you know how to stop collusion before-the-fact, then I'm all ears too!

What do you suggest as a way to mitigate this risk?

Fair enough perhaps. Having worked in IT I'm usually sceptical of people who talk before they've delivered. It's good if Patrick says he's willing to do the work to pull the project through to a final installable product.

btw The demo itself means nothing though. There were working demos of cold fusion generators presented to the public.

Thank you for participating in this dialogue.

I'm going to jump around a bit for expediency purposes. Bitcoin was developed on a premise which is that trusted third parties are security leaks. You cited a US DOJ Rep, I am citing the alleged creator of bitcoin which is the creator of the technology that your project is built on .

Trusted Third Parties Are Security Holes http://nakamotoinstitute.org/trusted-third-parties/

Nick Szabo, the writer of that paper, is a graduate of GWU Law school and he has written many essays related to the subject of digital law and security. He is well held as THE expert in the field of “blockchain” (nobody in the crypto industry likes to use that term like that).

Poker has inherent security problems that are very similar to the banking industry. To outsource these problems to central authorities and to call them security solutions is absolutely against this philosophy. In the crypto space it means to literally create a security hole. This is why I take great offense to the coin poker white paper. There is a problem with the disconnect when you say you are unfamiliar with the blockchain technology but you like their presentation. You have either been duped or are disingenuous. In the crypto-space the coinpoker whitepaper is a scam and a lie.

The US Doj would not be an example of security from a crypto standpoint. It is a clear example of a security hole from the citizen point of view. Like the coinpoker offering it relies on TRUST, and this is exactly NOT security. To solve a problem securely means to remove the trust principle.

I think at this point it would be disingenuous for you to claim that you don't perfectly understand my point here. It's really disappointing to me that you have gone from a public relations rep for Poker Stars, which is well understood to have ripped of the players in regard to, among other things, the SNE changes, and you are now titled as head of security.

From my understanding you are now perfectly seated to (again) sell to the players the IDEA of security, but while not actually providing it (and in fact providing the complete opposite).

My next posts are going to change the tone though, to be more friendly and I hope I can be forgiven for making multiple separate posts. I want my points to remain clear and separated. So as harsh and direct as I am here, I am going to paint a different picture that can allow these contrasting views to co-exist, and then it will be up to you, Josem, and other projects, if they wish to concede to this (new) view.

This helps me understand your tone. We'll get to this. Please forgive me I'm about to write a few large posts in a row, I hope mods don't feel I am spamming, they are important.

There are two significant problems to be solved that are very inter-related. The first is that poker has grown sick. It was obvious to me years ago, and obvious that it would get sicker. The players didn't believe this as a whole but it became undeniable to any sincere player when Dnegs was telling the players that increasing rake would help the games and benefit the players. This forum was 50% filled with new accounts and recreational players that were laughing at pros and claiming that this would be good for the recreationals. I would have a difficult time having a sincere dialogue with anyone that still felt that recreationals have a better experience with higher rake. It's quite obvious to me that their experience would be that they would feel they are suffering more bad beats (I don't expect everyone to understand this).

The DOJ handed Poker Stars a de facto monopoly, and today we as players feel the full effects of that monopoly which is held up by payment processor restrictions and regulations. The industry evolved in this direction and only a few major operators were able to compete and survive (obviously this is starting crack and there are more competitors at the very present day).

The other problem is an older mathematical problem called “mental poker” which is poker's equivalent of the double spend problem that birthed bitcoin when it was finally solved. Mental poker or “secure multiparty computations” is basically the ability to shuffle and deal a card game securely between players with no central trusted authority. The solution to this problem would have incredible ramification easily to the level of bitcoin.

These two problems and their possible solutions work hand and hand. The players pay rake to a central authority to secure their game. But the new realization is that this cost is actually indirectly enormous BECAUSE they are paying a security HOLE to secure their game.

This is the problem that the PLAYERS face whereas an emerging operator is intrinsically going to want to solve the problem of “How to profit”.

So there is competing wants here and therefore an obvious need for a centralized model to convince the players that “trust based” security is optimal and necessary and so the whole operators model will be naturally based on this principle.

We can understand then that I am seeing from a different perceptive and paradigm. This outlines the exactly reason why (you) Josem might see these problems as unsolvable, you are approaching them from an intrinsically unsolvable direction.

My friend isn't a representative of the DOJ - I merely provided a source for an idea that isn't mine. That idea is pretty simple, and I'm somewhat bemused that anyone would even argue this idea: that there isn't one "solution" for security, but rather, a good security system has a number of parts that complement each other.

This isn't the crux of security. I understand what you mean to say. The crux of security is to solve the problem on a vector which makes breaching impossible or ineffective, not "difficult". You can do this, for example, by forcing theft of something valuable to be so costly that there is no incentive to steal it. Or you can make it such that it takes so long to breach a vault that there is no incentive to do so because you won't get the bounty in time for when you need it (this is the crux of cryptography).

You are pointing to mitigation, I am talking about actually effectively unbreachable security. Bitcoin is not a $100 billion project because it has layers and layers and layers of obfuscation. It is the most secure financial network in the world because it is perfectly conjecturally secure. It was so from the launch.

These are two completely different paradigm and mine comes from the creators of bitcoin which is the technology your project is based on.

There IS however a coincidence of wants here but it takes an understanding of the technology, the emerging projects (especially the hybrid p2p/decentralized models), as well as the circumstances of the industry I highlighted above.

The players would like a profitable game and the emerging poker sites have a very difficult problem of player acquisition. The network effects of poker is a special problem. As you acquire good players the old legacy games get softer. So there is an equilibrium here where the players can't necessarily unilaterally deviate and gain. Much like the boycotts, as players leave, there is incentive to stay.

Skipping the reasoning....there is a conclusion to all this that is a solution.

It involves the emerging sites forming a loose coalition, still based on selfish interest, but also based on a core protocol that each of the sites build off of. The trick is that this movement needs to involve the players, the thought leaders of the community.

It's quite clear, the new age of poker must serve the players and therefore it must involve the players. This is the vision I have had, and the project CypherPoker that I found is perfectly inline with this vision but it could be any such project that is designed as a common first layer.

Cypherpoker means to be a base layer 1 protocol for mental poker. It is a philosophy (but with a working demo). This is how bitcoin works. Satoshi didn't build wallets, exchanges, banks, etc. It is the most bare bones solution possible and that's where it gets its security and how it is the crux of this entire movement. It's not proprietary, there was nothing to sell, and no marketing team/strategy.

It CAN'T be proprietary, that is the KEY to this whole point I am making.

Coinpoker is not a solution to the problems I outlined, nor is it a solution to the problems that the coinpoker whitepaper outlines. In order to provide REAL security and service the players there needs to be a base layer mental poker protocol. And in my opinion it stands to reason that each of the emerging sites will work on a (inverse) common grounds.

There is much to discuss in between this “conclusion” and what we have today. But I paint the picture of this end so we can understand the direction we should move towards.

Mods are welcoming of informative posts in this emerging area. (However, we will attempt to keep the number of threads devoted to this area to a manageable number.)

I imagine this would change if posts or threads pertaining to "decentralised poker" become too much selling of one specific commercial endeavor, especially if made by anyone financially connected to the endeavor.

Cheers, myself I am not financially connected to any project and this is purposeful. I tout cypherpoker but firstly it's not proprietary and secondly it's not my project. And I am only using it because it is the best example I would be happy to find a similar project but I haven't.. It just might look otherwise if someone just loosely read one of my posts.

Josem there was earlier talk in this thread about how a hypothetical mental poker protocol would remove the barrier to entry for emerging projects. Some claim these barriers are not high (cost wise) and some claim that completely removing the server technology would not amount to very much.

Can you comment on what the difference of cost would be between launching a traditional centralized server based model and site which already is already provided a secure perfectly server-less back end at no cost?

This is something coinpoker, for example, doesn't quite have. Your project still uses a server to authenticate the shuffling and dealing. But coming from a venture like Galfond, where he means to provide all of the legacy solutions to a fully serverless model (part of which your project has utilized) what are the changes in cost and barriers to entry?

(thx)

still waiting for Phil Galfond's poker room...

might be useful ITT when discussing current or hypothetical future poker site(s) or new potential industry business model(s) to distinguish between a Site / Operator that conducts business in regulated market(s) with those that don't.

They are materially different businesses imo.

If not distinguished , the discussion gets pretty cloudy and hard to follow.

Galfond is screwed and sunk if he thinks he can launch a traditional centralized model in this emerging environment-he's digging a hole

If we consider (a coalition) working off the same core/protocol then it's not so cloudy to consider some operators will comply and some won't.

I've brought this up a couple times ITT and I know you are smart, though several topics and subtopics come and go so maybe you just missed it. Please read the following sentences twice.

On November 16, 2017 there are no published/adopted technical gaming standards for the noose protocol. Adherance to some form of technical gaming standard is a requirement for regulated markets.


This could change over the next 3-5 years but not now and not anywhere I know of (I don't know regulatory in ALL markets, few do, so could be an exception). For sure not in USA.

So again we can discuss hypothetical site that uses protocol and does not comply, or a site that uses protocol and chooses to comply, but in 3-5 years when such a thing is actually thing.

It is NOT my ignorance that is the problem here. A p2p provably fair protocol does not have an EXTRA difficult of regulatory compliance. It is FAR more secure (ie 100%) than anything else and 100% perfectly publically auditable (which includes auditing by regulators. Coinpoker has a hybrid part way model and they are compliant, the nooseprotocl is even more so. You aren't pointing at anything significant.

There is clearly and obviously no issue.

My friend, you are 5 years behind. It's ready now. I don't understand how you keep skipping that point.

nooooooooooooooose. get in the game, brah

you are missing the point entirely. its based on your lack of working experience in the regulated gaming industry.

you said a P2P operate could chose to comply (operate in regulated market) or not. they defintely have the option to NOT comply ala Virtue , Coin, etc etc.

No P2POperator could use the protocol AND comply in the regulated world of today. If they did they would be outside the gaming regulations for that market (aka they would be breaking the law)


Im not talking about WHEN the protocol will be here. It is here NOW. I am talking about 3-5 until regulators catch up and publish tech gaming standards to handle the new technology.. might be 3-5 years, might be 5-10, might be never.

Let's let Gzesh and Josem hash that out if they will.

so have you contacted joey already?

No but someone else more reputable said they would.

Well, I will certainly defer to Gzech on all regulatory matters as he likely has more direct working experience and knowledge than anyone else in the thread, certainly alot more than me. Though at some point he will probably need a retainer from the thread to continue to give free legal advice cash only. no bitcoin.

Most likely Josem dealt with regulators from time to time in his role as Security guru at stars/amaya. . But he already yelled at me once for making assumptions about him so ill stop there.

As some additional color commentary, I was involved with the creation and adoption of new technical gaming standard for land based regulated . As point of reference it took us about 2 years and I think we spent ~$100,000 as we were the ones that wanted it at the time. Maybe grunch thru this to get a sense for what I mean by technical gaming standard.

Keep in mind this one was orders of magnitude less complex than what we are talking about ITT and had no "silk road" stigma attached in the minds of regulators.


http://www.gaminglabs.com/pdfs/GLI-24_v1.3_Standard.pdf



wow digging on Joey again ? Did he use to spank you on PLO tables or is it something else with him? insert smiley face thingy