great post. this resonates .

I've asked this a few times and never got any answer.

If one had the knowledge and resources to attack poker market with a clearly superior blockchain based technology, why on earth wouldn't they instead spend those resources of one a dozen more lucrative, less complex, less risky target markets.

Unless they just loved poker and looked at it as a hobby type thing, I think most business people in Nov 2017 , with what is understood about where this all headed , would focus on another industry.

Its the wild wild west of blockchain. go get yours now. Poker would about #52 on my top 5 markets to attack.

Ok so you feel Phil Galfond is wasting his time and money? And just to be clear, I do, think he is wasting his time and money. I'm just wondering if you feel that is consistent with the point you are making here?

I don't think Riopoker has a hope in overcoming startup costs without serveless tech. I think its a giant blackhole for Galfond's money. I'm not sure if you agree.

I don't understand the sentence I am completely delusional but also have valid points.

I agree, and I think Galfond's only "niche" is he wants to serve players, but the players want more profitable games, and I think that he cannot provide that while overcoming startup and operating costs. The numbers don't work, so what does he seek to offer that is different?

And I am not advocating a p2p "site". I agree, and have agreed already multiple times, these new p2p poker projects offer nothing but the same old ****ty model that seeks to rape the players of any skilled money they can.

Worse these projects are giant crowd funds for nothing in return but promises.

Phil's issue(s) have little or nothing to do with p2p vs server based arch.

If he wanted to run a regulatory free mostly illegal site in the important countries, he could do that straight way with legacy server based technology like Bovada or ACR or fill in the blank. Obviously he doesn't.

I would agree with you though that if he did want to go all Calvin Ayre rougue then p2p would be something he would have to seriously consider, cuz all things being equal (which they are not) p2p > server based from a theoretical point of view.

I think we both agree he has been challenged but we probably differ on root cause(s)

why are you so infatuated with Galfond and rio?

I'm really confused on how you can't connect all this. To start, the reason I use Galfond is because its a perfect example. I would use luckychewy poker too but I don't know if its still means to exist and evolve into a real money site.

I use Riopoker as a theoretical example because many players think it will be a viable option to provide a game that serves the skilled side of poker.

I wonder what you think the ballpark for regulation compliance and security are to legitimately overcome the barriers to entry. I suspect its 100x more than you think. I'm not interested in arguing, but rather agreeing on a reasonable estimate.

We don't need to include marketing, because riopoker for example isn't marketing yet.

Phil has admitted multiple times, the startup costs and tasks involved far exceeded his expectations. And the new launch date is "indefinite" Do you think that your expectations are more reasonable than his?

This is what we are disagreeing on and I want to put out real numbers so we can do the math.

I dont have to estimate as much as you think. I have direct experience running a public company in the regulated gaming space (live not online). Regulatory costs are big and material. To your specific question you didn't give any obvious info needed in order give a meaningful answer.

More importantly, perhaps you are asking the wrong question. The question is not should I use p2p or server based.

The question is "Do I want to operate the a site in regulated markets" ?

If answer is regulated then p2p is likely not even allowed or at best their are no current standards published by gaming regulators. so the additional cost of going p2p in regulated markets is infinite. For example in the U.S. I am not aware of one gaming agency that has even published a draft for crypto standards. Actually I'm not aware of an agency that is even started talking about it yet.

Awesome so we can get your accurate educated estimate. I am asking a question like "what do you think phil galfonds startup costs are?" it doesn't have to be his project, you can make a theoretical one that has the mission of serving the players with the implication that the legacy sites have failed on this (this is explained in the intro post for riopoker "A poker site should".

edit: I am also asking if you think you can estimate this number better than galfond?

We can address the law in relation to emerging crypto tech I think once we have decided p2p poker is cost viable, and we will use sources and citations from experts in the field.

not in this universe or any parallel universe could I estimate galfond start up costs better than galfond.

lets agree on three major buckets

1) Development
2) Regulatory
3) Player acquisition / marketing

#1) assuming make vs buy, assuming full functioning site from scratch with all games, lobby, cashiering, built in reward system, great UI, etc etc I'll just pull $1,000,000 out of my arse for starters. $500,000 if using programming resources from India, Eastern Europe, $1,000,000 if using your own employees in Malta (total guess on my part, I know nothing about what developers make in Malta). $1,500,000 - $2,000,000 if based in US and using US based developers.

#2) depends which countries you want to operate. All, One? Some?

#3) somewhere between $5 and $5,000,000 how much you got?




I am not talking about the "law" in relation to crypto. I am talking about regulated GAMING law and associated technical standards . These are are two different things. In addition to adhering to all local "laws", regulated gaming companies must adhere to all local gaming regs and technical standards and additional layers of corporate and personal licensing.

Ok good, and sorry I thought you were claiming to be more knowledgeable than Phil. But we have to keep in mind, he made that mistake and admits it...and you are admitting he understood his costs better than you.

But with the numbers it help me understand our disconnect. They seem agreeable. With number 3 I think 2.5 million seems reasonable.

Do you think Galfond thought he had multi billion dollar start up costs? I suspect he thought 1 million tops and that he could get great strides down with 300k etc. Just a hunch, but I called it, that he would later admit he underestimated it.

So what I am suggesting then, is take all these new ventures...say 5 to 10 of them, and create a core infrastructure for the software that eliminates server costs and much of the development. I think we will disagree on this, but I need to start us somewhere: I think it would eliminate a million in costs per project.

So if you have 5 projects you have 5 million in savings that can go towards 2) and 3).

I have some thoughts on how to massively reduces costs on 2 and 3 but I want to make sure we can get on the same page with 1.

In at least the UK market, software providers for gaming firms also need to be licensed, which is a major problem for using an open source solution.

Having a few decentralised bits within a conventional software product is fine - wasn't it FT or PS who use player mouse movements as part of the RNG seed?

Also, if server costs are so important then how come microstakes and play money are doable?

This might be of interest to some of you:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...today-1694786/

so noose was just pimping for coinpoker and then they went official?

If its the site is me and lecktoraj were talking about I was far more ripping on them than pimping

true. my bad. your motivations ITT are still unclear so always skeptical .



same for almost all regulated jurisdictions.

Ok lets peel back the onion on your quest for #1 costs savings for #1. I'll put aside for the moment this hypothetical, harmonious, Utopian universe where 3-5 new online poker operators even exists, much less agree to cooperate.

As you stated earlier ITT, first phase your Etherum shared infrastructure system provides RNG and crypto cashiering, and each site does the poker engine, UI, lobby, and everything else. Is this correct?



you still dont seem to get this. Regulated markets like U.S, UK, etc etc will not allow a p2p based online solution like you describe. so those costs are infinite and your ideas on how to a "massively reduce costs" might be interesting to you, bt they are irrelevant here on planet earth, because not gonna happen until gaming agencies adopts rules and standards for the new technology (don't hold your breath)

You can go in regulated markets with current legacy server based arch. those standards, rules , regs are published.

Or You can take your P2P site(s) and operate anywhere you want, outside the bounds of published gaming laws, without the ability to openly advertise and with fear of prosecution.

Do you really not get this simple fact or do you just choose to ignore because it doesn't fit into the narrative of the world as you want it to be?

But doesn't p2p introduce transaction costs to verify every hand? Why should we assume it would be cheaper to effectively "outsource" the server work to others? Server power seems to be almost free given sites run 0.02+0.00 tourneys and play money games.

It might also make sense for these 5-10 people to cooperate on a common software architecture for a conventional site but it has never happened yet.

Dutch Boyd's poker room made all its software open source after it went bust so if people don't mind sharing they can build on that back end and just put their own UI on the front.

To me some kind of decentralised poker where there is literally no site, just people with software (like some people have for file sharing) linking up and playing with no rake could be the future - the question is, who holds the buy-ins?

all good questions. this one is the easiest and already solved with a plethora of crypto based opoerating in the market . coinbase, etc

rest of questions are spot on.


its impossible to analyze what any cost savings would be for operator until noose FINALLY explains EXACTLY what is included with this "shared architecture".

To date he has only mentioned RNG and crypto wallet. RNG is about .000035% of total development costs for new site and cashiering is what about 15% ? 15% savings in cashiering development costs have little to do with his proposed architecture and more to with emerging crypto payment market which legacy online sites are already using.

Also I think server hardware is much less expensive than he thinks not to mention the wide variety and hosting options that can turn that fixed asset cost into a variable expense.

So best I can tell thus far his total savings are somewhere around .000035% of total development costs.

My motivations are on my sleeve sir, you are just skeptical in general.

Jurisdiction is the key. Governments don't just automatically have jurisdiction. There is no jurisdiction on p2p networks. And before you SUPER flame, I'm referring to the actual legal use of the word jurisdiction (now you can flame).

The incentive to cooperate is just a simple theory question which we will analyze and solve.

Not sure what poker engine entails, I only understand the philosophy of the p2p implementation because i have traversed some of the code of some of the projects. If you mean "that which provides the games and the game flow" I think the separation is at the UI (probably including the lobby). You might have a base lobby that anyone can spin up for free and then you might have skins, or completely overhauled UI's that different projects or companies developer, that use the same back end. So a very dull and general UI that provides a base for independent player vs player (like internet home games) and then the ability for anyone to modify that coder to be their own operator or to create compelelthy new code/UI to piggy back on the protocol.


There is nothing about p2p networks that is illegal anywhere.
Its not p2p networks that governments have jurisdiction over, its the payment processing. Often governments can only go after the operator and can't or doesn't ban or punish the actual players. In order to go after the operator they need servers to seize because they need jurisdiction.

This doesn't mean p2p poker sites legal, it means anything not server based can't have jurisdiction claimed on it. You are going to laugh and flame me, but I am well studied on this subject as the number 1 suspect who created bitcoin is a George washington law school grad and has extensively written on the subject (I am also loosely read on the history of poker in relation to law, poker has historical lead the way in this regard for certain types of communication/transport tect that pushed law).

I am impressed you asked this question this way. In short, the verification processes never takes place because its impossible to cheat and you lose and escrow if you do. So its effectively free. (of course you will have more questions but thats a good start to the technical protocol/discussion).

It is the business model for bitcoin and I have only copied the philosophy which is that there is some core components that would serve as a reasonable inverse common ground. If you pull out the smallest components (ie ONLY necessary ones) the task of creating and maintaining the base layer is very easy, and can be managed by a small team of volunteers (plus a community of contributors). So you have to define the correct scope and then the project lives on its own, and there is no direct funding or product that gets sold. Open source projects like this are standard. The trick is to define the components that bring "life".

Obviously I am claiming to hold the key perspective and I will show why all the projects are solving this wrong (they are trying to launch sites and business and ignoring the concept of a common grounds).


The smart contracts manage the money and take away the power to do so from the sites (if the sites choose). So you have a separation of duties which is going to be seen as historically an important change in getting skilled money back into the game (profits for the players). It's a very rational change to want, but of course there is a difficultly. But as players are educated they will want sites to not hold their bankrolls, just in the same way we don't need banks to hold our bitcoin.

I like your questions, please continue to look for holes and disagree etc....

That's because we still have an argument to have about jurisdiction. But that will be more difficult and we might need a lawyer that is well versed on the subject to chime in.

An easy point to make is that when all you have to do is modify a UI or create a UI in order to provide games the software development side is reduced dramatically. It makes it incredible easy to create and very scalable in many vector directions. People think you can just pay a team in India 100k and you'll have a site. Really its an indefinite cost to build a poker site from the ground up and comply with regulations and bridge with payment processors and making sure its maintainable and scalable.

Having the back end as a p2p infrastructure that already exists reduces the cost to create a site from ground up by millions. It takes away all the difficult except for aesthetics and art.

The security costs are astronomical and it must be evolved over time (which is part of that cost). The security must be developed internally with the employees as well. Poker sites are like banks and if they are to be successful they MUST have security like this in place from the beginning. And they can be ruined or set back big time (cost) with a breach.

Remember with jurisdiction there is no compliance regulations applicable with, for example, the secure nature of the RNG, because it is not the operator that provides the rng anymore. Nor does the operator handle the money.

So the costs for those aspects alone are reduced enormously and these are some of the biggest hurdles an emerging site has difficult getting over, these startup costs.

And I reject the notion that new technology cannot enter a space that doesn't have regulations for it. We have already watched the history of bitcoin unfold in relation to law, and that is NOT how it happens.

I have a very good philosophical understanding of how this works and for this dialogue we will draw on examples and experts.

that is correct. With people I dont know I usually start with the assumption that they have some sort of angle or ulterior motive, and then work up from there. your motives are still not clear ITT. nor do I know who you are.


in this I think we are talking about two different things.

Blockchain is going to revolutionize alot of things, without question. It will introduce all sorts of questions and dilemmas for business and governments.

However, real money gaming laws are published in all regulated jurisdictions. Whether you enable real money gaming using legacy server, p2p, 10 pads of llegal notebook paper, a table in your basement or anything else, the laws don't change or care. p2p changes nothing in this regard, and again make it currenly impossible to operate legally in any regulated market I am aware in the world.

If you dont believe me, talk to Bryon Micon and ask about his unplanned vacaction to the Dominican Republic after being charged by NGCB in Nevada with illegally running a gambling business. He thought like you. its crypto man, I'm good you cant touch me. Well they could, and they did.

ok

I suggest you think more about this. and the rest of above.

Poker is a game.

Providing a software platform for a game requires a game engine.

World of Warcarft as a game engine.

Grand theft auto has a game engine.

Poker has a game engine.

Developing a complete poker game engine from scratch is not free and is no less complicated under a p2p arch.

Developing a complete poker game UI from scratch is not free and is no less complicated under a p2p arch.

Developing a complete poker game UX from scratch is not free and is no less complicated under a p2p arch.

Developing a complete poker game lobby from scratch is not free and is no less complicated under a p2p arch.

To date, the only development savings you have alluded that matter is a shared RNG. again about .000035% of development cost




ackowledged and respect all that. you are all over the map ITT so hard to keep up. If you want to have a discussion on how / if p2p changes the ability for an entity to operate a real money gaming site in a regulated jurisdiction, then thats a a much deeper and theortical discussion. Again I would suggest just calling Bryan Micon and see how that worked out for him in Vegas.

The operator no longer runs the payment processing in this future scenario.

They had jurisdiction because he was operating out of nevada, I'm guessing with servers in Nevada, but certainly with hardware in nevada and so accepting payments from in nevada. This the jurisdiction observation I am refering to. I am citing his case as support for my argument and not yours.


The game engine is part of the base layers and already provided. So are BASIC functioning UI's. The UX is what needs to be worked, but it is far less complicated when you don't have to scale it or integrate it with the back end. FAR LESS.

We are basically rendering the design problem, from the operators perspective, down to pure aesthetics. So I'm claiming from millions to 100's of thousands.

No, micon was absolutely stupid and did not consider law whatsoever. He had a libertarian perspective and quickly found out that poker sites are like banks and you cannot just run a bank in the US freely.

I have studied the philosophy of jurisdiction in relation to digital law, only the specifics and what is related to poker, but through the man that is widely held as the creator of bitcoin who extensively explained how law works in relation to emerging tech.

I'm not guessing. We (this dialogue) are going to make citations and call expert opinions.

would you agree that before any of the other meaningful discussions can be had, this issue must be resolved or agreed upon.

I stand by my layman's view that operating or enabling a real money gaming site in a regulated jurisdiction without being licensed by the appropriate bodies, will do nothing but grant you an unplanned trip to the Dominican Republic. p2p, legacy, table in your basement or any other method does not change this. Gaming commisions dont care. Unless it is explicitly authorized by law and licensed and approved by gaming agency then it is illegal.

I'm open to being proven wrong.

Gzesch?? help me out here.

You are citing a person that resided and operated in clear Nevada jurisdiction. I am saying that the operation of the money (especially the majority of it) is not done by the operator. There is no jurisdiction for that.

I understand the concern so we should rush to the heart of it. So the question is, if the operations are outside of (especially american) jurisdiction of the law enforcement agencies, do you still believe that the agencies can enact their powers?

Because if we can agree they cannot then I only need to show the scope of jurisdiction and that it doesn't reach.

But its a different dialogue if you believe these agencies CAN prosecute beyond their jurisdiction.