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The software CAN be protected.
I'm sorry, but is just wrong. No piece of software can be protected from snooping as the very definition of "software" means that it has to be executed on a machine and if the machine can understand it then so can a human.
You can make it very hard, but their will always be somebody with the dedication and know-how to get round whatever you try.
Juk
You are attacking the wrong problem.
But keep up the good work all. All along here, folks are defining and refining the solutions to the problem.
The security problem is solved unless somebody shows a problem we haven't mitigated. Keep thinking, objections are good.
If your security stands on the belief that some software can be made "unsnoopable" then I'm afraid it's just not going to work and as soon as money is involved all the smartest crackers in the world will be working round the clock to find a method to circumvent whatever you have tried. The only really secure method is to use some decentralized cryptographic algorithm as outlined in the other post.
I think this whole idea is an interesting one, but is fundamentally flawed. Assuming that a P2P poker client was created and a bank (or other trusted institution) agreed to hold player's money in such a way as to allow other players to confirm each other's balances (so as not to allow balance "faking"), then I have to ask myself would I play on such a system myself?
Sadly, I don't think I would other than for heads up matches. I think for HU matches then a system like this could be trusted 100%, but as soon as you add multiple people into the equation then how can you be sure they are not colluding against you?
One option would be to have hand histories that revealed all of the mucked cards after each hand was over. This would change the fundamental way poker is played, but at least (in theory) then each player could see if they were being colluded against. I'm sad to say again that I still wouldn't play even with this addition, as I'm quite sure that somebody smart enough could collude in a very clever way that would make detection almost impossible.
So in conclusion: I think this makes for a very interesting academic idea and could possibly work in practice for heads up play, but I don't think you can ever secure it properly against collusion for multi-player games.
Juk