I would like to understand what it would take to build (program) a poker site, basically the time and manpower/cost involved in just the software side excluding regulations and legal fees etc.


I'm willing to do some research and studying on my own, if i could kindly get some direction, and I can post my progress to double check my work.

any general thought would be helpful to start thx!!!

I do have basic programing knowledge that should help us communicate your answers

You may be interested by this thread:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/19...tware-1046679/

ahh pefect, i looked through it, ill come up with some specifics for questions, theres some sites to research in this thread. thx ill be back

Is it that 1 million is a conservative estimate and 5 million would be plenty?

The point that the thread makes is that it would be a monstrous task to build a poker site on your own, and to pay a company to do it at the average rate for development will be in the hundreds of thousands to millions.

Ya I mean I think we'd agree there are ways to make it cheaper, but it can't be laughable to suggest it could be done for 2 million, I'm more looking for the maximum amount that that most/all people would agree is needed (not sure I said that well.

I don't mind if this thread gets merged into the other one.

I wouldn't try for "most/all". I'm not even close to being qualified to make that estimate. Some here might be, but I would guess that most aren't. And even when someone is basically qualified, it's very easy to aim low, especially when you're not really the one doing the work. If I were doing this, I would mentally double any consensus.

Also, you are really asking us to pick a number out of a hat. You could probably get a poker site built for 100k, but it would be a pretty shoddy job. If things like security, availability, failover are important to you, then the cost is going to escalate pretty quickly.

A lot of people think of PokerStarts and FT when they ask these sorts of questions... remember that both these companies have been in the game a long time, and they have been working on their software, every day, for years, and spent 10s of millions on it.

Most new 'poker' sites do not build their own software, but buy in to an existing network (ipoker, microgaming etc)

Thx, i realize it can be done cheaper, i guess i realize now that i am looking for the upper limits, doesn't have to be the extent of stars either, just a basic site maybe with half the bells whistles.

I'm thinking 2 million shouldn't get much of a laugh, and 1 seems possible?

Two big questions - US or Non-US site? And do you want this to be a 'real money' site.

Both will have differences in pay grade and technology start up costs. Honestly.. 2 million to build a poker site in the US just makes me wonder reality you live on, when you factor in people's salaries, server time, the DBA's and coders you need, security experts, systems, etc.

thx for the clarifying questions.

I'd like to deal with both of those issues separately.

Lets say its play money and global?

I want people to not have your reaction, so what would be a better number?

2 million just for developing the software seems pretty high. As a new site, do you really need a bazillion of games...no. You need NL holdem in cash and tournament mode and maybe something special that attracts gamblers like a really good Chinese poker or something.

The hard part is payments, regulations, security and very good testing (and hopefully scaling later).

My estimate would be that you can pump out a decent prototype for one game variant (let's say 6max cash) in two weeks solo imo. It wouldn't be code I'd ever want to see in production which is a different beast.

100k/year buys you a solid developer depending on where you are located 60k might as well, in SV it'll cost more.
You could get a 10 man team for two years for 2 million at that price. I'd estimate that you can get a solid production ready codebase cranked out by a 5 man team in a year if they are worth 100k...so I'd guestimate in the 500k-1million range

Not to split hairs, but an employee costs a company about 2x their salary when you add on taxes, benefits, insurance, office rental, equipment purchase, HR outsourcing, licenses for all the relevant software etc so a 5 man team at 100k is likely to be in the 1-2 mill range.

I looked up scaling is it the ability to add a larger customer base? Or its like windows updates? or both?

Security is obv important but I wanna treat the question without regulation or payment processing etc.
since its programming I think we assume it can be done anywhere that has the skill?

I see why location matter, can we not just assume independent contractors?

Makes sense

most outsourcing focuses on econmies of scale which often means less "skillfull" work

Yes, location matters. And independent contractors can cost more in the long run as you have give people a WTF did the other guy do learning curve. You don't need one guy in his mom's basement, you need a TEAM. Coders. DBAs. Project managers.

Scaling is the difference between hosting a 50 person game and a 5,000 person game. You have to plan for the large numbers.

To give you an idea of what things might cost - look at recent poker start ups. You are talking millions to get off the ground. Play money is not profitable enough to support that base.

Ya i recognize this from the smallest programs from first semester group project. Fixable at that level, and I except it would render things useless on a large scale.


Ya would have to make it scalable for a large pop. Not stars big, maybe half.

No of course not, I'm just looking for a way to cut out the complicated stuff from the convo. Just a site, big like stars etc. Not sure where i would look at for start ups, or do you mean their financial statments, cause that will include all the other things not pertinent to the thread.

Pretend I'm a billionaire and I wanna make a play site for like a million kids or something for free chips, just the site. Would this really cost 5 mill? I feel like i could pay my super smart friend 1 million and hed think im a sucker.

I don't mind if we say 5 mill max, but is there anyway its 10?

thx for humoring this btw , its obv kinda a stupid question.

Pokerspot open sourced their code.

https://code.google.com/p/pokerspot/source/checkout

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