Bitcoin Forum

After a year in development I've launched my Bitcoin poker site, Paddleboat Mississippi. If you like no-limit Texas hold'em, please consider checking it out at https://paddleboat.ms/ (https://paddleboat.ms/).

I am not a big company, just someone who likes Bitcoin and poker. I wrote the kind of site that I would like to play poker on myself. The game looks and works much better than other poker sites in my opinion. The design is clean and functional, putting gameplay first. It uses modern web technologies, but doesn't look like a typical modern site.

The site doesn't ask for any personally identifiable information, so you are welcome to play anonymously if you wish. Also, my fees are much lower than any other poker site. Notably, there is no rake. You don't need to deposit any Bitcoin to play - you can try a game for free. This really takes the fun out of it, but it lets you make sure the site works well before committing your Bitcoin.

There are not many people on there at the moment, so you may not find anyone to play against when you visit. To get a game going, you will probably need to either play against the bots, or get someone you know to join your table. The site does support play-by-email for slower games if your group can't all be online at the same time - you can set a bet timeout of up to 7 days, and the site will email you when it's your turn to bet.

Thank you for your attention and I hope you give the site a whirl at https://paddleboat.ms/ (https://paddleboat.ms/).

Where have you been all this time and where do you know the Bitcointalk forum, maybe right now the community here is already busy with poker tournaments here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5383543.0, maybe the party's almost over.

Yes this forum is the best place right now to promote gambling sites, what's more, poker is loved by many communities, it takes time to assess and the reputation of your poker site is known and liked by the public.

I hope this is a good start for your poker site as well as for you now and in the future, good luck.

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How, play for free without depositing, a little complacent for me, please explain for real, could hurt me later, haunted by curiosity.

just a friendly welcome.

I know you said that you are not a big company so I'll assume that your funds are extremely limited. but if you want to attract players, better marketing would be a great thing to do and would most likely help your website. I quickly checked your website and the design is pretty plain but it does give me an "old school" vibe. I also, liked that you can try out the game by playing with friends.

I haven't tried the website yet but once you are on the website click "new game" it will redirect you to another webpage with options "play with bitcoin", "free game with friends", "free game with bots", etc...

When i visited your site i thought that i`m back in the 90s. I suggest you to improve design and use your script. With such design you can get some "old school" gamblers but it will be low quantity of players. If you want to promote you site you need at least high quality design, several cryptocurrencies with low commissions for deposit/withdraw and several more games at least. Or your site will be just from several friends. May be it is not bad.

If you want to introduce your site, you should check the other gambling sites on the Gambling board so maybe you can change your thread and create ANN about your site. Maybe you need to Buy a chopper membership (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=credit;promote) that will help you add an image.

I visited your site and saw that your site is simple with a green background and we need to create an account. It needs more things to add such as T&C, Help, and else.

Well, I had the same feeling, like we are back in the 90s! But even that retro look can be good, as you say it can attract some people who like that design! What bothers me can we trust this site? Who wrote the code for card shuffling, or is it borrowed?! 

Starting a poker site is not easy! Attracting players is the hardest part... and I guess for attracting players only money helps! Marketing, tournaments with guaranteed prizes, freerolls... all that should last so people will have a chance to see your site! And all that costs money, as always, more money more chances for success, less money less quality, lower chances for success!

I understand your enthusiasm! Without a doubt, these projects are quite romantic and work correctly in very local niches.

I think that joining a network and buying a skin is the best way or the best business model today, that gives you player traffic that is not cheap at all, but... I think the future of crypto poker is to copy that business model and allow enthusiasts like you to access under this modality.

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I also found your domain curious, it is a domain that is very much in trend, that gives it a strange touch because we have a very vintage site, something that one does not expect to find in that type of .ms extension.

My place here seems to be for your site and if you want to get acquainted with the players as a part, then the first thing you need to do is to make your design a little better because the mind of your lips is a bit normal  I mean, you have to improve the design a little bit, and you have to take a good look at the ones that are gambling and present them to everyone.

It took you one year in order to develop this website?
Sorry for the question,but are you a newbie programmer?
I see that you aren't making this website for the sake of making money and growing a gambling business.
Perhaps I will try the free version,but I'm busy right now.
I don't really think that somebody is going to bet actual Bitcoins on a website that doesn't look legit enough and doesn't have enough gamblers.Maybe the poker players can use it to train their skills for free,but there are way bigger platforms for playing poker for free.

We can`t say anything about code. Just test and analyze games one by one. The same problem with deposit/withdraw - only test and believe the OP. As for me - i don`t want to play with such design, so this questions are far from mem i don`t plan to do any research.
About promotion - first of all - change design. With such design only specific player will play and the expenses will be much more than profit i think. Or it`s possible to play some old school home tournaments, at least for the first time, to get some money for promo. But the OP have to find players even for such tournaments.

It's not that bad for me but yeah, if there's a room to improve in the website then I think that you should take time to consider improving or changing the overall vibes of the website. If you don't want to go to all the trouble, then you can probably hire people to do the designing and coding for you. Paddleboat reminds me of those boat casinos so it's pretty cool.

It's a simple website and there's the feeling that design is quite intriguing and interesting for me. Only one paid game/table is there.

But the good part is that there are many players that are trying with the free game. These folks probably are just checking out your poker site and it's a good start that there are those that have visited your site.

I haven't signed up yet and just looked at the few tabs.

Objectively speaking, the website reminds me of those 90s computer where your dad stays at the office playing solitaire all night.
 
Kidding aside, though I do understand that your funds may be limited, I hope you invest on its aesthetics and overall user interface. It is essential that the moment a potential customer opens a website, it would attract him for the first 10s to navigate throughout the page. In this way, they would be more inclined to stay making them your potential target customers in the long run.

What a classic game design that looks like 90's solitaire game. It's so good play in there with bots because the gameplay is very smooth and it feels nostalgic all the design aspect of the game. The main question here is how we can trust you that you will not run with our money? There's no info about your company or anything that will give players assurance that you will not run. This is 2022 and most of the people here don't trust anymore unlicensed Casino. I will be happy to use your website as casual game with bot but not with real money. Make it decentralized if you really want to run it anonymously.

Same impression I have upon visiting his site. It has an old school vibe which I like because I love old stuffs, from songs, to games, movies, anything. This can make his poker site stand out from the crowd. His site doesn't have bonuses yet because like he said he only made this for his own interest. I mean no big business partners but if we support it and his site grows big, he might consider this soon.

Free play's are not a waste of time if your goal is to enjoy and past the time. Also it allows you to practice and master your poker skills. Another thing i like about his site is the ability to email you when your game is ready . not sure if other poker sites have this feature?

But for the sake of self testing then it isnt really that bad either but its true that bot will only waste gamblers time which i do see that it would be surely be ignored.
In regarding about sites design then it is really that a very simple basic and lots of space been not utilized even though its simple and direct to the point
but i do hate solid green color. hehe

The design looks good for me it was like I'm playing solitaire on my old PC which brings back the memories. I tried it with bots It looks good and I don't see any problem, I think you just need to attract more players a simple promotion or competition is enough to attract players, I personally don't want to play with bots even if the game is fair it's much better for me to play with a real players.

Hmm, interesting, site UI looks pretty old style, nonetheless rather clean though and uniform all throughout (from what I can see). Still, if you were trying to advertise the site as a business then I doubt it could get much traction, but if it was solely for people who want to play and stuff like that (kind of like god field if you know about it) then yea, it could work as one, especially with the timeout feature which looks rather interesting imo. Could be, or that it didn't necessarily took a year but rather just spread out the work in that year.

You definitely should improve your user interface because it seems like you are lost in time. Nowadays, there are so many poker sites that has been on the internet and they are reputable ones. If you want to be par in the competition, then you must consider enhancing and improving your website first to garner and encourage more clients to look it up and be their go-to. Check the things that a player will be looking for for a poker site and then incorporate it to your website. That way, you'll have potential clients. Consider to add variety of games to play too. Like a twist and such to make the players curious and engage with your site. Please take this as a criticism for your site to be successful in the future. I wish you luck OP.

Always nice to see a new Poker website being developed. I will check your website out this weekend and give it a try. Having an active player base is the most important thing for any poker website. Nothing is more frustrating than sitting alone on a table and nobody is joining. Playing against bots can be nice for learning purposes, but to really play for money we need to have other humans to play against. Maybe during your initial launch phase you could add more heads-up tables so you only need 1 person to play against. To attract a larger scale of players you should also consider running some promotions and giving deposit bonuses for larger stakes. It's quite hard to convince regulars to switch to your website. Good luck with website.

Thanks for all the good ideas and kind words, everyone. The best idea I'm hearing is tournaments. I will plan to code in support for tournaments, and then run a few with cash prizes. Winning something above and beyond the poker winnings themselves, should incentivize people to play and get me a player base.

I also like the idea of adding other games. Do you think seven card stud and five card draw would be the best ones to add? Those are the ones I like anyway.

I like the idea of adding other cryptocurrencies, but it puts a heavy load on the server. Running a Bitcoin daemon is the most resource-intensive thing the server does, and I don't have the resources to add another one. If my site ever starts making money, I will get a more powerful server and add other cryptocurrencies, but until then I don't think it's wise.

I totally understand the trust concerns. I probably wouldn't trust this site with my Bitcoin either. I think to address this, I will keep adding free functionality, so people don't have to trust the site in order to use it. Hopefully people will see that too much effort has been put into the site for it to be a scam.

I think the term frequent player must sound familiar to you and that is good here in the forum, its equivalent would be a frequent poster and as it happens in poker, good or bad, that is determined by time in the individuality of each person...building community is not Easy, which in your case is measured by player traffic.

It is good that you take into account all the suggestions, but the best thing is that you return to answer in the thread and in that line of thought you join the community not only as an owner or entrepreneur but as a user who can contribute to the community.

You can use your site as independent site for tournaments. Someone else(even bitcointalk tournaments probably) can organize a tournament just using your site without deposit money. At the end just calculate how much everybody won and this man send money to winners. And you will get a commission for using your site. In this way you ought improve speed and accessibility of the site.

It is excellent that you take into account all the suggestions of the forum members, however if you do a general improvement of the whole site and create an infrastructure for pvp poker and at the same time you can leave the poker against the same system, it is something that you would be innovating in a casino, I don't know how good the performance is, but at least it is something new, and the new always attracts the attention of all the players, and already with an infrastructure that is only for pvp it would be leaving an option to tournaments are held with surveillance of a third party plus the help of blockchain, it is something like Betnomi is doing, you can start as they do, then you can make the necessary improvements, of course this is my suggestion and if it is in the possibility that it you can do.

The idea is not bad, but I think there will be quite a few people who are hesitant about this domain of paddloboat.ms
Nowadays it is.com if perhaps to a lesser extent .io   .ms exudes little confidence. However, if you can gain trust in the forum here and advertise, you can win a lot of players with it. Maybe play some freerolls for free so players can try the site without having to deposit money right away.

Domain names does indeed could really be seen and people does prefer on seeing .com or something in near popular but it isnt bad to have those odd domains but people couldnt just ignore about websites budget.

If they couldnt afford .com or better domain names then they would already have hindrance or questions in mind that the site budget or finances isnt really that great which is something not surprising kind of reaction.

Somehow same as suggested and advised above, as long you do stick on giving out good service and interesting promotions then this domain issue would be ignored.

month after this post and thread yet you remained Silent ? no  update ad all? are you serious in what you are telling us here?

at least short update of what is the plan makes sense at all.

And i like it also   maybe both 5 cards and 7 cards would make it better.

waiting for that to come now.

I see this project last month, I would like to ask of the OP managed to do some promotions I think many people would be interested to this game. I also see that you would be able to test it using bot, how many players you have so far? maybe a weekly giveaway would be a good idea and eliminate the player vs bot since we don't know how fair would it be I still considering playing with other player.

You haven't played online poker much, have you?

Poker rooms usually have a "play money" version where you play for no money. They simply give you chips that are not worth anything and if you lose them they give you more, usually up to a limit. It is like playing with your friends with some chips but without money. I guess they do it for people who don't dare with money, because a profitable percentage of those players end up depositing and playing with money.

The point is that it is very different to play with fictitious chips that are worthless than to play with money, even if they are insignificant amounts. The way of playing changes a lot.

If you want to see the play money version you can download Pokerstars for example and there you can choose to play with fictitious money.


This poses a problem, which is not unique to your site, but to all sites that want to preserve the privacy of their users: collusion.

Playing without identifying yourself in casino games is not a problem, because after all they are EV- games (or EV+ for the house) and you can't cheat.

On the other hand, in poker playing anonymously implies a great risk of people cheating, so you won't see me in those sites.

Checked the site and seems a bit simple though it doesn't attract me to play even you can play using play money or chips that has no value. Though I have played in pvp poker in a gambling site against different people and it is quite good to experience it but this one does compared to it as other poker players may cheat using another account when playing with valued chips or whatever the site use like their own tokens whatsoever. Promotions are bit less in my opinion or lacking the effort in promoting the site after launching.

Site seems very much simple & quite old school era. I'm not saying I don’t like such design; I'm loving this smf forum as well LOL. But with the competition, promotion in the market, I guess OP will have hard time establishing the site.
I haven’t created an account with the site yet. Can someone share whether there's board game (pvp but multi players). I'm looking for such poker sites. There are only few available options.

I haven't created an account as well, but why would we?! What is so great about this place that can make me want to play here?! Old school design not for sure, good tournaments with granted prizes?! There isn't any!

PvP but multiplayer?! You need to be more specific about what you want! Join Betnomi poker games, I know just one game left, but you will get a taste of nice poker and maybe there will be another tournament after this one!

I visited your site, and its design seemed old to me. In order to compete with the websites that are currently on the market, you must further develop the design. Because if your website is not attractive then no matter how trustworthy it is, players will not be attracted to that website. Because there are a lot of websites in the market today that are offering something better, attracting players to a new website is not an easy task.

So try to develop the website in a more interesting way and design the forum's Ann thread creatively.

OP hasn't logged in for almost so not sure if he is still following this thread and reading our suggestions!
But in case he does, I want to know why the deposit page generates three types of bitcoin addresses (bech32, p2sh, legacy). I don't think this is needed since almost all wallets support segwit and hence only a bech32 address should be enough.
Also, when I tryed the game (for free), I noticed that the page reloads with each action (deal, fold, call..) which I found unpleasant.

You know... the best sites are normally the ones where the "Player" are the designer of the game being played. A lot of ...let's call them investors, will pay a developer to develop a game for them and then the developer takes control and most of these developers will give preference to everything else and not the actual game play.

Your site looks simplistic, but the game play is very good and it is a pity that there are not more active people on the site. I love the fact that you can play via email and also against bots....... such an awesome feature.   ;)

Honestly, people now are very skeptical that even domain is being checked. I think it's because of the previous scam history of fake sites that users are now being more careful. I guess proper advertising of the site would be a good idea. Gaining the user's trust is also a way of building an important good reputation.

Actually, .com is pretty cheap and not gonna matter anymore because the name of the casino itself determines the premium of the domain unless all domain in comparison has same name then .com will always be the most premium since its a top level domain. But if we compared paddleboat.com to bitcoin.xyz or other unfamiliar domain then the website that name after Bitcoin will always be expensive because of its premium due to the demand of that name. Domain doesn’t matter anymore on the current valuation of website.

I just revisited the website to test this feature. I created a new game with friends and provided some of my email addresses. When I checked my email accounts, I didn't see any invitation emails. Not sure what's the cause of the problem, it could be a bug or just a problem with their email server/service provider. I don't think they want to keep their customers waiting for their friends who will never join because they didn't receive any invitation.
Also I noticed that if you create a new game and go back to create a new one the website hangs although it creates the table and you can access it only from the My games (!) menu!

That's almost a month, this thread would be better if we have an active OP. so now, I have a feeling that OP is not part of the team or the company, or they just have a very poor marketing strategy. Some company take their time seriously in the forum as they know how big the market is, and I still believe in first impression last, so not good for the business.

If you read his previous posts.... you will notice that he is not a company or a group of people, but rather a single individual that created something that he loves doing. So I think he has a full-time job and he does this on the side .... so do not expect him to comment frequently on the posts in this thread.

This is a project of passion for good game play.... something that is lacking in profit driven projects that are out there now. I guess he will grow over time, if the project is a success...  ;)

Well, first I will say welcome to the forum, here if you do things properly you will attract players to your new poker site. It's always a pleasure to see new casinos pumping out but we are more interested in seeing quality development and design that can place your poker site in high demand because of good quality but from what I saw on your site it is far from that. A lot needed to be done and building a site is not an easy job so you will need huge marketing/promotion also consider getting a copper member account it will help your posting ability on this forum.

To be honest I don't think there are many poker players here in the forum, mind you, everyone knows how to play, but few poker players and passionate poker players who want to play some games within the community even less, so in practice We are all freeroll players here, well, it in the first instance it seems, is the global category that we can give ourselves.

For a poker player the site may not be very attractive, in any case the interface of a poker table does not demand much in terms of graphics, what one wants is an honest site, that there is no collusion and if there is, it detects it by advanced use of programs that not only analyze IP traces, etc. they also have the ability to analyze and correlate the game between certain players, so in the event of a "false" or "true" complaint, e.g.


On the other hand, you have to be careful with these poker-only sites,  beware, a nickname, an email + IP, etc. They can be clues for them to track you in search of knowing what level of bankroll you manage, where you play, etc. Even gaming habits.

This is a "weird" site but the same OP mentions it is a personal project, maybe it's a programmer's final project, although he mentions his story, but anyway, you always have to be careful, not only with projects In isolation like this, sometimes the ones that seem the most legitimate do the most damage to a bankroll.

On the other hand, it is worth saying that this site does not charge for withdrawal but for deposit, 0.5% of what you deposit goes to the HF. This seems not very good but in this case this site does not charge rakeback per hand or per buyin, this is very good, especially in the cash tables where even leaving with profits you can be paying 5% of your profits in rake or even some more times. And this every time you sit down to play, but this only in the idea does not help much to this poker site, I have seen several Fiat casinos with similar modalities, but they do not survive.

The OP made this site by himself, without team. And you can see that this is and old-school site. It is impossible to get a lot of players with such design nowadays. May be the OP works with design now, or he got his players and it is not interesting for him what happens with this thread. Anyway i don`t think that he will often answer here.

Harsh truth indeed, but OP must realize that stepping up to the game is really crucial to thrive in here. There are a lot of pre-existing sites, and making a new one all by himself, and not being able to live up to the necessary time and attention to communicate and execute improvements could be the cause of the end of this site before it can even begin.

What do you expect from the community mate? to just jump on your site when you care nothing about the Broadcasting you put here?

Imagine creating a thread , actually ANN Thread but never comes back to answer or at least bump His own thread?

you are just proving that you are not capable of handling even your own advertising so expect nothing from as also.

We are looking for company that will keep sharing updates in their thread and not a Fly By Night company .

Hello and welcome to the forum,

I really like your site, it made me remember when I programmed in college, and also the program it has responds quickly to the tasks that are given the order, the command screen is excellent but it would be even better if you could replace it with a graphical environment Through some drawings, people and players like the visual more and do not read much, this leads to more emotion. To have all that development in such a short time and you alone is something to admire, very few can achieve it, if you look at it you have enough development and the optimization is at a very good level.

Apologies for necro, but I can't PM you as I'm a newbie.

The site isn't available anymore which is a shame, as I really enjoyed the aesthetic. Is there any way to play it still?

Thank you,
Austin