Starting a new gambling site through investors. Poker by Dabs

[Dabs]

*edit*

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The address for Dabs Poker Site Investment is:

1PokerbN4edVrJ4hgbUdGEAtLaBJ5xzad

Dabs
2013-09-06 (2013 September 06)
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Hi,

Please see this thread for reference:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=280368.0

Summary:
1. I want to put up my own Poker website with client / server, and / or HTML5.
2. I will need funding to pay developers and promotions.
3. I will run it. Cold wallet will be controlled by me.
4. I will pay all investors according to their proportional contribution from profits.

I started a thread on the lending forum, didn't get much interest there, locked it, and starting this here.

Instead of making an IPO or whatever, I just wanted to summarize first my intentions and gauge interest.

In any case, whether or not this attracts investors, I will still attempt to do it on my own.

As far as investing is concerned, all investors will be individually tracked manually, so I do not want more than 100 different investors. You can be anonymous (being referred to only by a bitcoin address) or you can post or PM me (and remain anonymous to the rest).

I will ideally want a total of up to 1000 BTC to start this project with minimum individual investors starting at 1 BTC. So I will get maybe 100 investors who buy shares of my poker company at 10 BTC each, for example. Or I get 10 investors who buy 100 BTC each.

All expenses and expenditures will be listed.

What will differentiate my poker site from all the others out there? I will attempt to use a so called "Provably Fair" system. In all other non-poker gambling or casino sites, such as the popular dice sites, Provably Fair allows players to verify that they got a fair dice roll. That they won or lost fairly.

In truth, the current implementation of Provably Fair gaming systems are actually "Probably Fair" with the probability that they are fair as an astronomical probability. Specifically 1 or 2 in 2^256 to 2^512. We're talking about cryptographically secure hash collision resistance.

The following threads are some discussions I have started or participated in about this from a technical point of view.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=282726.0  and
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=266791.40

And this is an actual game I am hosting now (although the players are taking their sweet time.)

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=274068.0

The largest poker sites are non-bitcoin, yet they can not "prove" their hands are fair except through third party accreditation from gambling commissions or independent audits. The players just have to trust them.

Statistical analysis of millions of hands show uniformity and indirectly the fairness.

Poker is also a PvP game. Player versus Player. The players never play against the house. The house always takes a rake or a profit, unlike dice sites where you bet against the site. Thus, SD having some losing months.

At this point, I have not asked for anything other than opinions or feedback. I don't know whether to do this directly or go through a stock exchange (and issue dividends.) I do know, if I do this directly, you can email, PM and/or message me and I can keep track of at most 100 people, which is all I need.

If I do not reach the required minimum amount, I simply refund all investors back whatever they sent. If I get only half or a third, I will see if I can still make the project work.

This is not a loan, this is an investment. Investments, while I will attempt and exhaust all possible means to make this profitable, are like gambling; this can still lose or ROI will take a little bit longer than all these other mining companies accepting pre-orders.


Dabs

[1715572252]

1715572252

[1715572252]

1715572252

[1715572252]

1715572252

[Dabs]

My napkin math is 6 to 10 players per table * 20 to 30 tables * 60 hands per hour * 24 hours * 25 days per month * 2% to 5% rake. All ring or cash games. That's at least 50 BTC to 100 BTC or more per month, after about 6 months to 1 year. Tournaments are not yet included, and there's no zoom or rush or fast fold style games yet.

Tell me if I'm wrong, too optimistic or overestimating the numbers. I feel that is conservative.

Some popular bitcoin poker websites: 300 players average, 30 tables average.
Some non-bitcoin poker sites: 50,000 players, 2000 tournaments.

Feel free to send me a PM. If there's interest, I'll do a self-managed IPO and issue 10000 shares worth 0.1 each with a minimum of 10 shares or 1 BTC. I'm not really interested in trading for this as that's a secondary market already and I'll leave it to the more savvy ones to do PTs if they want.

If not, well, it was worth a try, and I'll probably open source the whole thing just to get it out there.

[Ytterbium]

I thought about that idea for a poker site, it wouldn't be that difficult to implement.  You just have everyone contribute some random data, hash it all together, and use that as the seed for a PRING.  

One problem, though is that you'd need a way to prove that no one knows who anyone else's cards are.

Also 2-5% rake is a huge ripoff.

[Dabs]

I thought about that idea for a poker site, it wouldn't be that difficult to implement.  You just have everyone contribute some random data, hash it all together, and use that as the seed for a PRING. 

One problem, though is that you'd need a way to prove that no one knows who anyone else's cards are.

Also 2-5% rake is a huge ripoff.

That's what I do for the shuffling part. The dealing part is secret so no one else sees the cards.

Your problem, is the same problem that is on all other poker sites, which is, how to prevent super-users or god-mode players. This is where trust and reputation come in. I have no need to play my own game. All dice site owners can play their own games, and that is not good for other investors as the owner can obviously win.

The proof here, so far, is that each card has a secret only for that card. And while you know the hash ahead of time, you don't know the card rank and suit until I give you the secret for it.

That rake is pretty standard across all poker sites that I have seen, and it is much lower than physical casino card rooms. I could do lower or higher, depending on any number of other factors. No flop, no drop, and maybe some other arbitrary rules.

[Dabs]

I'd just like to add that PokerStars has the lowest rake for non-bitcoin poker card rooms at 4.5%. All others are charging 1 cent or something per hand, with a $3 or $4 maximum cap.

Physical brick and mortar casinos or card rooms charge 5% to 10% rake.

As for bitcoin only poker rooms, my initial research shows 5% as the highest. And 2.5% as the lowest with certain games going as low as 1%. They also have maximums, such as 0.01 BTC. These sites also have promotions such as freerolls and rakeback. No Flop No Drop means no rake for that particular hand.

Generally:
Higher rake is better for investors.
Lower rake is better for players.

We need to find a balance as well as include promotions and marketing to attract enough players to make this profitable.

My current system already asks players to voluntarily "cut the deck", so the game will be fair. As the operator, it is in my best interests to keep the game as fair as possible, so there will be no "god mode" and we will use some sort of collusion detection system as well as manual review of hands.

The games can be made 100% provably fair by revealing the deck either after the hand, or after a day or two, but I'm not sure poker players will want that, therefore I came up with a system that attempts to do this without revealing all the cards except what players can normally see. If you fold and muck your cards, no one else should be able to see them.

[dragonfruit]

How many ventures are you trying to start again? None of them will be successful.

[Dabs]

Just this one for now. I'm already doing escrows and a lotto. Both have been relatively successful.

Only the online poker really needs a site or client/server to take off.

[byronbb]

Poker is hard imo. If you get beyond anything but small you have to deal with collusion issues, bots, ratholers, and short stackers. Go provably fair baccarat highest limits possible. Very popular game with the highest limit gamblers in Asia and getting a foothold into Las Vegas. Maccau, China's Vegas, makes 2/3rds of its ENTIRE revenue from the VIPs who play this game, which is astonishing because it's a 1% house edge.

[mechs]

Poker is tough - provably fair card games have been done (just check out bitzino).  The problem with online poker are issues such as screen sharing and other collusion methods.  Still, you are right, online poker was very successful before the US crackdown, so they found a way to do it.

[Dabs]

Poker is hard imo. If you get beyond anything but small you have to deal with collusion issues, bots, ratholers, and short stackers. Go provably fair baccarat highest limits possible. Very popular game with the highest limit gamblers in Asia and getting a foothold into Las Vegas. Maccau, China's Vegas, makes 2/3rds of its ENTIRE revenue from the VIPs who play this game, which is astonishing because it's a 1% house edge.

Baccarat punto banco looks interesting. I will do some research into this and may be a completely separate project. It looks like it's a different form of dice, because it's largely or completely a game of chance. I'd need a bankroll to start it though, since it is a House vs Player game.

Poker is hard, that's what makes it interesting. Also Online Poker is hard to make Provably Fair. All other card games are easy to make Provably Fair. People have studied Mental Poker for over 30 years and still it is hard to implement. It's getting easier because the computing power that is needed is now available and all the crypto voodoo fancy math has been discovered.

Most crypto came out of the problem of the original Mental Poker.

Collusion = need some sort of detection algo and manual human review. If it gets too large, people will attempt to police themselves.
God-Mode / Super-Users = that would be my responsibility or my server is hacked (which is still my responsibility).
Bots = I might actually allow it. Open source the client. Go make your own 3D version of the game, but the base engine is still Provably Fair. If I publish an API, or make a "console / text" client, I've just given to keys for the bot makers.
Ratholers and/or short stackers = hmmmmm. how do the big sites deal with this? If you leave a table, maybe you shouldn't be allowed back in that particular table for about an hour or so. Go find another table. There are strategies to handle them as a player, such as doing raises against them. As the house, maybe start with bigger buy-ins or something. I will have to figure this out.

Some people play against known ratholers / short stackers by choice because they know a strategy to apply against them.

Poker is tough - provably fair card games have been done (just check out bitzino).  The problem with online poker are issues such as screen sharing and other collusion methods.  Still, you are right, online poker was very successful before the US crackdown, so they found a way to do it.

It's easy to do any other game and make it Provably Fair. Poker is the only exception (and any other card game where you can't reveal the entire deck.) As for the usual problems, they are the same problems across all online poker sites. I'll just take a cue from the bigger ones on how they handle those problems, while trying to be fair to players.

[Dabs]

Well, while most bitcoin poker rooms are around 2.5% rake, I did find one which claims 2.0%. Not to mention a brand new dice site from an unknown is getting tons of "investments". So, I'm bumping my thread just in case someone seriously wants to throw me some coins.

Code:

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The address for Dabs Poker Site Investment is:

1PokerbN4edVrJ4hgbUdGEAtLaBJ5xzad

Dabs
2013-09-06 (2013 September 06)
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Send me a PM or email me, or be completely anonymous and I'll just track your sending address. That address is a cold wallet offline address.

[Dabs]

1 year bump. Someone PM'd me about a potential Baccarat game, and someone suggested I do a variant of a dice game. Sic Bo, Pai Gow specifically. (Those are player versus house games, so also need a bankroll.)

[casinobitco]

CasinoBitco.in has provably fair Baccarat - CoinRoyale mimicked it as well.

https://www.casinobitco.in/casino/baccarat/

1 year bump. Someone PM'd me about a potential Baccarat game, and someone suggested I do a variant of a dice game. Sic Bo, Pai Gow specifically. (Those are player versus house games, so also need a bankroll.)

[BitHash]

 I believe if you open a stock option in some automated website and prove what the 1000 btc will be spent on exactly (the bitcoin + changed so not sure if you still look for 1000 btc) than even smaller fish can attribute something. I would love to invest 0.1 for example and reinvest the dividends . So long story short , open an ipo on a place like havelock or whatever and you can easily get 100-200 , if you tell doog to help you out , he will 'probably' vouch for you and you can get up to 1000 (or more like 500-600 , 1000 might be strect because lets face it thats about 400k$).

 I believe you can make this happen if you just take that way , manual way is too much hard work for both the investor and the invested.

[Dabs]

 I believe if you open a stock option in some automated website and prove what the 1000 btc will be spent on exactly (the bitcoin + changed so not sure if you still look for 1000 btc) than even smaller fish can attribute something. I would love to invest 0.1 for example and reinvest the dividends . So long story short , open an ipo on a place like havelock or whatever and you can easily get 100-200 , if you tell doog to help you out , he will 'probably' vouch for you and you can get up to 1000 (or more like 500-600 , 1000 might be strect because lets face it thats about 400k$).

 I believe you can make this happen if you just take that way , manual way is too much hard work for both the investor and the invested.

Thanks for that comment. I think I can easily manage 100 people, but not 1000 who each put in 0.1 BTC. I have not yet looked into any of those websites since the last one I used was bitfunder.

[BitHash]

 To be perfectly honest with you , I haven't used any of them as well.

 I am not sure what the 1000 btc will go for since its about 400k$ right now , but if you can manage couple grand of out them you can pull of an automated system into the website (not like dice investing at just-dice , this will be totally seperate) for people who would like to invest , this way it will not be like invest as much as possible way like just-dice but it will be like a certain amount (1000 btc in this case) like havelock or consertium or whatever  , so it will be like them but for only one stock and implemented in the website , that way people might even buy and sell your stock and you can give dividends automatically.

 This way you can even make one share = 1 satoshi , as long as its automated it won't take your time , you just put in the total profits and it will be divided automatically 1000 btc is a big number to trust with another website, for that much money try to open your own , that would be much safer and if I know doog , he will show you how to keep them safe

 Btw why did you guys stopped with jd but you think about a poker site? If you are going to start a gambling and be afraid of the legal charges why don't you just continue with jd?

[Dabs]

 To be perfectly honest with you , I haven't used any of them as well.

 I am not sure what the 1000 btc will go for since its about 400k$ right now , but if you can manage couple grand of out them you can pull of an automated system into the website (not like dice investing at just-dice , this will be totally seperate) for people who would like to invest , this way it will not be like invest as much as possible way like just-dice but it will be like a certain amount (1000 btc in this case) like havelock or consertium or whatever  , so it will be like them but for only one stock and implemented in the website , that way people might even buy and sell your stock and you can give dividends automatically.

 This way you can even make one share = 1 satoshi , as long as its automated it won't take your time , you just put in the total profits and it will be divided automatically 1000 btc is a big number to trust with another website, for that much money try to open your own , that would be much safer and if I know doog , he will show you how to keep them safe

 Btw why did you guys stopped with jd but you think about a poker site? If you are going to start a gambling and be afraid of the legal charges why don't you just continue with jd?

Good idea.

To answer your last question, I'm not with doog in JD, he did that on his own. I was just an early tester / player / investor. I offered to do the off-shore hosting thing, as online gambling (with fiat money) is not illegal in my country. It was actually declared legal by a court here. So online gambling with play money or with virtual money might not even attract any attention at all.

[superbit]

I agree that provably fair with poker is doable, but as others have mentioned there is just too much to manage and worry about.  The big draw with dice sites is easy to understand and instant results for both player and investor.

I haven't seen a bitcoin pai-gow game yet, but I'm not sure that gets the players required to earn any money.  It needs to be easy, maybe some kind of a spin on dice where you can start with a 1% house edge on your first roll, and if you are willing to risk it all on a second roll (maybe has to be same odds as original roll or maybe not) you get your next spin at 0.9% house edge, do it again and you get 0.8%  Once you lose it resets at 1%.  Might even be able to start it at 1.25% and go down by 0.25% a spin, to a minimum of 0.5%?  Award a bonus to the longest winning (and losing) streak at 50/50 odds. Maybe 0.1% of the 1.25% house edge on first roll goes to the longest streak jackpot.  That gets paid out at midnight everyday. (This might require some kind of calculation to avoid .000001 bets going crazy to win long streak, but it's just an idea, logistics could be worked out)

[filharvey]

If u want to talk I'm current developing a oculus poker app, written in c# on both the client and server. The client is written using unity so a web version can be provided.

Current it is proof of concept and every thing works well. I was recently looking at a way yto have bitcoin payments into it.

Let me know if you want to talk more on it. Would required a lot less than 1000btc to complete.

Phil

[Dabs]

@superbit, Pai Gow looks complicated. I'm thinking I might do something like Sic Bo instead. It can be made as fast as all the other dice sites.

@filharvey, I can take a look if you want. I know that Poker the way I want it is going to be uphill.

[superbit]

@superbit, Pai Gow looks complicated. I'm thinking I might do something like Sic Bo instead. It can be made as fast as all the other dice sites.

@filharvey, I can take a look if you want. I know that Poker the way I want it is going to be uphill.

Sic Bo is easier for sure but not sure that it has the same community feel as dicing.  Maybe if somehow everyone bet on the same roll, but then I'm not sure how you would establish the pace of the rolls.  (same goes for craps)  I still like my dice idea from above

[Dabs]

Sic Bo is easier for sure but not sure that it has the same community feel as dicing.  Maybe if somehow everyone bet on the same roll, but then I'm not sure how you would establish the pace of the rolls.  (same goes for craps)  I still like my dice idea from above

None of any of the current top dice sites are really "community dicing", but rather, each player is dicing on his own (his own rolls, his own server seed, client seed, nonce, except for onedice). The community feel comes from the integrated chat room, and where people can see the All Bets tab or view.

Sic Bo or Craps could be implemented the same way, each player dices on his own (because some players might actually take time placing bets all over their table). Then roll. Or pick one bet, and roll roll roll.

You could make everyone bet on the same roll, bet on the same table, you'd sort of see everyone's bet all over the table, but the pace would be either a fixed time dictated by the dealer / croupier, or it would wait until all players have clicked on "bet / roll".

Some players might get pissed off at the delay, unless the table is rolling every minute with a count down timer on top.

Then you could have different tables for different speeds. The slow players can stick to the slow table (rolls every 2 minutes) while the fast players can flock to the fast table (rolls every 20 seconds).

Ok, this isn't poker anymore, hehe.

[electerium]

Dabs,


Provably fair online poker is a very very neat idea, from the perspective that no one who plays online poker can actually verify if the RNG is RNG. To be able to advertise your site as being provably fair and this RNG as legit would be something that you possess over every other online poker room in the world.

The only problem is that every single bitcoin centric poker room besides swc has failed.


Have you considered building something around USD/fiat instead?

[srgkrgkj]

well i guess no place for a small fish like me who has less than a Bitcoin *sob* I can understand why you dont want many investorsas it can get pretty messy

[freedomno1]

It's interesting to see this continue from 2013
So is this a natural extension of Dabs lottery remember that was a thing for a while.
Best of luck with this kind of like SWC but perhaps it will grow on people could try havelock seen S.Dice trade there and CBTC IPO there.

[mailmansDOGE]

Dabs, haven't you managed gambling websites before? What lead to closing them? From what I recall, your past projects were simpler that what you're proposing here. Why should people trust you with that?

[Dabs]

Everyone else, thanks for the feedback. Poker is indeed going to be difficult. I offered SwC to help them if they ever want to do Provably Fair, but they politely declined saying it's not a priority.

They do have a point, because they are a trusted bitcoin poker site. But still, it's something to be able to say that your game is provably fair.

I mean, no one is ever going to play on any blackjack, roulette, dice, or lotto game that is not provably fair anymore.

Dabs, haven't you managed gambling websites before? What lead to closing them? From what I recall, your past projects were simpler that what you're proposing here. Why should people trust you with that?

This poker game is the most ambitious project I have. I intend to actually start smaller (probably a dice site like so many others you see here.)

I've never managed any gambling websites except my lotto (it's not even a website).

This whole thread is more like a dream.

At this point in time, it remains academic. The reality is that I will probably go partner up with some local people to put up a "regular" dice game site. So much easier. Then this thread can point there for those people who trust me enough to "invest" in that one when it's up and running.

Have you considered building something around USD/fiat instead?

Sorry, I'm not going to get involved if it touches USD/fiat. Too "dangerous". I'll let the exchanges handle the conversion and I can be "clean" with just bitcoins.

[Dabs]

I'll make a new thread sooner or later, but I thought I would bump this and also say that I'm considering just putting up a dice site, with 4 people (myself included), for about 300 BTC only. Considering when I first posted this, the exchange rate was only $100 USD per BTC, now it has gone up.

The 3 other people are all local to me, so if they try to run away, I can shoot them. (Just kidding.)

300 BTC covers 3-4 months development time 2-3 months beta test time, and 6 months total operating expenses, as well as the salaries of the 3 people (who can be paid in fiat if they don't want to keep bitcoins.)

Currently, we are talking to a Filipino-Chinese businessman to become an investor. His business is Armored vehicles and a security guard agency. The plan is to scare him that his Armored car business will die when bitcoin takes over the world and banks no longer need paper money. hehehe.

We can work out the terms on how your investment pays you back, I estimate that we will be profitable after the 6th month, and if everything goes as planned (which usually never does) we can pay back the principal and interest in 12 months.

The goal is to raise between $120k USD to $160k USD equivalent, or 300 BTC to 400 BTC. Investors will have my complete dox (not like it's already mostly out there) but not my 3 other people, for their safety. And you can track the coins in the blockchain.

Progress and milestones and Gantt charts and all those other "business" stuff will be provided.