Texas Hold'em and Omaha/Omaha8 Poker Room - NL, Limit, Potlimit games

[EPiSKiNG]

wow.. that's close to $3k. real stuff!

yeah, you're telling me... I had my heart set on winning it all and buying a bus for my band... Sigh....  Well at least it wasn't "real" money.

-EP

[hippich]

wow.. that's close to $3k. real stuff!

yeah, you're telling me... I had my heart set on winning it all and buying a bus for my band... Sigh....  Well at least it wasn't "real" money.

-EP

Hehe. I was telling same "it's not real money" when I found someone took all bitcoins... =))

On the other note, someone contacted me via email as mikerka and said he decide to return money. So fingers crossed.. =)

[EPiSKiNG]

wow.. that's close to $3k. real stuff!

yeah, you're telling me... I had my heart set on winning it all and buying a bus for my band... Sigh....  Well at least it wasn't "real" money.

-EP

Hehe. I was telling same "it's not real money" when I found someone took all bitcoins... =))

On the other note, someone contacted me via email as mikerka and said he decide to return money. So fingers crossed.. =)

That's good to know... I wonder if he's trying to see if he can get traced somehow... Have a bunch of poker playing bitcoiners showing up at his house with guns.  ha.

[graingert]

It would be great if there were boards to play with fake money only, perhaps use the Bitcoin test network :p

[hippich]

wow.. that's close to $3k. real stuff!

yeah, you're telling me... I had my heart set on winning it all and buying a bus for my band... Sigh....  Well at least it wasn't "real" money.

-EP

Hehe. I was telling same "it's not real money" when I found someone took all bitcoins... =))

On the other note, someone contacted me via email as mikerka and said he decide to return money. So fingers crossed.. =)

That's good to know... I wonder if he's trying to see if he can get traced somehow... Have a bunch of poker playing bitcoiners showing up at his house with guns.  ha.

Probably his point is just to teach me or something like this. Bug was really stupid. Anyway, let me see coins on my address first. This email could come from anybody.

[tanerlorn]

Second, I have some suggestions, you need to adjust your tables really.

Thanks for your input. I would like to hear what other members think about best combination of tables. This part is matter of messing with configuration files, so I can implement this fairly easy.

Also I never played anything beside hold'em, so I really do not know any details about other poker games (it just came with software and I left it as is). If there are bugs with it - please let me know. Probably it will make sense to push bug report to server software author.

Finally, you must fix the structure in limit tables. The problem is, the software makes the blinds 2x big as they should be. In .02-.04 limit for example, the blinds are .02 and .04, when they should be .01 and .02. This makes the opening raise size to .06, when it should be .04. Now, due to this fact you would have to have .005 and .01 blinds, if you want to keep the .01-.02, limit tables. This would be fine, and I would make 5 of those as well. Currently at the .01-.02 limit tables the blinds are .01 and .02, and the opening raise size is .03, when it should be .02, and blinds .01 and .01. That would actually work too, so either .005 and .01 blinds, or .01 and .01, if you can't do 3 decimal points.

Could someone else comment on this too? I do not have much experience in poker, but I always believe .01-.02 should refer to small and big blinds. Is this really incorrect? Any examples?

Yes I am correct. Open a play money pokerstars table, with limit betting. 200/400 limit holdem has 100/200 blinds. etc

Also I forgot one VERY important thing

You must implement all hands to be shown at showdown. At current time, sometimes only winning hand is shown. This is to prevent teamplay/collusion, people working together. All players on table should be able to see the losing hand, at least in the "dealer chat" window.

[tanerlorn]

What is adequate size of rake?

Keeping in mind bugness and beta state of software.. =))

I'd use the rake structure of pokerstars or fulltilt.

This is bad for a variety of reasons.

First of all the rake is really high at pokerstars and fulltilt. they had complete control of the US market so people didnt really have a choice.,...but it was really bad...

micro, and low stakes cash was almost unbeatable.

also those two sites had points and vip programs or rakeback, which ended up giving up to 40% of the rake back to the players

Plus since its really buggy...just keep working on it..

It is your choice what to charge for rake, but people are voluntarily playing here...and they don't HAVE to..if u charge the rake too high they might stop....In my opinion just start off charging 1% in rake...WITH a cap...at like 100bb....so the most ur taking off a pot is 1bb....also the pot should be a minimum of around 5bb to qualify to be raked...and the pot should see the flop, no preflop only rake

If you follow these guidelines, I think it'd be fine to start charging rake immediately.

[tomcollins]

Second, I have some suggestions, you need to adjust your tables really.

Thanks for your input. I would like to hear what other members think about best combination of tables. This part is matter of messing with configuration files, so I can implement this fairly easy.

Also I never played anything beside hold'em, so I really do not know any details about other poker games (it just came with software and I left it as is). If there are bugs with it - please let me know. Probably it will make sense to push bug report to server software author.

Finally, you must fix the structure in limit tables. The problem is, the software makes the blinds 2x big as they should be. In .02-.04 limit for example, the blinds are .02 and .04, when they should be .01 and .02. This makes the opening raise size to .06, when it should be .04. Now, due to this fact you would have to have .005 and .01 blinds, if you want to keep the .01-.02, limit tables. This would be fine, and I would make 5 of those as well. Currently at the .01-.02 limit tables the blinds are .01 and .02, and the opening raise size is .03, when it should be .02, and blinds .01 and .01. That would actually work too, so either .005 and .01 blinds, or .01 and .01, if you can't do 3 decimal points.

Could someone else comment on this too? I do not have much experience in poker, but I always believe .01-.02 should refer to small and big blinds. Is this really incorrect? Any examples?

Yes I am correct. Open a play money pokerstars table, with limit betting. 200/400 limit holdem has 100/200 blinds. etc

Also I forgot one VERY important thing

You must implement all hands to be shown at showdown. At current time, sometimes only winning hand is shown. This is to prevent teamplay/collusion, people working together. All players on table should be able to see the losing hand, at least in the "dealer chat" window.

Please don't do this.  Just because a lot of online sites do this doesn't mean it's a good idea.  If you do this in live poker, you'll get a kick in the nuts if you do it too much.  Although this rule is supposedly designed to prevent collusion, it is very rare that it actually is.  However, a lot of nits like it since they get to see what people had.

[EPiSKiNG]

Second, I have some suggestions, you need to adjust your tables really.

Thanks for your input. I would like to hear what other members think about best combination of tables. This part is matter of messing with configuration files, so I can implement this fairly easy.

Also I never played anything beside hold'em, so I really do not know any details about other poker games (it just came with software and I left it as is). If there are bugs with it - please let me know. Probably it will make sense to push bug report to server software author.

Finally, you must fix the structure in limit tables. The problem is, the software makes the blinds 2x big as they should be. In .02-.04 limit for example, the blinds are .02 and .04, when they should be .01 and .02. This makes the opening raise size to .06, when it should be .04. Now, due to this fact you would have to have .005 and .01 blinds, if you want to keep the .01-.02, limit tables. This would be fine, and I would make 5 of those as well. Currently at the .01-.02 limit tables the blinds are .01 and .02, and the opening raise size is .03, when it should be .02, and blinds .01 and .01. That would actually work too, so either .005 and .01 blinds, or .01 and .01, if you can't do 3 decimal points.

Could someone else comment on this too? I do not have much experience in poker, but I always believe .01-.02 should refer to small and big blinds. Is this really incorrect? Any examples?

Yes I am correct. Open a play money pokerstars table, with limit betting. 200/400 limit holdem has 100/200 blinds. etc

Also I forgot one VERY important thing

You must implement all hands to be shown at showdown. At current time, sometimes only winning hand is shown. This is to prevent teamplay/collusion, people working together. All players on table should be able to see the losing hand, at least in the "dealer chat" window.

Please don't do this.  Just because a lot of online sites do this doesn't mean it's a good idea.  If you do this in live poker, you'll get a kick in the nuts if you do it too much.  Although this rule is supposedly designed to prevent collusion, it is very rare that it actually is.  However, a lot of nits like it since they get to see what people had.

Yeah, I mean, if everyone could see the hands, then what value would bluffing have?  I know Tom wouldn't want that!  ;-)

-EP

[tanerlorn]

Second, I have some suggestions, you need to adjust your tables really.

Thanks for your input. I would like to hear what other members think about best combination of tables. This part is matter of messing with configuration files, so I can implement this fairly easy.

Also I never played anything beside hold'em, so I really do not know any details about other poker games (it just came with software and I left it as is). If there are bugs with it - please let me know. Probably it will make sense to push bug report to server software author.

Finally, you must fix the structure in limit tables. The problem is, the software makes the blinds 2x big as they should be. In .02-.04 limit for example, the blinds are .02 and .04, when they should be .01 and .02. This makes the opening raise size to .06, when it should be .04. Now, due to this fact you would have to have .005 and .01 blinds, if you want to keep the .01-.02, limit tables. This would be fine, and I would make 5 of those as well. Currently at the .01-.02 limit tables the blinds are .01 and .02, and the opening raise size is .03, when it should be .02, and blinds .01 and .01. That would actually work too, so either .005 and .01 blinds, or .01 and .01, if you can't do 3 decimal points.

Could someone else comment on this too? I do not have much experience in poker, but I always believe .01-.02 should refer to small and big blinds. Is this really incorrect? Any examples?

Yes I am correct. Open a play money pokerstars table, with limit betting. 200/400 limit holdem has 100/200 blinds. etc

Also I forgot one VERY important thing

You must implement all hands to be shown at showdown. At current time, sometimes only winning hand is shown. This is to prevent teamplay/collusion, people working together. All players on table should be able to see the losing hand, at least in the "dealer chat" window.

Please don't do this.  Just because a lot of online sites do this doesn't mean it's a good idea.  If you do this in live poker, you'll get a kick in the nuts if you do it too much.  Although this rule is supposedly designed to prevent collusion, it is very rare that it actually is.  However, a lot of nits like it since they get to see what people had.

Sorry but its completely different in live poker, Tom. In live poker, it is quite easy to tell if people are communicating, signaling, or using strange speech in order to telegraph their hands or the strength of their hands. In online poker, it is impossible, its just anonymous and anyone can come in with a friend and start sharing hole cards over the phone or an IM program. It is essential that this feature be implemented until there is sufficient support to review hand histories and prevent collusion. Preventing cheating and maintaining game integrity should be the #1 priority of this poker site.

I don't care if one gets a kick in the nuts for doing it live. For the record, I have played thousands of hours live and have never once asked to see someones mucked hand. I hope you can understand how completely different it is. Hands go to showdown around 5% of the time anyways, so its not like its gonna be showing your cards every hand. It will simply show the cards when someone bets with the best hand and someone else calls with a worse hand, it needs to show what worse hand they were calling with, this is extremely important if you just think about it for 5 seconds, come on man. It already shows someones hand if they are bluffing, at least if they are out of position, I'm pretty sure the software shows the bluffers hand and then shows the callers winning hand (but only if the caller had position, this should happen regardless).

There is a lot of differences between online and live poker, and one of them is you need to be able to see all hands that went to showdown, every time. You don't want your hand to be seen, then go play live poker and kick people in the nuts for asking. You wanna come on here, then abide by the rules. There's a damn good reason online poker has its own set of rules, that have been carefully honed and perfected by Full Tilt and Stars, the two main sites in the US market till recently. Its because those rules are the best rules for running an online poker room. Just because the rule only prevents collusion rarely, that is your argument for not having it? That is a god-awful argument, not trying to be a dick, just speaking my mind. It shouldn't matter at all how often it prevents collusion, if it does it ONCE its worth having.

[tomcollins]

Second, I have some suggestions, you need to adjust your tables really.

Thanks for your input. I would like to hear what other members think about best combination of tables. This part is matter of messing with configuration files, so I can implement this fairly easy.

Also I never played anything beside hold'em, so I really do not know any details about other poker games (it just came with software and I left it as is). If there are bugs with it - please let me know. Probably it will make sense to push bug report to server software author.

Finally, you must fix the structure in limit tables. The problem is, the software makes the blinds 2x big as they should be. In .02-.04 limit for example, the blinds are .02 and .04, when they should be .01 and .02. This makes the opening raise size to .06, when it should be .04. Now, due to this fact you would have to have .005 and .01 blinds, if you want to keep the .01-.02, limit tables. This would be fine, and I would make 5 of those as well. Currently at the .01-.02 limit tables the blinds are .01 and .02, and the opening raise size is .03, when it should be .02, and blinds .01 and .01. That would actually work too, so either .005 and .01 blinds, or .01 and .01, if you can't do 3 decimal points.

Could someone else comment on this too? I do not have much experience in poker, but I always believe .01-.02 should refer to small and big blinds. Is this really incorrect? Any examples?

Yes I am correct. Open a play money pokerstars table, with limit betting. 200/400 limit holdem has 100/200 blinds. etc

Also I forgot one VERY important thing

You must implement all hands to be shown at showdown. At current time, sometimes only winning hand is shown. This is to prevent teamplay/collusion, people working together. All players on table should be able to see the losing hand, at least in the "dealer chat" window.

Please don't do this.  Just because a lot of online sites do this doesn't mean it's a good idea.  If you do this in live poker, you'll get a kick in the nuts if you do it too much.  Although this rule is supposedly designed to prevent collusion, it is very rare that it actually is.  However, a lot of nits like it since they get to see what people had.

Sorry but its completely different in live poker, Tom. In live poker, it is quite easy to tell if people are communicating, signaling, or using strange speech in order to telegraph their hands or the strength of their hands. In online poker, it is impossible, its just anonymous and anyone can come in with a friend and start sharing hole cards over the phone or an IM program. It is essential that this feature be implemented until there is sufficient support to review hand histories and prevent collusion. Preventing cheating and maintaining game integrity should be the #1 priority of this poker site.

I don't care if one gets a kick in the nuts for doing it live. For the record, I have played thousands of hours live and have never once asked to see someones mucked hand. I hope you can understand how completely different it is. Hands go to showdown around 5% of the time anyways, so its not like its gonna be showing your cards every hand. It will simply show the cards when someone bets with the best hand and someone else calls with a worse hand, it needs to show what worse hand they were calling with, this is extremely important if you just think about it for 5 seconds, come on man. It already shows someones hand if they are bluffing, at least if they are out of position, I'm pretty sure the software shows the bluffers hand and then shows the callers winning hand (but only if the caller had position, this should happen regardless).

There is a lot of differences between online and live poker, and one of them is you need to be able to see all hands that went to showdown, every time. You don't want your hand to be seen, then go play live poker and kick people in the nuts for asking. You wanna come on here, then abide by the rules. There's a damn good reason online poker has its own set of rules, that have been carefully honed and perfected by Full Tilt and Stars, the two main sites in the US market till recently. Its because those rules are the best rules for running an online poker room. Just because the rule only prevents collusion rarely, that is your argument for not having it? That is a god-awful argument, not trying to be a dick, just speaking my mind. It shouldn't matter at all how often it prevents collusion, if it does it ONCE its worth having.

So tell me how you detect collusion using that rule?  And why wouldn't the colluders just fold on the end to avoid detection?

It doesn't detect anything except for figuring out what people folded, giving you more information on how they play.  The rule doesn't protect collusion at all.

BTW- I have played at several online sites that do not show hands at the end.  Much more enjoyable than the bot-fest infected FTP and PS.

[tanerlorn]

Bot fest infected? It is a known fact that other sites such as bodog, ub/ap, had well known botting problems that still exist, whereas stars/ftp at least had good support and eliminated bots when they first showed up on the sites, as well as having built in security now like captcha, not to mention a huge database of real player hand histories, to compare with suspected bot users.

The reason all cards must be shown at showdown is not due to when two colluders are HU in a pot, can't believe I have to explain this to you.

Its when a pot is multiway and someone is squeezed in between, and then river goes like one colluder bets the other colluder calls, and the person squeezed in between folds.....and then the callers hand is just mucked. Huge edges can be gained by making someone make incorrect folds in big bet games, such as no limit holdem. Implementing this rule we are discussing...This would be a very good situation and there is LITERALLY NO DOWNSIDE....more information is exchanged but like I said 5% of hands go to showdown anyways and the information is exchanged uniformly, it doesnt benefit anyone specifically, which is FAIR GAME.

I have tried to explain rationally why these are the rules basically everywhere, and you talk about sites that have a .0001% market share. How about you name some of the sites that have this supposed rule? I doubt you even can because they don't exist anymore. Stars/FTP had 90% of US market share for a reason, it was a pure free market, and they had the best game integrity, and customer service. Agreed, it was pretty terrible but it was the best in the industry, and as far as anyone can tell they both ran a fair game.

[eof]

All hands that go to showdown *must* be visible to anyone.  It is "rude" to ask the dealer to show "both hands" or "all hands".. but you are allowed to for good reason.  As someone who has paid tens of k's in rake in my life; I would consider this an essential feature.

[abyssobenthonic]

On the withdrawal security hole issue, I think a reasonable defense is something like:

* associate addresses with user accounts
* track deposits from each address associated with an account as a percentage of total deposits (see below)
* limit cumulative automatic withdrawals to an address to that percentage of account value
* users can optionally provide a public key for their account; if a user wishes to withdraw outside of the above constraints they request the site to send an email encrypted with that public key to them with a confirmation code.  The user then responds with the confirmation code and the amount to withdraw and the address to withdraw to and signs the response.  The withdrawal is then processed manually.

Computation of percentage would proceed as in this example:

* Initial deposit from address A for 10 BTC.  Address A now has a 100% deposit share for the account.
* Player builds balance to 20 BTC.  Address A's 100% share means that the whole account could be withdrawn in one-click to address A.
* Deposit of 5 BTC from address B.  Address B is assigned a share of 20% and address A's share is diluted to 80%.  The withdrawal maximums are now 20 BTC for A and 5 BTC for B.
* Balance declines to 15 BTC.  Address A's withdrawal limit is now 12 BTC and address B's is 3 BTC.
* Withdrawal to address B of 2 BTC.  Address B's share decreases to 7.6923076923...% ( (3-2)/(15-2); rounding error can be handled by for instance allowing any excess to be withdrawn from the account with the greatest share) and address A's increases to 92.3076...%.

(this is all based on speculation that the attacker in this case found a vulnerability that allowed the requestor to request a withdrawal to an arbitrary address)

[hippich]

the particular security issue hacker used will not be avoided by technique you describe. Any code can have security issues. My bug was so simple... =)) Here is it - https://github.com/hippich/Bitcoin-Poker-Room/commit/ef5f1a181fb207fe5e1260b3190835384fe99190

I am using much more stupid but rigid system - coins are transferred from server to my own local wallet. Only small change is left to process small withdrawal amounts. Big ones proceeded manually. So even if code will be hacked (and this happens), only change will be lost, not the whole balance.

On the other note - hacker, who contacted me, never replied nor sent funds. So either he was not real hacker or just decided to use money instead of returning.

[hippich]

Yes I am correct. Open a play money pokerstars table, with limit betting. 200/400 limit holdem has 100/200 blinds. etc

I do not have a lot experience in online poker, so I am sorry for stupid questions.. Could you explain what is referenced by these 200/400 then if blinds are 100/200?

You must implement all hands to be shown at showdown. At current time, sometimes only winning hand is shown. This is to prevent teamplay/collusion, people working together. All players on table should be able to see the losing hand, at least in the "dealer chat" window.

The whole server I believe is built around idea of dealing with hands like in real poker. I do not believe I will be able at this point modify code to enforce showdown cards in the end of game (I do not have needed skills for this).

I still believe our community is small enough to have such problems. If you do not believe to someone - do not play with them.

[hippich]

Just rechecked transactions. Found that not all hacker's withdrawals were successful. Only 680 btc stolen.

[tomcollins]

Bot fest infected? It is a known fact that other sites such as bodog, ub/ap, had well known botting problems that still exist, whereas stars/ftp at least had good support and eliminated bots when they first showed up on the sites, as well as having built in security now like captcha, not to mention a huge database of real player hand histories, to compare with suspected bot users.

The reason all cards must be shown at showdown is not due to when two colluders are HU in a pot, can't believe I have to explain this to you.

Its when a pot is multiway and someone is squeezed in between, and then river goes like one colluder bets the other colluder calls, and the person squeezed in between folds.....and then the callers hand is just mucked. Huge edges can be gained by making someone make incorrect folds in big bet games, such as no limit holdem. Implementing this rule we are discussing...This would be a very good situation and there is LITERALLY NO DOWNSIDE....more information is exchanged but like I said 5% of hands go to showdown anyways and the information is exchanged uniformly, it doesnt benefit anyone specifically, which is FAIR GAME.

I have tried to explain rationally why these are the rules basically everywhere, and you talk about sites that have a .0001% market share. How about you name some of the sites that have this supposed rule? I doubt you even can because they don't exist anymore. Stars/FTP had 90% of US market share for a reason, it was a pure free market, and they had the best game integrity, and customer service. Agreed, it was pretty terrible but it was the best in the industry, and as far as anyone can tell they both ran a fair game.

LITERALLY NO DOWNSIDE - except the entire table seeing what you had.

What is the upside?  The case that two colluders both call on the river?  Why wouldn't one colluder raise the other or just fold?

One I know off the top of my head is TruePoker.  You *can* see showdown hands, but you have to go through a bunch of menus and ask to have it emailed, and it takes 15-20 minutes to show up.

But hey, I know it would hurt you a lot if you are used to playing with HUDs and other "cheating" programs.  Stars/FTP had 90% of the market because they had huge advertising, had solid software, and catered to 20-tablers.  The more auto-pilot HUD-bots they had, the more rake they made as everyone passed money around.

[tomcollins]

Yes I am correct. Open a play money pokerstars table, with limit betting. 200/400 limit holdem has 100/200 blinds. etc

I do not have a lot experience in online poker, so I am sorry for stupid questions.. Could you explain what is referenced by these 200/400 then if blinds are 100/200?

You must implement all hands to be shown at showdown. At current time, sometimes only winning hand is shown. This is to prevent teamplay/collusion, people working together. All players on table should be able to see the losing hand, at least in the "dealer chat" window.

The whole server I believe is built around idea of dealing with hands like in real poker. I do not believe I will be able at this point modify code to enforce showdown cards in the end of game (I do not have needed skills for this).

I still believe our community is small enough to have such problems. If you do not believe to someone - do not play with them.

200/400 refers to the bet size, not the blinds, in limit poker.

NL poker does not have fixed bet sizes, so it refers to the blinds.

Colluders and cheaters are perfectly capable of cheating and colluding without being able to be caught by the showdown rule.  They are really hard to catch online.  Fortunately, most are really bad at what they do so they either are super obvious or end up not making anything out of it.  The rule is much more useful in limit poker, where a 4-bet fold is really odd on the river, so they have to call.  Also, bluffing with complete trash is a lot harder to pull off, and colluding is a lot more powerful since you can see-saw people and make big pots when you have hands, and they have no way to counter.  In big bet poker, anyone can raise any amount, so it makes it that much harder to get a benefit from colluding.

[hippich]

200/400 refers to the bet size, not the blinds, in limit poker.
NL poker does not have fixed bet sizes, so it refers to the blinds.

Oh. Now it makes more sense. I will reconfigure tables once room will be empty since I need to restart server to changes take effect.