How Decentralised Poker Removes the Racketeer Risk

Decentralisation mitigates the most unsightly problem facing online poker today: unscrupulous operators, or what we might call ‘racketeers’. The history of online poker is littered with cases of criminal action taken against millionaires (and even billionaires) who have amassed their incredible wealth by creating online poker websites. This leads to an important question facing the average poker player: how can you trust a centralised platform to provide a fair game?

Those unfamiliar with online poker may not be aware that in the earlier part of this decade, the operators of the largest websites in the industry were charged with a range of crimes including fraud and money laundering. After more than twelve months of legal wrangling, only a small number of the defendants were convicted, while the larger outlets involved were able to escape without officially admitting ‘any wrongdoing’.

More important than the judgments were the facts revealed by the investigations: billions of dollars had been made by the operators of these centralised poker platforms, in just a few years of business. Was all of this money generated by offering legitimate and fair games of poker? Or is it possible that some unscrupulous characters might have taken advantage of the gullibility of the general public? After all, if a punter loses his stack in yet another ‘bad beat’, who is he going to complain to? ‘That’s poker — bad luck!’

It might be nice to believe that there are other people out there, double-checking the code and the servers to make sure online poker sites are not finding clever ways to game the system. Who knows? Maybe these online poker sheriffs really do exist, keeping the bad guys honest on behalf of the rest of us. Do you have faith that this is indeed the case?

When we are talking billions of dollars; when we know that these operators have managed to strike deals admitting ‘no wrongdoing’ in the past; when we know that some of them now enjoy a life of luxury on the Isle of Mann completely free from the arms of the law, why would we trust a single dollar of our hard-earned money to centralised poker platforms and those who operate them?

Decentralised poker requires no such blind faith. A blockchain-based solution offers an inherently more trustworthy method for facilitating games of online poker — for two simple reasons. The first is to do with the software. Whereas the existing poker platforms operate with proprietary (closed-source) software, decentralised poker is premised on open-source code. Anybody who wants to do so may inspect the code for themselves to see, for instance, that the random number generator is in fact random!

The second reason is to do with hardware. Whereas the existing platforms operate on private servers run by private companies, decentralised poker is facilitated by the players’ own computers sharing the load as a network. On any given virtual table, each player’s own computer takes turns in shuffling and dealing the deck. This way, no single player (or central actor) can skew the probabilities in his own favour.

This method even allows for a the traditional method of ‘cutting the deck’ to be employed. This is of course the process whereby the player to the right of the dealer effectively re-shuffles the deck after the dealer has already done so, and before the cards are dealt, to further reduce any chance the dealer may have of stacking the deck to suit himself.

Viewed in this light, the difference between centralised and decentralised poker is stark. The former is akin to playing a sit-and-go at a casino whose owner lives in a tax-haven with no extradition treaties (and where the dealer may or may not be friends with everybody on the table but yourself). The latter is more like a home game wherein each player takes turns shuffle the cards in plain view of everybody else. It really is like ‘chalk and cheese’.

If you had the choice between the two options, which would make more sense to you as a gambler? Would you take your chances with the millionaires and billionaires who made their money from the punters who played their online tables? Or would you trust your own computer using open-source software to give both yourself and your peers a fair chance at winning a fair game?

Nothing can change online poker’s shady past, but one thing can offer online poker players around the world a fair game now and into the future: decentralisation.