Cryptocurrency is all over the headlines these days and you’ll have seen plenty of news and chat about digital currencies bouncing about the poker community as well – many new crypto-poker rooms starting up, often using what is known as ICO’s to raise the funds to do so.
But what does all this mean to you and me as players who might be tempted to try our luck in the new poker market?
First off, let’s check out a few of the basics, starting with a glossary of terms for those new to the crypto world…
Cryptocurrency: As the name suggests, this is a digital method of payment designed to replace or mirror traditional ‘fiat’ currencies; the US$, the Euro, the British pound, etc.
The crypto term comes from the fact that they are designed using cryptographic numerology – basically a sequence of highly difficult mathematical equations which produce an answer, which then becomes a crytpocoin.
The best known of these is Bitcoin (BTC), sometimes synonymous with cryptocurrency itself, but which is in fact only one of many hundreds of cryptocurrencies on the market nowadays, others including Ethereum (ETH), LiteCoin (LTC) Ripple (XRP).
For more information on this subject check out a site such as coinmarketwatch.com
Blockchain technology: A difficult concept for many to grasp, block chains are a fiendishly clever way to record things such as financial transactions, described as “an incorruptible digital ledger of economic transactions,” by Don and Alex Tapscott in their 2016 work ‘Blockchain Revolution’.
Using a peer-to-peer (P2P) approach, once any record has been entered into the blockchain it cannot be later altered without altering all subsequent blocks, and this would require millions of random users to somehow conspire together.
As the American entrepreneur, investor, and founder of Mosaic Marc Andreesen put it:
“The practical consequence […is…] for the first time, a way for one Internet user to transfer a unique piece of digital property to another Internet user, such that the transfer is guaranteed to be safe and secure, everyone knows that the transfer has taken place, and nobody can challenge the legitimacy of the transfer. The consequences of this breakthrough are hard to overstate.“
Initial Coin Offering: More commonly abbreviated to ICO, an Initial Coin Offering is designed to raise the investment money required to fund a project, be it a cryptopoker site, any number of tech-based services, or even a cryptocurrency itself.
How it works is that investors put in money and receive crypto coins or tokens in return, which basically work as shares in the company as with traditional Initial Public Offerings (IPO’s)
How can poker players use cryptocurrency?
OK, so forget for the time being all the Doug Polk crypto-investment and trading talk – that’s just a different version of investing or gambling in the traditional money markets – we are poker players and want to know what exactly we can do poker-wise, so here we go…
Value
This is the bottom line for any poker player who wants to make a living at the game, who wants to be a professional – we go where the value is!
If a particular poker site hosts games which are considered ‘soft’ (and everything else is considered OK about it; interface; security; withdrawals; etc) then of course we are going to play there.
So, we should be looking at the new crypto-poker sites in the same way: do CoinPoker or Nitrogen or SwC, for example, provide us with more value than, say, the latest ACR or 888 or PokerStars games? If it does, then we should seriously consider getting involved.
What to look out for?
Rake: This is the poker players’ biggest nightmare, of course, as not only do we have to beat our opponents, we have to beat the house!
There has been much talk about how rake in the crypto-poker rooms has risen dramatically, but the main point is that it is generally tied to the cryptocurrency itself – you pay rake in % of a coin, so if the price of, say, Ethereum rises, so does the rake, but so do your winnings. It’s not an exact science, yet, but it’s something you need to take into account.
It should be noted that cryptopoker rooms have a lot of flexibility to reduce rake themselves – it’s a reasonably new area of poker, so they have to be very aware that players can go elsewhere if costs are too high, much as PokerStars for example have been in the firing line over the past couple of years.
Transaction fees: Our deposit and withdrawal methods and costs are obviously a very important factor in whether a site is suitable or not, and for crypto poker rooms the main stumbling block – or area of concern – is getting your money on the site when the price of crypto is high.
A minimum deposit of, say $50, could at times have a fee of the same amount attached to it, but crypto-poker rooms will, again, have to adapt to the times – introducing different cryptocurrencies for example.
Stakes/Games:
As with every ‘traditional’ poker site, this varies fairly widely. SWC, for example, offer ‘NLHE, PLO, Omaha 8s or better, PL Big O, PL Big O/8, Open-Faced Chinese, Pineapple, Badeucy, 2-7 Triple Draw, and mixed games’.
Micro-stakes have proved a bit problematic for many of the rooms as the price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies soared and plunged over the past few months, but changing the 1000 chips = 1coin model to 10,000 = 1 coin has been proposed, and implemented by some sites to allow for $10NL and other small stakes in tournaments to run.
This, of course, might vary to-and-fro over the months so you need to check out what’s available as and when you play.
So where does the ‘value’ come in?
If you think back to the mid-noughties, the player field was full of ‘recreationals’ – people playing for fun and basically handing their money over to those more serious about the game (that’s you!)
Likewise, the cryptopoker rooms of today are a mix of some serious players and those, for example, who are ‘crypto-wise but poker-foolish’ – not to be unkind, of course. Nitrogen Poker, for example, has more than its fair share of sportsbettors (because that’s what the main site is focused on) and the newly-opened CoinPoker has a typically heavy ‘crypto-clever’ chunk of investors whose poker game has yet to catch up.
Now, if you are a ‘rec’ yourself reading this, it’s not far off a level playing field at the moment – you’re not going to be swarmed by sharks – but if you are a better player, a more serious poker player, it’s a throwback to a decade ago and there are definitely some easier pickings to be had.
It likely won’t stay this way, but for now the value is sitting there waiting to be plucked like ripe apples.
Technology and Security
One of the biggest draws to crypto-poker rooms is the underlying tech behind them, the ‘blockchain’ described briefly above. Although far beyond the mathematical expertise of myself, the fact is that it allows for a much safer environment for poker players…
RNG
The ‘Random Number Generators’ which are used have often come in for unfair criticism over the years, but this doesn’t mean they are perfect or 100% secure.
By putting the RNG on blockchains however, it gets rid of an area of concern – the blockchain unable to be perverted unless it involves every single historical coded record being changed, and this is virtually impossible, the sheer number and transparency of the records being their main safeguard – you could go in and look at it yourself, for example.
Bots
Again the blockchain technology affords crypto-poker sites an ability to much more easily discern real players from the bots which have infested traditional sites over the years – although admittedly such sites have been more proactive recently in trying to stamp out this plague on the game.
In the crypto-poker world, CoinPoker’s Head of Security Michael Josem, for example, stated recently: “We are developing a Fairplay blockchain-based security and fraud system that is going to help us discern the real players from the bots, preventing cheating. Casual players should have a chance to enjoy the game again.”
OK, so these are the basics of crypto-poker rooms as it stands – still relatively uncharted territory for most but then again so was the online poker we take for granted in most places today. There’s money to be made, fun to be had, and things to be learned along the way.
Would I advise you to stick your entire bankroll on a crypto-poker site in the hope of making a quick killing? Of course not! But I wouldn’t advise that for any poker site either, and quick killings are not what good poker players are about.
