Programmers, help fight the UIGEA from the bottom up.

[jukofyork]

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I guess basically what I'm envisioning is leveling the playing field for poker software and having people compete on trust environments (payment systems, deal fairness, game fairness). And if that competition never materializes, well, we've got a spiffy p2p system for free money games I guess. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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Yep, I agree - just having a nice P2P play-money system would be something worthwhile and quite academically interesting.

Juk [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Tuff_Fish]

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I think that having a 3rd-party take care of the collusion detection (and bot detection) using their own unpublished methods is probably more likely to put off colluders (and botters). Perhaps, I'm wrong for thinking like this though.

Juk [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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I think you are thinking quite correctly on this. The purchasers of the server software could subscribe to an independant 3rd party security service which would receive every hand and use algorythms to check for bad patterns. Also, they could look at any hand history which was brought to their attention.


Since, by definition, the site is honest, it is YOUR site, the only threat to overall honesty is strangers coming in and colluding. It is my belief that colluders leave pretty fair sized footprints. I am not an expert though.

If I have missed something, let em know.

So far I believe this is where we stand.

The software program itself. Being looked at. (by a number of people I assume) It is unclear if a solid poker site program can come from the open source. We will know in due course. There is no doubt that such software can be obtained, but at what cost?

Site software security. This is 99.9% solved, believe it.

Security against outside colluders and cheats. I think the 3rd party security group is a good approach. One company could serve many "homegame" sites.

Payment processing. Right now, I can only see some sort of situation where a trusted 3rd party does the banking. This can be as simple as the homesite operators wife.

"Hello Molly? This is Ralph. Have Mike put $100 bucks into my play money account. The check is on it's way. Thanks"

"Hello Molly? My play money account is up to $290. You can check it with Mike to be sure. Can you have him take $200 out of my play money account. My son will stop over a bit later around 3 or so and pick up $200 cash. Yep, it is the wife's birthday. You know how that goes. Thanks"

That model works for the small homegame network. Correct me if I am wrong, but I am thinking this is similar to how the underground home games operate.

Still thinking.

Tuff

[freecard4all]

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(and it does NOT have to be open-source)

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But it *should* be, otherwise how would anyone be able to trust it?

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I meant it doesn't depend whether the sw is open-source or not. Even if it's closed-source you are able to read it's memory (I don't know how but I saw some good exploitations).

[_dave_]

Ahh, I mis-interpreted you then, sorry. Now that I re-read it, it is clear you meant the above [img]/images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img]

I also wanted to make clear the point that closed source offers zero protection, and that a properly secure system should not suffer from known source code.

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Even if it's closed-source you are able to read it's memory (I don't know how but I saw some good exploitations).

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I know very little about this too. I was interested enough to do some searching for a few days recently... If you are interested, check the source for Juk's FPHG (uses Window's own ReadProcessMemory function IIRC) - or do some google for "T-Search" or "Cheat Engine".

[_dave_]

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Yep, I agree - just having a nice P2P play-money system would be something worthwhile and quite academically interesting.

Juk [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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With these threads I am now (just a little bit) wishing I was back in my final year of Uni - This would make an awesome (and actually interesting to do) final year project [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

And I'm pretty sure a nice p2p play money system would be very worthwhile - often the various forums put on "Heads up challenge tournaments" or whatever, and it is often troublesome to find a site that will accommodate whatever unusual format is desired. Ability to a create a private table server with any custom game format would be awesome.

I'm pretty sure it could be used as a great coaching tool too.

EDIT:

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I have to ask myself would I play on such a system myself?
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Sadly, I don't think I would other than for heads up matches. I think for HU matches then a system like this could be trusted 100%, but as soon as you add multiple people into the equation then how can you be sure they are not colluding against you?


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Is this not the current status quo? Surely after Absolute, no one has 100% failth in any operator... so we currently have a similar system to the example High trust >>> Medium ground >>> Low trust mix of providers a p2p system would evolve into, no?

dave.