The Matrix

[pmiranda.pt]

When sitting down at a internet poker table we are normally unaware of the high technology that is "under the hood".
We are used to compare and comment the quality of the software of most casinos, actually we are only referring to the client side of the application, without thinking of the technological Godzilla that are on the other side of the line, the gamer server.

To whom is not familiarized with the concept, online poker fall in the MMOG ("Massive Multiplayer Online Game") category, games like World of Warcraft, Ultima Online orSecond Life manage thousands of users connected simultaneously (actualy World of Warcraft manage millions).

In Online Poker the system is even more critical, having millions of decisions to make in microseconds on one side and secure financial transactions (bets, rakes, transfers, ect..) on the other side. Just as an example, at the moment of this writing there is 9.465 players at 9.197 tables at PokerStars, if we make a simple math, an roughly estimate that each table is making 60hands/hour, thats approximately 9K hands/min or 153 hands/second (and still some players complain about some extraordinary badbeat).

Some massive high tech investment is necessary, not only in human resources, like programmers and engineers, but also in equipments ans network infrastructures because those systems are usually implemented by distributed computing aka server grid or Matrix.Unfortunately I found very little information about the implementation of the poker networks, but as an example for games like World of Warcraft or Second Life they use thousands of servers running linux on a grid, most poker networks must follow the same architecture.

That explains the recent venture of several casinos and poker rooms running over the same network, sharing not only user traffic but also backend servers, callcenters and very often client software with only skins being different. I think that it is a symptom that will persist, resulting in some large poker networks that "franchise" is technology and traffic to whom, with a couple of hundred thousands dollars, wants to have a poker room.

I post here some interesting links about the issue, like I said I haven't found much information about poker networks, so if someone has informations about it please fell free to share it.


Writing Low-Pain Massively Scalable Multiplayer Servers - Excellent article by Joel Reymont, main architect of the project OpenPoker.

Inside Second Life's Data Centers - Second Life.

Architecture and Techniques for an MMORTS - Implementing a MMOG.

Artigos DevMaster - Some articles about the issue.


Regards

[jukofyork]

[ QUOTE ]
To whom is not familiarized with the concept, online poker fall in the MMOG ("Massive Multiplayer Online Game") category, games like World of Warcraft, Ultima Online orSecond Life manage thousands of users connected simultaneously (actualy World of Warcraft manage millions).

[/ QUOTE ]
Considering online poker has no artists, no animators, no story creators, etc, then I don't see how they can justify charging several thousand times the cost of a WOW subscription for what is essentially thousands of times simpler software.

If it were not for the fact that land based casinos used the rake system then I'm guessing that we would all be alot richer and [censored] like Dikshit wouldn't have quite so many billions.

Sadly, we all accepted the ridiculous fees at the start and it appears as though the sites do everything possible to avoid a "rake reduction war". Forget rigged rivers helping the fish; the real conspiracy lies in how they are making such a RIDICUOLOUS amount whilst avoiding any real competition between the sites...

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