reducing the possibilities of collusion and enabling cheap boundless payments and withdrawals using cryptocurrencies and smart contracts.
Isn't this an oxymoron? By implementing it as a DOA and anonymous players, collusion becomes very easy.
I see "Ron Gross" discusses this point in the white paper.
A few points of clarification:
- You don't have to be part of the DOA to enjoy the game. It will be made available to everyone
- Collusion requires players being able to play at the same table. Pokereum removes the ability for people to pick and choose their tables (randomized assignment as per the white paper description), thereby making it a statistical improbability that two or more colluders will land at the same tables.
I certainly don't want to appear hostile or defensive, but I get the sense that the criticism about collusion are born out of an incomplete understanding of what we are talking about (for this aspect of security). I'll try to sum it up colloquially here:
To collude in traditional online poker systems, two or more people are typically in contact with each other outside the game system and share knowledge of their hands without others at the table knowing. This happens today when online poker games let people pick their tables, and they can direct their colluders to the same table. Pokereum does not let you pick a table - you are assigned (according to our matchmaking algorithms). So two people are randomly assigned to tables. There are stats and maths to discusss how likely/unlikely these two people land in the same game, but intuitively, we know that as the number of games increase, the chances of them getting in the same game drop (rapidly).
So, the cheaters face two options (once they've chosen to take their chances at collusion):
- play the table assigned, thereby be unable to cheat
- quit the table (and lose the buy-in) and try again
Any team looking to try option number two will quickly find that the costs of quitting tables will always be higher than whatever they can get
IF they ever land at the same table (esp. since BOTH cheaters have to walk away from their buy-ins).
I thought this concept was pretty clearly explained in the paper - but maybe the confusion around the topic is a good indicator that we should take another stab at that section.
Hope this clarifies things for you!
EDITPS: There will be a "play with friends" feature, but it's not fully spec'd out yet, so I don't have a lot to share with you on that part just yet.