One thing I firmly believe is that your hobbies should pay you. At the very minimum they should pay for themselves. We’re always looking for inventive ways to make money. What better candidate than something you already enjoy doing? A great example is poker. It’s a game played by millions of players worldwide. In today’s day and age, many of those are online. The internet age is beautiful. It has allowed us to have out of the box ways to get ahead like cryptocurrency and freelancing literally at our fingertip’s. One such idea I researched a while back for a client was online casinos. Physical casinos pull in over $600K a day. Online casinos bring in just about half as much. Half as much is very attractive when you think about the fact that the overhead is 1/10th as much.
Starting an online casino is by no means easy or cheap or easy. The software alone will run you well into six figures. Then there’s advertising and other expenses. You even have to adhere to local laws in addition to federal law. So how is this a solution for the everyday Joe? It’s necessary to scale down the operation a bit. In the shadows of the big casinos in Vegas are smaller poker rooms. As the name implies only poker is played in these establishments. Despite the lack of variety, these smaller venues don’t hurt for clientele.
Enter Pokerstars.com. These guys are the definitive site for poker playing online. They have plenty of free content to keep casual players satisfied. If you want to go deeper you can join an impressive array of tournaments and even take tutorials. Experience playing with pros such as Daniel Negreanu, Jason Mercier, and Vanessa Selbst and hone your game. They have real money games if you think you’re good enough.
Taking a chance at the tables isn’t the alternative income stream we had in mind. Pokerstars has a great little section called “Home Games” This is a user controlled private poker club. You can set up tables and tournaments for all your friends to play on. Using the magic of bitcoin you can start running your own poker room in the shadow of the big online casinos for free
"A few steps will get you earning."
First, download the PokerStars lightweight software to your computer.
Next set up your club. You can start right away making tournaments. It’s easier than you may think.
You’ll need players so invite some friends. Invite some friends of friends. Invite some strangers. With an invitation code to join your poker club, people can begin signing up for tournaments.
Have a bitcoin address set up where the entrance fees to the tournaments will be sent. Let participants know what the buy-ins are and the payout(minus whatever percentage you keep for yourself). Be sure those playing have paid in and ALWAYS payout swiftly and fairly. You want people to come back right?
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Running an online poker room by no means effortless but it is absolutely free. Is it legal? Uncle Sam would most assuredly say no. Depending on the size of your poker “club” You could very easily be called on operating a gambling establishment in ___(insert your state) without a license. The fact that you are using an unregulated currency(you could even make your own currency and trade it through the NXT market for added legal security) and PokerStars being a licensed platform throws so much legal gray area in it makes my head hurt. This gray area is your friend however if you do ever have to defend yourself in court. Whether you want to just take poker night with the crew online or you’re running multiple tournaments earning thousands; Home Games are a great tool. Work on that poker face in the mirror and make your hobby pay you.
