Years ago I started writing about how the advent of bitcoin would change the landscape of poker in a dramatic but favorable fashion. Today we are starting to see projects emerge that are doing exactly that. Coinpoker is a hybrid server/decentralized model that has an opportunity to give the status quo legacy sites a run for their fiat money.
A New Model
CoinPoker will release 500 million CHIPS (CHP) tokens into the market (see 3. Token Sale) and this amount will be fixed. ~https://coinpoker.com/downloads/coinpoker-whitepaper.pdf
Rumoured to be backed by the infamous Tony G, Coinpoker brings some interesting changes to the tradition poker site model. Firstly, they are doing an ICO which means that players and investors can by shares of the poker site which are digital tokens called “CHP”'s. These shares are fixed at 500 million and they will be used as the actually currency for the site. So if you want to play poker on coinpoker you have to buy CHPs from other players or an exchange. Today the project is in a presale phase so deposits (and withdrawals) are not activated. The only way to use CHPs is to win them in the freeroll tournaments being offered daily. In the future the price of CHPs will float on exchanges and so early holders might get rewarded if the site becomes significantly popular!
A New Provably Fair RNG
Players often complain big sites like Poker Stars are rigged. Coinpoker has a solution for this that should give players confidence in the fairness of the site. In order to provide the shuffled cards Coinpoker takes a random seed from each player, mixes it with it's own seed, and then deals based on aggregated inputs of all the players. This information is to be hashed to the Ethereum block-chain and thus will be verifiable after the hand is played out. Since each player effectively gets a shuffle, each player is able to verify that the deck was randomized. This feature has not been implemented but is planned for later this year.
Smooth Software
After playing on Coinpoker for a couple weeks I have to say I am really digging the software:
The developers have done a great job and I can easily say its the best software I have played poker on. It beats the leading competitor by far in my opinion. The animation and game flow is noticeable smooth! There are still bugs and there were some pretty “fatal” bugs from a player's perspective but the developers recently rolled out an update which patched up many of the crucial issues. Payouts weren't being displayed and the all-in percentages weren't functioning properly and these things are fixed now. Bugs are to be expected and this shows that the developers are able to attend the important issues with urgency which is great.
Collecting Free Money
Signing up at Coinpoker took only second to verify an email. At this time there are freerolls going off every hour and many players register them and sit out. It's negative rake; you get paid play. The games are very soft which is incredibly refreshing compared to the shark infesting waters the legacy sites have fostered. Its likely at the end of the ICO players will have to verify their account to withdrawal, but I could also see this being waved at least if players just want to sell their CHPS
Avoiding the Keynesian Pitfall
Coinpoker offered their presale tokens in terms of Euro's initially and since then the Ethereum price has skyrocketed which the rest of the ICO stages use. There was an initial announcement that the CHPs price was going to be adjusted to reflect this change but investors and players complained because it was effectively a devaluation. Not many days later Coinpoker decided they would not go through with this devaluation and instead they just cut one stage of their ICO. It was alarming to think they would go through with such a decision but it might be a sign that they will listen to their customers complaints knowing they decided not to do the devaluation:
Within the last week, we have been talking with you all about the issues that arise along the way. One of these things was our ICO price. Well, we are glad to tell you we finally reached a decision that we feel is the fairest: our ICO will have two stages, and the prices for them will be as follows: 4,200 CHP = 1 ETH for the 1st stage, and 3,500 CHP = 1 ETH for the 2nd stage.
These are the prices that we have stated on our website and Whitepaper ever since the beginning, and the only thing that we changed about it was remove the middle stage.~https://medium.com/@CoinPoker/important-ico-updates-9e04ad52e7f8
The Future For Coinpoker?
Coinpoker is off to a great start. It is not easy to launch a site or develope the software from scratch. The most difficult part is creating a player base to have enough liquidity to really make a splash in the markets. All this month players are offered many free-rolls and new tournaments with added bonus CHPs. At the end of the month there is a tournament with a Telsa car for the grand prize. Right now there are over 600 players in the lobby. It seems Coinpoker is understanding the problem of bootstrapping. If they continue to serve the players wants, I wish them luck, and so far I see no reason they won't succeed and thrive.
It would be interesting if in the future Coinpoker decided to start burning some of the CHPs they hold...