When the Australian government effectively banned its citizens from online poker in March of this year, we were given yet another example of the problems facing centralised online poker platforms. At any moment, the ruling authorities can declare the hobby 'illegal', leaving operators with a simple decision: risk prosecution or leave the market. Basic economic theory tells us that somebody or some thing will come along to meet the market demands. There are several good reasons to predict that it will be decentralised poker platforms which step up to the task.
The game of poker is popular with a wide cross-section of society. At your local casino table you may find yourself sitting across from successful businessman, tradesmen, university students, maybe even a tourist or two. In the online poker world, it is more difficult to get a read on who you are playing with, and this leads to another problem facing centralised online poker platforms: the ability for the operator to fill its own tables with 'bots', or simulated players whose job is to stack the odds against the genuine player.
Legend has it that in the Wild West, it was not uncommon for poker players to keep a Derringer by their side, lest they run into an unscrupulous player (or dealer) who might seek to take an unfair cut of the money on the table. The mere threat – implied or otherwise – of immediate justice for wrongdoing may have been enough to keep people honest. When you can't even see who you are playing against, what would lead you to assume that everything is above board?
The reality is that in the world of centralised online poker, things are clearly not above board. There are obvious reasons as to why some of the biggest names in online poker live in places like the Isle of Man. Billions of dollars have been made by men savvy enough to build centralised online poker platforms. Were these billions of dollars made by providing a fair and honest online arena for punters to play poker?
Let's look at things a different way: If somebody felt that they had suffered an unbelievable run of bad luck with the cards, who exactly could they complain to? If their pocket aces were broken by yet another outside straight-draw on the river, where could they channel their mounting suspicions? After all, poker involves an element of luck: looks like you just got unlucky, buddy! Don't worry, you can easily deposit more money into your account in just two clicks...
Already we have seen two obvious problems facing centralised online poker: 'legitimate' businesses can be scared from the market by government prohibition, and it is not altogether clear that an honest player can know that he is paying for an honest game in the first place. This is without even considering the inherent problems facing digital delivery of something as simple as 'random shuffling': ask any computer programmer to tell you how 'random' a single computer can actually be. Perhaps centralised poker platforms really are a mug's game.
So how does decentralised poker address these problems? By sharing the load across the computers of all of the players involved in the game. Instead of relying on a central computer to 'do the right thing', every player is helping to keep things fair by merely being connected to the network. A single, central actor may – by accident or by design – tilt the odds in one player's favour. If all of the players have a vested stake in a fair game, and each of their computers is helping in the running of the game, this problem is instantly eliminated.
The decentralised platform also solves the problem of government prohibition. The 2017 rule changes enacted by the Australian government led to companies like 888Poker leaving the market. Due to their size and need for legitimacy in other jurisdictions, such companies have little choice but to cease offering their services to Australians. Decentralised platforms do not suffer from the same problem: they are not offering such a service, and there is no single legal entity to prosecute even if the government wants to claim that rules are somehow being broken.
You can ban people from running underground casinos, but you can't ban people from playing house games. You can ban companies from offering centralised online poker platforms to your citizens, but you can't ban individuals from pooling their computer processing power to enjoy a fair and honest game of poker. Well, perhaps that is not entirely true. We know that governments the world over can and do try to pass all kinds of laws which are impractical and unenforceable (not to mention unjust). Perhaps one day the Australian government will try to ban decentralised online poker.
If it ever comes to that, then I for one will be watching on with great interest. Like a mug punter feeding another $100 into a centralised poker platform, any government trying to stop decentralised poker is going to need a lot of luck!