Today poker is facing a radical change that was outlined and predicted some time ago by a lecture in the form of poker manifesto called “Ideal Poker”. This manifest was actually a lecture given in many countries around the world by John Nash, explaining the effects, a universal currency would have in relation to the various national currencies available at that time. I present it rather in the context of poker so the players might understand his explanation better. This is significant now because we do in fact have this universal currency and so natural the explanations Nash gave 10 years ago are starting to make sense and his instructions and advice are beginning to become relevant and useful.
Today in the poker economy we are seeing the effects of this economic evolution, but it is not immediately identifiable until you start to consider pokers’ economic network as another tunnel for our financial system. It isn’t a stretch to suggest then the economy of poker is well controlled and regulated by governments and other agencies that also control our financial system. Naturally then we are able to view today’s poker environment under the same view that John Nash presented for our economic outlook.
Bitcoin is a multidimensional advancement for our civilization that not many people really understand. The crux of it can be well understand in the lecture “ideal money”, or we might turn to this reddit post (https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2eff0b/bitcoin_swift_and_the_brics/):
So the question is: What Bitcoin price is needed to compete with SWIFT?At a guess, spending about USD 250 Million right now, especially as part of announced policy, would drive the re-pricing of Bitcoin towards a level suitable for trade settlement. For a BRICS sovereign nation, USD 250 million is small change.From the BRICS perspective, the capital gains are not very interesting, but re-pricing the Bitcoin system to make it competitive against SWIFT really is.Just as interesting from their perspective, even though Bitcoin is beyond the direct control of any government, the BRICS countries are not threatened by that lack of control. They all have actual hard assets and population at the core of their wealth. They are directly threatened by the financialisation of the world which disproportionately benefits the US and it’s close allies to the BRICS detriment. The SWIFT system is one of the major components of that financial system.Only the elites of the west (and not the general public), are threatened if US control of world finances is reduced via a competitor for SWIFT.You see the world is involved in an economic war that we are generally unaware of. This author suggests that 250 million USD could bring about a global equilibrium described in ideal money as “asymptotic” ideal money. I cannot begin to describe the favorable change this would bring to the entire world.
Let us look to pokers’ current problems before I explain the solution that Nash gives in “ideal money”:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/news-views-gossip/post-picture-expresses-your-current-feelings-pokerstars-1484551/
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/news-views-gossip/what-would-take-mass-player-exit-amaya-stars-1484019/
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/news-views-gossip/view-we-should-start-online-poker-players-union-1484140/index5.html
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/news-views-gossip/do-you-think-amaya-doing-good-job-running-pokerstars-1484492/index2.html
And then we have threads like this, happening so often people are starting to get “annoyed” by bitcoin threads:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/news-views-gossip/will-bitcoin-help-usher-next-golden-age-poker-1484278/
What is happening here? Please allow me to explain, bitcoin is decentralizing the economy of the game, and there is a revolution going on in the industry as well as the global economy. The players are discussing unionization, and there is no better tool for it than crypto-currency-in fact this is specifically what it is for.
By adopting a crypt-currency for the community, we grow an incredible amount of focus and solidarity including gaining single unique identifiers that will facilitate REAL democratic processes. This coin or asset (it is really both), gains its value purely from the inefficiencies players realize and complain about in the poker economy, just like bitcoin gains its value from the inefficiency and the riggedness of our centralized economy of the recent past. You adopt it together, and all the players gain, and all the centralized sites lose as explained by Nash in the lecture Ideal Money.
It doesn’t matter the specifics, it really doesn’t, but what matters is we collectively decide to support the movement to adopt and spread a finite amount crypto-asset. This simultaneously does many things one of which is that it helps combat and solve the collusion problems players face today and fear in regards to the decentralization of poker.
Its not just the players we would rally to adopt this coin, but any sites and services that are involved in the poker economy should wish to support the players and this asset together. Those that join in gain, and those that don’t will be seen to be working against the communities interests.
Then in adjustment to such a move by the players, more and more sites will create and adopt their own crypto currencies (poker forum coin) and these will become trad-able on an exchange, and this is what it means to be “asymptotically” ideal poker. It will cause rake to stabilize and eventually begin to slide towards zero. So you see, the major players in the industry already know its over, they have foreseen the inevitable checkmate.
It was highlighted by Nash that the addition of this universal currency for the players of a game changes it from zero sum to one of collective gain:
When one studies what are called ”cooperative games”, which in economic terms include mergers and acquisitions or cartel formation, it is found to be appropriate and is standard to form two basic classifications:
(1): Games with transferable utility.
(and)(2): Games without transferable utility
(or “NTU” games).In the world of practical realities it is money which typically causes the existence of a game of type (1) rather than of type (2); money is the “lubrication” which enables the efficient “transfer of utility”. And generally if games can be transformed from type (2) to type (1) there is a gain, on average, to all the players in terms of whatever might be expected to be the outcome.
It also helps shape and tie in the entire poker industry by organizing players in the fashion of a legislature or a congress so that the players can sit properly in the roles of their game and take back the freedoms that are inherent to them in this word.
And so I will repeat, again, and until we finally collectively understand what has been said, and what is being presented to the world and the players, that poker is under the revolution as described by Nash and Ideal Poker:
There perhaps will always be “rake”, like also “death and taxes”. But it is sometimes remarkable how poker strategies can evolve. And in relation to that I think that it is possible that “PSFTCIAFBIDOJ ” are like a political faction that will become less influential as a result of poker revolution. The “PSFTCIAFBIDOJ” view of things did not come into existence until after the time when what we can call “Black Friday” had become established in the US. And by this label we wish to differentiate between any theoretical or ideal concept of justice and the actual form of governing regime structure that came to exercise state power on the poker community. (All over the world varieties of sites make claims to have systems very properly or even ideally devoted to the interests of the professional or recreational players of those sites and always an externally located critic can argue that the site is actually a sort of despotism.)
PSFTCIAFBIDOJ implicitly always have the argument that some good managers can do things of beneficial value, operating with the skins, and that it is not needed or appropriate for the players or the “customers” of the chips supplied by the site to actually understand, while the managers are managing, what exactly they are doing and how it will affect the “ROI” circumstances of these players.
I see this as analogous to how the PSFTCIAFBIDOJ were claiming to provide something much better than Ponzi schemes that they could not deny existed in all other sites. But in the end the “dictatorship of the proletariat” seemed to become rather exposed as simply the dictatorship of the regime. So there may be an analogy to this as regards those called “PSFTCIAFBIDOJ” in that while they have claimed to be operating for high and noble objectives of general poker welfare what is clearly true is that they have made it easier for their sites to “print money”.
So I see the entire privately raked community as in a weak sense comparable to the “PSFTCIAFBIDOJ ” because of the support of both parties for a certain “lack of transparency” relating to the functions of poker sites as seen by the players. And for both of them it can be said that they tend to think in terms of sites operating in a benevolent fashion that is, however, beyond the comprehension of the player of the raked sites. And this parallel makes it seem not implausible that a process of poker revolution might lead to the expectation on the part of players in the “great game types” that they should be better situated to be able to understand whatever will be the rake policies which, indeed, are typically of great importance to players who may have alternative options for where to place their “deposits”.
thewealthofchips 