http://www.vennd.io/
What Is Vennd?
To properly understand Vennd, you first need to know a little bit about Counterparty and the Bitcoin blockchain. Bitcoin’s blockchain is like a ledger book that contains records of every Bitcoin transaction ever made. Just like a real ledger book, there’s “space in the margins” next to each line. Counterparty is notes scribbled in the margins of the ledger, meaning each action on Counterparty needs a Bitcoin transaction to ride on top of. Similarly, Counterparty addresses are Bitcoin addresses; you just need a compatible wallet (i.e. Counterwallet) to see and interact with your Counterparty assets.
Because of this, Counterparty is commonly called a “Bitcoin 2.0” platform. It builds advanced features on the Bitcoin protocol like contracts for difference, decentralised exchange, and asset issuance.
An “asset” is a token that can represent anything the issuer wishes to back it with: entry to a show, a bag of soy beans, even a gold or silver coin. Once an asset has been issued the owner commonly wants to sell it; this can be done manually, but it’s a labour-intensive task. The easiest way to scale past one or two dozen sales is to use Vennd.
Vennd detects Bitcoin or Counterparty assets entering your wallet, and automatically triggers a send of the asset you’re selling back to the wallet that made the deposit. It’s a lot like a physical vending machine – put money in, get goods or services out. The base code is freely available from our Git repo under the Unlicense. Contributed bug fixes and features are of course appreciated!
rakeless poker
Asymptotically Ideal Poker
In economics, an optimum currency area (OCA), also known as an optimal currency region (OCR), is a geographical region in which it would maximize economic efficiency to have the entire region share a single currency. It describes the optimal characteristics for the merger of currencies or the creation of a new currency.~http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimum_currency_area
Poker players are starting to realize what the Bitcoin community already knows: if the poker industry were to adopt crypto-currency payment networks, there would be an asymptotic slide towards rakeless poker. However, the barrier to entry is quite high, and it is popular belief that a mass adoption would be impossible (somehow this is a reasonable conclusion to people as if email or the internet itself might not catch on, or that technology is not growing at an accelerating pace.) This article outlines the next technology AFTER bitcoin as a solution to this barrier.
The author has been pointing out that this conclusion of impossible barrier entry can have no reasonable justification, with the evidence starting to show clear in today’s current events. Amaya, under the reasons of entering the US markets, decided to raise the cost of poker in the perspective of the “pro“. This caused an equivalent uproar, and it is the author’s firm view that this event is absolutely correlated with the cost of “effective rake” from the players perspective.
This means that it is in fact not some certain determinable number that becomes the ideal effective rake that sites might target with rake %, but rather that rake is very related to the public’s opinion on it. What we are suggesting is in an ideal world (that we all know doesn’t exist), if all players joined together in complete understanding, education, and solidarity of this, rake % and/or effective rake would in fact be reduced.
This leads us to Asymptotically Ideal Poker. The author wishes to make a distinction between bitcoin and digital assets offered by the decentralized exchange counterparty. Please make sure you educate yourselves on the difference between the two. It is our view that if the players created a digital asset with a finite number of “coupons” there might be these strong reasons (below) that suggest this could accelerate poker’s next evolution. The coupons are exchangeable on a decentralized exchange which means they are very convertible to bitcoin (and in near the future to anything). SOME of their multiple functions are:
1) early adopters stand to gain most
2) players would have incentive to educate themselves on crypto currency
3) players would have incentive to cooperate
4) creates incentive to hold a unique account thus creating single unique identifiers
5) the network created with wallets and “keys” facilitates a proper functioning democracy
6) facilitate a players committee or a union (or Ppa)
7) helps prevent collusion and fraud within the community without relying on third parties.
8) helps raise communities to forum 2.0‘s
As players begin to understand this project we will be designing our marketing plan mostly by discussing which poker sites, and other related entities (coaching sites, forums, live venues, radio shows, stables etc.) we can market the poker coupon to.
The coupon becomes a self sustaining economic force inheriting its value from the inefficiencies of the existing system.
Naz Coin
As Nas-An ancient Persian game that some say is an ancestor of poker.
The author proposes a new kinda of coin, possibly not previously conceivable by the collective consciousnesses of the players community. We call this coin “Nas Coin”, pronounced “Naj” coin, not to hide the fact that it is possibly a tribute to both the origins of the game and a great master of the game theory behind it. But perhaps the slight variation “Naj” will remain interesting and slightly humble.
The 2 keys technological advances that make this solution newly available the players need to implement are:
1) The monetary supply of the coin can be locked for the entire expected duration of its use and usefulness
2) The coin is tradable on a digital free market exchange such as: counterparty
The coin is described in greater detail in articles below:
Poker Forum Coin
Single Unique Identifiers
Facilitating a players Union
Dissolving a Monopoly
Asymptotically Ideal Poker
The Intrinsic Value of Nas Coin
The parameters aren’t as important although the author has a few ideas, mostly much like the monetary supply of bitcoin (more info here). What is needed then is a few trusted, trust-able, and prominent industry professionals and leaders to step forward to implement and speak out to the players about the adoption of such a coin. Then this digital asset can be created and locked in as a coin on an exchange as quick as setting up an email, and the “coins” can be transferred as quick as sending one.
The coin might only serve to function to educate players on crypto currency technology, yet this might be enough to bring great change to the community. It might be then that in the future “Nas Coin” doesn’t retain a significant economic value in relation to other coins, interestingly though, there might be the possibility it becomes a scarce collectable.
Nas Coin would facilitate the creation of pokers version of the Kula Ring, eventually creating an asymptotic slide towards Ideal Poker.
Nas Coin is the esoteric key to “Ideal Poker” and “Asymptotically Ideal Poker”.
Esoteric Notes: Ideal Rake
This is a condensed version of Ideal Poker, dealing with specifically what might be called “Ideal Rake”. I TRULY believe the “esoteric key” to this, is to have in your mind while reading the quotes below the concept of a universal poker coin. On top of this I present some thoughts and a few questions on the topic of “Ideal Rake” here.
So a few notes from Ideal Poker on the top of rake:
… various interest and groups, notably including PSFTFBICIADOJ has sold to the players a “quasi-doctrine” which teaches, in effect, that “less is more” or that (in other words) “raked poker is better than not raked poker”.
…chips themselves are merely an artifact of practical usefulness in poker communities and/or sites, there are some traditional or popular views associating chips with sin or immorality or unethical or unjust behavior. And such views can have the effect that an ideal of rakeless poker does not seem such a good cause as an ideal of a good public water supply.
Or the question can be asked “How do `raked poker’ and `rakeless poker’ differ, if at all, for the valuable function of facilitating utility transfer?”.
And also, if we view rake as of importance in connection with transfers of utility, we can see that rake itself is a sort of “utility”, using the word in another sense, comparable to supplies of water, electric energy or telecommunications. And then, if we think about it, we can consider the quality of rake as comparable to the quality of some “public utility” like the supply of electric energy or of water.
Our view is that if it is viewed scientifically and rationally (which is psychologically difficult!) that rake should have the function of a standard of measurement and thus that it should become comparable to the watt or the hour or a degree of temperature.
But it seems very likely that, although that scheme for arranging for a system of rake with ideal qualities would work well, that, on the other hand, it would be politically difficult to arrive at the implementation of such a system.
Our observation, based on thinking in terms of “the long term” rather than in terms of “short range expediency”, was simply that there is no ideal rate of rake that should be selected and chosen as the target but rather that the ideal concept would necessarily be that of a zero rate for what is called rake.
But of course, also, poker sites of a state cannot actually do anything of the form that can be called “rake targeting” without having some means for measuring rake. How would they do this? The means for measuring inflation that they would naturally use would be a “deposits raked” index relating to domestic transactions within the territory of the state.
And if “rake targeting” were used as a “line” by the managers handling all of these various internationally prominent sites then there would arise interesting possibilities for comparisons between these major sites. Each of the sites managed thusly would have its officially recognized status in terms of rake as measured by the domestic index of deposits raked of the state of the managers. But also, and this is what is more significant from an internationally oriented viewpoint, the various rakes would have rates of exchange so that they could be realistically compared in terms of their actual values.
And so the various currencies managed with “rake targeting” would be comparable by professional and recreational players who would be able to form opinions about the quality of the rake. And what I want to suggest is that “the public” or the players, those for whom a medium of exchange functions as a basic utility, may develop opinions that are critical of rake of lower “value quality”. That is, the public may learn to demand better quality of that which CAN be managed to be of better quality or which can be managed to be of the lower quality observed in so many of the various poker sites in the 21st century.
So here is the possibility of “asymptotically ideal (rakeless) poker”. Starting with the idea of value stabilization in relation to a domestic ‘deposits raked’ index associated with the territory of one site, beyond that there is the natural and logical concept of internationally based rake comparisons. The sites being compared, like PSFTCIAFBIDOJ, Merge, Party Poker, etc. can be viewed with critical eyes by their players and by those who may have the option of whether or not or how to use one of them. This can lead to pressure for good quality and consequently for a lessened rate of rake.
But it cannot be irrelevant whether or not the future quality of a rake is really assured or whether instead that it depends on the shifting sands of poker site decisions or the possibly arbitrary actions of a bureaucracy of officials (PSFTCIAFBIDOJ).
We can legitimately wonder how the speediness of its adoption or delays in its adoption might affect the policies operating to control the actual exchange value of poker deposits. The constitutional structure of the authority behind rake is of the “chips” character in that nothing is really guaranteed as far as the value of the chips is concerned. But this is typical of all currencies used in the world nowadays.
The “Intrinsic Value” of “Effective Rake”
“…the mere act of voluntary trade increases total wealth in society, where wealth is understood to refer to an individual’s subjective valuation of all of his possessions.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_theory_of_value
Today’s global poker network might not be readily comparable to Nick Szabo’s extension of Metcalf’s Law:
Metcalfe’s Law states that a value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of its nodes. In an area where good soils, mines, and forests are randomly distributed, the number of nodes valuable to an industrial economy is proportional to the area encompassed.
However if we assume a global internet landscape of Ideal Poker and the general goal is to facilitate the “probabilistic” exchange of chips from the less efficient players to the more efficient players, then the value of the Ideal Poker network becomes comparable to Nick Szabo’s formalization of Adam Smith’s works:
The number of such nodes that can be economically accessed is an inverse square of the cost per mile of transportation. Combine this with Metcalfe’s Law and we reach a dramatic but solid mathematical conclusion: the potential value of a land transportation network is the inverse fourth power of the cost of that transportation. A reduction in transportation costs in a trade network by a factor of two increases the potential value of that network by a factor of sixteen. While a power of exactly 4.0 will usually be too high, due to redundancies, this does show how the cost of transportation can have a radical nonlinear impact on the value of the trade networks it enables.
The networks’ value, is the value that Ideal (and therefore Moral) Poker brings to our society and how Ideal and how Moral the poker network is. The “transportation” cost in the trade network then becomes the “effective rake” (ie site profits per “transaction”).
So the potential value of an Ideal Poker network is the inverse fourth power of the “effective rake”.
This outlines an intrinsic value for a “Poker Coin“
EV as a “utility”: the Global Rake Standard
If we think about bitcoin in terms of “ideal money” we can start to paint a different economic perspective:
The special commodity or medium that we call money has a long and interesting history. And since we are so dependent on our use of it and so much controlled and motivated by the wish to have more of it or not to lose what we have we may become irrational in thinking about money and fail to be able to reason about it like a technology, such as radio, to be used more or less efficiently
…
Consider a society where the money in use are subject to a rapid and unpredictable rate of inflation so that money worth 100 now might be worth from 50 to 10 by a year from now. Who would want to lend money for the term of a year?
In this context we can see how the “quality” of a money standard can strongly influence areas of the economy involving financing with longer-term credits.
And also, if we view money as of importance in connection with transfers of utility, we can see that money itself is a sort of “utility”, using the word in another sense, comparable to supplies of water, electric energy or telecommunications. And then, if we think about it, we can consider the quality of money as comparable to the quality of some “public utility” like the supply of electric energy or of water.
Let’s imagine we know the “price” or “value” of bitcoin is going to raise consistently for the extent of our lifetimes, and let us assume we each have an instant and free (no transaction fees or exchange fees) way of “converting” your bitcoin into any form of currency that is useful and needed.
Provided there are charitable people and “places” presumably one now has access to a new kind of “electricity” beam, which is really a channel of “gold”. If you need some value you simply reach in and pull it out. This is something that we may not believe can exist as a “true” form of “social welfare”.
Then we might compare this to our understanding of a “game” such as “poker”. We can ask, what does the effect of such an economic change have on the game of poker. What does it mean to decentralize poker, and also how can we apply such a solution to a smaller subset of the global economic problem that is “poker”.
The special commodity or medium that we call EV has a long and interesting history. And since we are so dependent on our use of it and so much controlled and motivated by the wish to have more of it or not to lose what we have we may become irrational in thinking about money and fail to be able to reason about it like a technology, such as radio, to be used more or less efficiently
Consider a poker society where the chips in use are subject to a rapid and unpredictable rate of rake so that chips worth 100 now might be worth from 50 to 10 by a year from now. Who would want to lend chips for the term of a year?
In this context we can see how the “quality” of a rake standard can strongly influence areas of the poker economy involving financing with longer-term credits.
And also, if we view rake as of importance in connection with transfers of utility, we can see that rake itself is a sort of “utility”, using the word in another sense, comparable to supplies of water, electric energy or telecommunications. And then, if we think about it, we can consider the quality of rake as comparable to the quality of some “public utility” like the supply of electric energy or of water.
We have been using money as a “resistor” or as a heat source from friction, essentially derived from the “misuse” of it. Kind of like giving a cavemen and electrical source, eventually they might figure out how to:
1) hurt things
2) create fire
2) create sparks
But as we get this new energy “source” in place in the form of a global currency standard we will be able to “hook up” to it with “business” models that use money in a completely different form.
One akin to giving said cavemen a house with working electrical technology.
So then money can truly be compared with things like “voltage”, “current”, and “resistance”…and we begin to see how bitcoin is a true unifying break through in mankind’s scientific understanding of “this”
This suggests Adam Smith’s “invisible hand“, is in fact a force and only remains “invisible” because of our ignorance to it.
Creating Assets as Single Unique Identifiers for Decentralized Poker
The decentralization of poker is a project that an increasing number of players are beginning to talk about. The freedom bitcoin and decentralization might bring the players is expected to bring new life (and money) back into the poker economy. There are many projects already in development today, and although the shift might be slow, the realization of decentralized poker is becoming an inevitability. There are however challenges and perhaps even unsolved issues, one particular issues being collusion. The author would like to address one such aspect of malicious attacks on the economy of the game. The solution posed is very similar to the implementation of bitcoin, that by creating a scarcity of user accounts and creating a free market for them, holders of the “asset” will only have an incentive to keep that asset as trusted member of a larger web of trust.
Poker Assets: single unique identifiers using Counterparty
Counterparty could be used to create a finite number of assets each auction-able and transferable to an individual person’s wallet as proof of identity. The number of divisible assets created is not extremely important however to create any amount of value (which is crucial) they must be finite at least in distribution.. A good idea for the distribution might be the same rate of bitcoin (decreasing by 50% every X years) which will likely reward early adopters as well as cause the majority of early adopters to value their asset (to save it rather than to sell it).
Where does the value come from?
The value comes from the need for a web of trust within the poker community. If the community had a solution for this problem decentralized poker would have no unsolvable issues. The rake and transaction fees alone are enough to pump great wealth into any decentralized poker solution, as well as the new players that would be added to the market if decentralized poker could function above regulatory controls. This means that it is both reasonable and economically sounds to suggest a decentralized solution to single unique identifiers could accumulate its own wealth. It’s a valuable solution to the players.
Web of trust
Once assets are released, the system can work in tandem with a decentralized poker site (or centralized for that matter) and begin creating games and communities that utilize and track the assets that represent unique player accounts. A web of trust is then created which can be utilized to analyze trust-able and non trust-able behavior in any programmable fashion. Players can use or create any type of queries they wish, and choose to make such profiles public or not public. There is no need for disruption to sites or communities of any form. Players can choose to take part or not take part, and players without assets can still join games that are set up within the web of trust (if the players within the web decide so).
Creating an integrity rating
Anyone can create different ways to rate each individual player (many of which can be automatic for instance with a HUD). The key is to have a universal voting system in which players can decided who they trust the most and who they would like to share their trust network with. Another “coin” given out periodically to all asset holders at a rate based on the period of time they have held their account (assuming accounts will generally gravitate towards trustworthy holders who can make them valuable) can facilitate a voting process by which the most truth-worthy accounts are voted to the top.
Players should then choose to give tips, donations, benefits, rake back, discounted rake etc. to these players since this will create incentive for honest people to maintain their reputation. Games can be created with a certain % of trusted players equal to some desired level of security for the game. It might be acceptable to have some malicious players, colluding, multi accounting etc, if the over all profitability of the game is still superior to that of today’s game.
Nonetheless, certain requirements of integrity ratings can be made much like a bar bouncer at a league game checking ID’s in a drinking establishment. On that point some players might choose to link their ID’s or different social media site accounts etc. which might give them more credibility to the players (and earn more integrity coins) yet some players may choose to remain anonymous
How the Free Market Might Work
We tend to feel that free market solutions simply give the wealthy and corrupt a chance to take advantage of the unfortunate, however when designed properly the free market facilitates an interesting process. For example if all accounts were bought up by untrustworthy sources, they would simply not gain any value, this would cause the malicious holders to sell them very cheap. If 50% of good people bought assets and 50% of bad people, the web of trust would create value for only the trusted assets. These assets then would be more valuable for trusted people than for people who can’t gain trust. Some assets can be tied to people are are fine with being publicly known, and so this might create a strong foundation for others to link their trust to.
Players are free to defect from or not enter into the system. Decentralized poker only needs a small subset of players to create a web of trust, and no doubt other webs of this kind will exist. Players can sell their asset and buy a new one. Players can keep one asset for all time and buy tons of new assets and play some games with a “known” account and some games with different anonymous accounts. In this light we might point out multi-accounting is only a serious problem if only certain players get to do it.
The idea can be put simply, if we can turn the formula into how much are the players willing to pay to bring a secure amount of integrity to their game, then the players can decide how secure they want it. Bitcoins and the Counterparty solution are simple mechanisms to facilitate this choice.
Poker Forum Coin
I’d like to propose the community gathers together in a small dialogue for the purpose of discussion the value of implementing a community forum coin. This coin would not necessarily be intended to hold a certain value, but might instead have a useful function in the form of a facilitator of exchange. Creating the coin is simple as is defining its parameters. Community members simply create a wallet on Counterparty.co by generating a password with no extra software being installed or personal information being required (the process is instant and takes seconds). The benefits of such a coin seems to be many yet the risk of experimenting with the process are nil. The effects and intrusiveness on the forum are negligent and the only direct change is that players might start to display their public address in order to receive tips, donations, and payments in the form of Poker Forum coin.
Can a forum really have its own digital coin?
In short yes. Because of a new technology built of the bitcoin solution called Counterparty, anyone can create their own coin with there own specifics. Let’s Talk Bitcoin, arguably the most prominent bitcoin news site, has already launched their own crypto-currency called “LTB coin” after they were and already established community.
What is Counterparty?
https://www.counterparty.co/about/
Counterparty is an innovative platform for peer-to-peer markets and financial instruments. Unlike Wall Street and other centralized financial institutions, Counterparty provides open, secure financial tools and markets that do not require a trusted third party or middleman to use. The first of its kind, Counterparty aims to decentralize and democratize finance in the same way the Internet itself has done with creation and sharing of information.
The platform is built on top of Bitcoin, and extends the functionality of the Bitcoin network in new and unprecedented ways. With Counterparty, anyone with an Internet connection gains access to financial instruments that were previously cost prohibitive or not available at all.
The primary goal of Counterparty is to enable entrepreneurs, developers, artists and more to build a new, productive economy: doing things that have never been done before, made possible by the amazing technology behind Bitcoin. We want to unlock the potential of “Bitcoin 2.0″ for thousands of people, who will then create profitable businesses, as well use the technology to further the social good. Read more about how to get started on building with Counterparty technology.
Counter party allows users to create their own coin called “assets”. These coins can be based on physical assets or anything users want. Creators can controller the distribution rates, methods, and whether assets can be divided or not. Once the coin is setup, users of the group it was set up for (ie the poker forum community) can sign up for a wallet and receive Poker Forum coins instantly.
For people who have never heard of or used crypto-currency, Counterparty is incredibly user friendly for creating a wallet and is as simple and as fast as generating a 12 word password. It takes seconds to get setup and arrive a user interface that is more user friendly than a traditional banking site. https://counterwallet.co
What is LBTcoin?
LTBcoin is a brand new kind of thing. It is a crypto-rewards system where people who help LTB to be useful are rewarded for their efforts. And it’s built on Bitcoin!
LTBcoin is the proprietary token for the Let’s Talk Bitcoin Network. It is the exclusive token accepted for sponsorships. It will provide the user a significant discount in the network wide and ACT-specific e-commerce stores. It can be used in the network for tipping and will generally be useful in every corner of the LTB universe.
LTBcoin does not use computational mining. Instead, coins are distributed to the content creators, the community and the platform according to a fixed schedule. After a period of 260 weeks (5 years), all coins will be distributed and no new coins will be created.Introduction of LTB coin http://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/introducing-ltbcoin-our-new-crypto-rewards-program-for-ltb-creators-and-community
LTBcoin was released even “after” the Let’s Talk Bitcoin forum was up and running. By using Counterparty individual LTB accounts can sign up to receive certain distributions of LTB coin based on certain levels and types of participation on the LTB community. Forumers of the LTB community can post there “public key” and receive payments or donations from each other in the form of LTBcoin. This creates a new dynamic for the community by introducing a small incentive, voting, and market option.
Content creator receive the majority of LTBcoins, while participants on the forum also are given a portion of the released coins.
LTBcoin will be distributed over a time span of 260 weeks with new tokens created and distributed weekly. The weekly distribution will be:
65% will be distributed to content creators
25% will be distributed to the audience.
10% will go to the platform development and maintenance.
The first weekly distribution will be on July 5th, 2014.
LTBcoin generates value largely from selling advertising space in LTB “auctions”. The process works much like Ebay but you must have LTBcoin to participate.
Demand for LTBcoin is derived from the value it has as the exclusive currency used for purchasing ads on the LTB network. LTBcoin will also be the exclusive token that lets you participate in our contests, buy gear at discount in our stores, and participate in promotions and other surprises we come up with along the way!*
Effective July 1st, 2014 LetsTalkBitcoin.com, the Let’s Talk Bitcoin! show, and the LTB network will only sell sponsorship space (on the web properties) or airtime (on the show) for LTBcoin, to the highest bidder, in LTBcoin, at our regular auction events
After 5 years, LTB has decided no more LTBcoins will be created.
What could a Poker Forum coin useful for?
If 2 + 2 wanted they could also sell a certain portion of advertising space however there are many less intrusive uses for a Poker Forum coin. Players could create there own home games with coins as entry tickets. Coaching sites might choose to accept Poker Forum coins for certain products they offer. Any poker related software might choose to use the community generated coin in order to attract customers from their target market.
Forum users can send and receive tips based on helpful posts or pm’s. This might create incentive for more participation and better content. There might even arise some interesting possibilities for decentivizing troll like behavior.
For any of these poker related companies adopting the system of spending and receiving the Poker Forum coin is just as easy as signing up as a community forum user.
What about the specifics of the coin?
The specifics can be anything the community desires. It can be a fixed release rate, a one time drop, and deflationary rate, anything we choose. The coins schedule can be locked so there can be no changes or interference made.
How would the coins be distributed?
Again this is something the community can decide, and to be honest it might not really matter. We tend to think of “money” as the creator and destroyer of wealth, but used in this form our Poker Forum coin would not necessarily represent a suppression by wealth but rather a facilitator of the exchange of goods, ideas, and services. Even if only a handful of player’s received a one time only drop, the coins are only really as useful as the network they cover. This means everyone who possesses them has utility to pass them out and use them.
Other ways coins can be distributed is through free rolls, moderator appreciation, bonus’s, poker sites, and perhaps in the future based on advanced statistics such as forum post counts and specific types of participation.
Can we really create a market for such a coin?
Yes.
Metcalfe’s law states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system (n2).
Reed’s law is the assertion of David P. Reed that the utility of large networks, particularly social networks, can scale exponentially with the size of the network. The reason for this is that the number of possible sub-groups of network participants is 2N*−*N*−*1, where N is the number of participants. This grows much more rapidly than either the number of participants, N, or the number of possible pair connections, N(N*−*1)/2 (which follows Metcalfe’s law). so that even if the utility of groups available to be joined is very small on a peer-group basis, eventually the network effect of potential group membership can dominate the overall economics of the system.
Sarnoff’s law states that the value of a broadcast network is directly proportional to the number of viewers. It is attributed to David Sarnoff.
For example, a network with 100 members is 10 times as valuable as a network with 10 members.
All that is needed is a few players that understand the value of the addition tool/option that a Poker Forum coin would bring to the community. If a few of the poker related communities and businesses joined in to participate their could be an immediate advantage to holding some Poker Forum coin. Coaching sites might have a few videos specifically unlock-able with only Poker Forum coin. Perhaps some well established coaches might advertise or auction a certain block of coaching time only redeemable with Poker Forum coin. Any poker relate sites including the community might allocate a certain portion of advertising only redeemable with this coin. Even some small poker sites might set up Poker Forum coin entry tournaments or cash games and eventually even bigger sites might get involved and choose to accept Poker Forum coin for tournament or cash game tickets.
The point is that having this extra option in the poker economy changes the dynamic and the interaction between all the interested parties.
What are some other advantages?
There has been a lot of talk about the possible benefits to the poker community in relation to the new technology bitcoin gives us. However the adoption of such technology takes time, and specifically in regards to poker sites, their business model are likely too cumbersome at this point to shift to adopting bitcoin as a payment system. One the other hand some players have recognized bitcoin brings the possibility of nearly frictionless transactions between players and sites, and this ability to liquidate our rolls might bring a poker service of higher value (ie lower effective rake). Having community forum users participate in a very user friendly crypto-currency system with zero risk to the user, might actually help educate the masses on the benefits of crypto-currency.
Furthermore players on the forum can display their public keys and begin to create a unique identifier which is attached to their Poker Forum coin wallet. Although not a completely secure solution, this might help incentivize players to keep one account and to stay truer and more honest to it.
Small fees can be used to enter certain discussions or sections of the forum, such as the marketplace, which act somewhat like a proof of participation. In this way, coins beings to act like a “vote”, which is another avenue the community might want to explore. The public address acts as a sort of “hall pass” which might be used to identify the legitimacy of the former in regards to the timeframe they have kept their account for.
Staking, another subject to big for this writing, is an area of poker that would benefit greatly with the new money technology available. A Poker Forum coin might help get the discussion on this going. The efficiency that crypto-technology brings transforms in to value that goes back into the poker economy.
The future of Poker Forum coins?
Perhaps the the first generation of this coin will flop. The community can just decide to create a new more evolved version. Many advances implementation can certainly arise, and many projects are in development to facilitate such advances. Multiple coins could (and will likely) be created to specifically facilitate certain functions that are valuable to the poker economy and the poker community.
Perhaps after some time the forum itself might adjust to facilitate different properties and systems for crypto-currency
What would be involved in launching a Poker Forum coin?
Launching the coin would be relatively simple, and once the properties are decided the specifics the asset could be created in minutes. The success of the release would be solely based on the community’s support for it and so we might decide a schedule in which early adopters have an early bird benefit. A type of referral program may prove useful for a more rapid adoption, as would a type of marketing strategy that uses mutually beneficial agreements between poker related business and the players community.
The coin itself may not have that much value, yet the implementation of it and the possible functions it might possess may prove to be incredibly useful. Many different ideas and innovations for the poker world may arise just like in the new global economy bitcoin is fueling. LTB just went through the process of adopting such a system and many peoples’ experience with it seems to be quite favorable. The initial discussion period and implementation need not have a giant portion of the community involved and in fact one of the main benefits of actually finally having a community coin is to facilitate future decision processes on the systems the community may wish to have.
Example/explanation of Ideal Poker
I know i have never explained myself very well, but it was critical of me not to do so. The stuff I have written will start to make sense soon, and please try to read it carefully and think about ‘double meaning’ as you go. I’ll try to give an example of how ‘ideal poker’ can be read clearer. Just keep in mind, there is not need to complain anymore, we have solutions, we are just not hearing them and not letting them be heard. http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=43602250&postcount=2719
“Your points are well made, but I still think the situation is not so negative for the regs in these games. I would contend that the reduced ROI in these tournaments can partly be attributed to a continuous increase in skill among the players in general. So regardless of the paytables, you would still have to increase your volume to keep your earnings the same.
You are absolutely right in pointing out that PokerStars benefits from having more games run, so in that sense the 27 man payout structure is good for us. I do think, however, that if we kept the 18 man structure, you would see the reg/recs ratio slowly increase over time thus making the achievable ROI go down even further. Finally, giving more players a positive outcome from the tournaments will not only make initial deposits go further, but it will also encourage further deposits from those who get positive experiences from our MTTSNGs more frquently. This is definitely very good for all parties involved, not least of all the regular players.
As for a leaderboard or something equivalent for 45+ players, I have to disappoint you, unfortunately. We have been moving away from leaderboards as a promotional mechanism and don’t plan to add new leaderboards anytime soon.”
Bad math sir. You’re trying to sell the players that quasi-doctrine Nash describes in ‘ideal ‘poker”, “that “less is more” or that (in other words) “raked poker is better than not raked poker” And I can assure you and the players that your math doesn’t hold. However you are going to want your post to be deleted as you have said too much. People like to explain how the markets of poker works in relation to the invisible hand we all attribute to Adam Smith, when we say ‘if the game was raked less, then there would be better players, and so the game would actually be effectively raked harder’. Well as far as I have learned Adam Smith asked his books to be burned on his death bed, and we have what remains. Why did he do this? Clearly to prevent the perverted misuse of the knowledge he spelled out. Lets hear it from the best poker player in the world (not me):
The Confessional of Targeting
It was the observation of a new “line” that has become popular with those responsible for “raked” functions relating to national poker sites that gave us the idea for the study of “asymptotically rakeless” poker.
The idea seems paradoxical, but by speaking of “rake targeting” these responsible officials are effectively CONFESSING that, notwithstanding how they formerly were speaking about the difficulties and problems of their functions, that it is indeed after all possible to control rake by controlling the supply of chips (as if by limiting the amount of individual “prints” that could be made of a work of art being produced as “prints”). This popularity of the line of “rake targeting” seems to have started in the US, which is the place, among the USA, Canada, Australia, and Europe, which had the most losing players. And we can note also that US was hardly a place where any crisis of poverty really forced them to not maintain the value of their chips but rather just a place where “raked” thinking was probably very influential.
Our observation, based on thinking in terms of “the long term” rather than in terms of “short range expediency”, was simply that there is no ideal rate of rake that should be selected and chosen as the target but rather that the ideal concept would necessarily be that of a zero rate for what is called rake.
But of course, also, poker sites of a state cannot actually do anything of the form that can be called “rake targeting” without having some means for measuring rake. How would they do this? The means for measuring inflation that they would naturally use would be a “deposits raked” index relating to domestic transactions within the territory of the state.
In the USA the standard domestic “deposits raked” index has a long history and it actually originated back in the days when the USA was still on the “rake standard” with regard to the monetary standards being accepted then. And most sites nowadays having large domestic economies also have some sort of an analogous index of ‘deposits raked’.
And now we start to understand why the leaderboards are disappearing (or not appearing at all), or at least I do, and the kids will when they start to READ and therefore understand ‘ideal poker’, what it means and what changes it will bring to the poker world. Only so long as they don’t read what has already been written, will such ridiculous examples of bad math remain.
thewealthofchips 