Playing poker online was a fury in early 2000’s then regulation and consolidation of the market crashed the game. No more players, no more fun.

Meanwhile the blockchain technology arrived and some poker room tried to emerge, and it mainly started with the exotic Seal with Clubs poker room, now dead.

For the fun part, I deposited 0.3 btc there around 2017, then forgot it. I was quite happy to find them back in 2019, and even got 0.3 BCH from the fork.

But why would you play poker in a crypto room ?

The DeFi protocols emerged recently. Some patterns emerged and then can be applied to Poker rooms:

• Players control their funds : the room can’t freeze an account

• No intermediate dominance : so low rake

• No state regulation : rake is not distributed to the taxes

• Decentralization: Token holders receive rake distribution

A bonus from cryptography is that player can ensure randomness is real. This is implemented in a few rooms such as Coin Poker or Virtue Poker

Virtue Poker proposes anybody to run its own node, aka server with a dedicated software, that is shuffling and distributing cards to players. The server holder earns a part of the rake and ensure scalability and resilience of the system.

One pattern is not applied yet : these rooms are not open source. This may come if their position compared to regulated rooms get stronger. This point is important to ensure there is no intermediate dominance.