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Thread: Crypto-based Phenom Poker claims to be revolutionary and "trustless" -- but is it?

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    Crypto-based Phenom Poker claims to be revolutionary and "trustless" -- but is it?

    The announcement of Phenom Poker just dropped.

    What is Phenom Poker? It's a new poker app with two features they claim are unique, but actually aren't.

    In short, it's a crypto poker site where they don't hold your money, and you get your crypto right when you leave the table.

    Here's their tweet announcing it:

    https://twitter.com/PhenomPokerApp/status/1749526492525080607


    Here's the longer description of the whole thing: https://www.phenompoker.com/post/pok...tion-is-coming


    The Poker Revolution is coming: Introducing Phenom Poker
    The game of poker is a beautiful thing. A mix of skill and luck. Math and psychology. Recreational or professional. A casual social gathering or prestigious tournament for prizes in the tens of millions of dollars. Take your pick. There's something for everyone. It's no wonder why it is one of the most popular games in the world. Yet, considering there is a player base somewhere in the hundreds of millions of people globally, there has been little advancement in the industry since online poker burst onto the scene some 25 years ago.

    Little has been done to rethink and advance an industry that has been riddled with scandals and schemes that have seen players' funds frozen or outright stolen by operators and competing players alike. In the United States, where the game is most popular, players are faced with limited options, nearly all of which involve trusting your money with some offshore operator in hopes they won't be the next nefarious operator and domino to fall.

    It's time for a change.



    A new type of poker site is coming

    We are buildng Phenom Poker for a simple reason - as poker players and long time members of the poker community ourselves, we want to solve some of the biggest problems in online poker and return value back to the poker community. Phenom Poker is a decentralized online poker site that is built by the players, for the players, and owned and governed by the player community. Built with a trustless gaming architecture, it is not necessary to deposit your funds with a 3rd party or ask permission when its time to retrieve your funds. Rather, a player can simply connect the Web3 wallet of their choice to play the game of their choice. While in play, funds are held in a Smart Contract until the player is finished playing, at which point the funds are immediately returned to the player's wallet, after accounting for any winnings or losses. This groundbreaking concept eliminates the need to trust an offshore company with your funds and also removes one of the largest bottlenecks in online poker - deposits and withdrawals. Also by removing the need for traditional payment rails (like banks or traditional financial institutions), Phenom Poker will not violate any US federal laws.



    Fair Gameplay and Player Protection
    *
    Some of the biggest issues plaguing online poker today include RTAs (Real Time Assistance), Bots, and collusion. While we recognize that some of the sites have made efforts to combat these problems, it simply has not been enough. The end result is players getting cheated out of millions of dollars and nobody is clear on where is a safe place to play. Its unacceptable. This is among our biggest priorities in building a new site - figuring out how to take a truly technology-first approach to solving these issues and also having Zero Tolerance policies in place when bad actor behavior is discovered. If we expect the game we all love to thrive and grow, there is simply no room too allow those who seek to cheat and scam players out of the their money. We will take a proactive approach to solving these issues and use the latest in Machine Learning and other technologies to identity bad actors quickly and give the community a level playing field to battle on the digital felt. Phenom Poker also uses a P2P encrypted RNG engine for card shuffling. This approach removes the possibility of the anyone getting real-time hole card access (including developers or site admins). We believe this should have been the standard across all sites a long time ago. The technology has been available and yet we continue to see SuperUser scandals pop up in the industry. Phenom Poker will always make use of the most sophisticated available technologies to protect our player community and prevent these scenarios.



    And it gets even better

    At Phenom Poker, every player is an owner! Phenom Poker is a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) and is owned and governed through the Phenom Token. Phenom Tokens are distributed to players as a reward for playing poker on the site. That’s right, you can own a piece of the site simply for playing the game you love. Token holders will collectively receive 50% of site revenues and also hold voting rights that control the future of the site. The other half of site revenues will be used to operate and grow the platform. This amount can be adjusted over time via a governance proposal that is voted on and passed by token holders. Our goal is to be 100% owned by the poker community and to be the most player-centric offering on the market.

    I'll tell you about the ambassadors in the next post.

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    Owner Dan Druff's Avatar
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    Phenom Poker has accumulated an impressive roster of poker pro ambassadors, including one regular PFA listener.

    Joseph Cheong
    Ari Engel (who listens to PFA Radio every week)
    Brian Rast
    Sergio Aido
    Eric Baldwin
    Chris Hunichen
    Justin Young
    Angela Jordison

    Ari Engel is especially notable to me, as he is very honest and really hasn't been part of the whole poker endorsement game until now.

    Joseph Cheong and Angela Jordison also have good reputations.

    I don't know Sergio Aido.

    Two of them have somewhat of a history of associating themselves with questionable poker companies. Eric Baldwin most notably signed with UB after the superuser cheating scandal. Brian Rast has been associated with various poker failprojects over the years, where presumably he traded his association for equity in these companies.

    Don't know that much about Justin Young, other than him being around in poker for a number of years.

    Chris Hunichen had a good reputation, but ran into a fair amount of Twitter controversy this summer, involving a Gofundme for his father's funeral. This controversy wasn't a huge deal other than bad optics, but it did sour some people's opinions of him.

    Anyway, I'm not sure what compensation these eight people received. I'm guessing it was the "tokens" discussed in the post above, which could translate into decent money if the site takes off.

    I'll give you my opinion of Phenom Poker in the next post...

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    Owner Dan Druff's Avatar
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    Phenom Poker's opening blog raised a few concerns for me.

    Most notably, there's this line:

    Also by removing the need for traditional payment rails (like banks or traditional financial institutions), Phenom Poker will not violate any US federal laws.


    This is simply not true. Any form of unregulated poker operating in the United States -- whether live or online -- is ILLEGAL if it takes a rake. It is irrelevant whether traditional "deposits" and "withdrawals" are made as part of the whole thing. This would only be (possibly) legal if they provided a real money online poker platform, but took zero rake or charges of any kind. Even then, they could be in hot water because of the online factor, and the fact that the three elements of gambling (chance, consideration, reward) all exist.



    Then there's the whole "token" thing. You earn tokens while you play, which are small pieces of ownership in the company. Believe it or not, this has been done before. Pokershare, a UB skin, tried this tactic in the mid-2000s. If you played on Pokershare, you would slowly earn "shares" in the company, and become an "owner". This ended up being meaningless, as the company folded. But I never believed I was really an "owner" while playing on Pokershare. It was a dumb gimmick. I imagine the same is true here. Supposedly you will have "voting rights" as a token owner, but I imagine the players will "own" very tiny pieces of the company, and their "votes" will be mostly uselses. More importantly, this might violate US securities laws.



    And what about the "trustless" claim? In crypto, trustless means that three is no top level authority figure or entity in charge, and the network is operated by a the entire community of users. Bitcoin, for example, is (mostly) trustless. When sending bitcoin to another person, you don't have to worry about the head of bitcoin (who doesn't exist) swooping in and possibly interfering in it. Trustlessness is important in cryptocurrency, as its entire basis centers upon not being owned or controlled by any organization or government.

    But how does that factor in here? Phenom Poker claims to use "smart contracts" to manage player funds. A smart contract is a protocol on a blockchain which execute upon meeting certain criteria. This happens automatically without a human being or outside system having to make decisions whether that criteria has been met. Smart contracts are important because they cannot be violated. The criteria to make them execute is set, and they automatically complete when that criteria is met. In Phenom Poker's case, the smart contracts hold up the players' crypto while they're at the table, and returns their crypto (plus/minus any wins/losses) when they leave the table. That's how Phenom Poker claims to be trustless.

    And I agree, from the financial standpoint, they actually are. It is true that when playing on Phenom Poker, you will always get paid your winnings.

    However, that does not mean the entire system is trustless. They are still providing the games. They are still providing the security. They are ultimately the arbiters of who is cheating and who is not. That's not trustless.

    Furthermore, there is a huge problem security-wise, which is brought on by the entire smart contract matter! Since you control your own funds, if you cheat and are caught, there is no money for them to seize and return to the victims! This makes it a virtual freeroll to cheat on the site, especially if it is fairly easy to create new accounts without an extensive KYC (know your customer) procedure.

    Even today on traditional poker sites, cheaters have to worry about getting caught before they can withdraw their ill-gotten gains. Getting caught not only costs them some of their profits, but also can cost them their seed money they deposited in the first place. This is not a factor with Phenom. There is no way for Phenom Poker to punish any cheaters, aside from banning them from future play!

    There's one more problem. Exchanges like Coinbase will never let this fly. They will shut down accounts super quickly which are caught playing on apps like Phenom. This leaves potential players having to utilize a middleman wallet in order to play without fear of their exchange account getting shut down. Few people are going to want to bother with this.



    Do I think Phenom Poker will succeed?

    No.

    The entire trustless crypto stuff is too complicated for the average player, especially the fish who make poker games good. Crypto poker sites have existed for well over a decade. None of them have ever become big. It's always been a niche market, and it always will be. Crypto is great as a deposit/withdrawal method, but a site running entirely on crypto -- especially via this trustless scheme -- will not appeal to the masses.

    The good news is that it's not likely anyone will get cheated. Since you are in control of your own crypto, there won't be a Lock Poker type situation where they run off with your money. This is also why the eight ambassadors don't have much to lose by promoting it. At the same time, this is unlikely to get off the ground, regardless of how enthusiastically these ambassadors tweet about it.

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    Good clip of crypto expert (and former poker pro) Jason Mo explaining why Phenom Poker isn't going to work out:

    https://twitter.com/cuntycakes123/status/1751114074812039311


    It's fairly technical, but he does a pretty good job stopping to explain the terminology and concepts to people not as knowledgeable. Even I learned some new things from this clip (and not just about Phenom).

    If you understand nothing about crypto, some of this will go over your head, but if you even know a little bit about how it all works, you should get something out of this clip.

    Among the points which I hadn't thought of:

    - This sort of token uses a bridge, which is vulnerable to attack. So it's not as secure as people think.

    - There are a ton of spoof type scams involving these type of smart contracts, and people will be scammed/tricked into their crypto being stolen if this site were to ever get popular.

    - Even if they give away 50% of the ownership tokens to players, and allow voting regarding the site's direction, it will be meaningless. Why? Because insiders will own the other 50%, and if they all vote the same way, all they need is 1 of the many many many other token holders to vote their way, and they'll have the majority victory. Great point!


    He made a number of other good points which I'm not remembering at the moment, since I watched this about 5 hours ago. But I agree with him for the most part.

    As I said in my other post, I still think the two biggest flaws are their inability to punish cheaters and the complexity of the system which will discourage fish from playing.

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    Integrity is not the first thing that comes to mind when Alec Torelli's name comes up.
    Big time red flag

     
    Comments
      
      sah_24:

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    Lord help us.

    They've even gotten Kessler.

    At least Shaun Deeb isn't brainwashed.

    https://twitter.com/shaundeeb/status/1824618299486839264

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    Here's the problem.

    Kessler is an honest guy and believes what he's saying.

    Even Torelli, who has had his share of controversies, seems to honestly believe what he's writing.

    I don't think any of these "pros" have bad intentions.

    They were sold a convincing story, and figure that it can't be a scam because each person holds their own funds.

    They just don't understand the flaws in the plan -- and these flaws exist on several fronts.

    The biggest flaw comes from the inability to seize funds from cheaters. That's huge.

    The other flaws include being illegal in the US (despite their claims otherwise), the token scheme possibly being a securities violation, the userbase being easily scammed by clever crypto phishers, the "ownership" scheme basically being a farce (and having failed before when tried in the past), and the fact that this won't appeal to the typical recreational player who will find it all too complicatged.

    I don't believe this site is a scam, but it's just not likely to work out, and I'm surprised how easily people are attaching their good names to it.

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    Phenom respondded to my questions to Torelli:

    https://twitter.com/PhenomPokerApp/status/1824427810439790689
    https://twitter.com/PhenomPokerApp/status/1824444142325469695

    1. We aren't opening data to 3rd party software - making it very difficult to use things like RTA to cheat

    2. Hear what you're saying about fund confiscation but can you tell us how much funds have been confiscated by other sites and returned to players? No. We have no idea but we do know their strategy isn't working

    3. Our House Rules include a provision that allows us to publicly release the identity of people caught cheating. This is more of a deterrent than risk of losing some of the gains won by cheating

    There are no perfect solutions but we have ample history of what other sites are doing/not doing and we are taking a different approach and have different priorities. We are more aligned with the community who will share ownership and say in the site. If the community has suggestions and/or changes to these policies they want to implement, they can simply vote for the change they want. That's the beauty of a community owned platform.

    Here is the problem regarding their responses:

    1) I'm not necessarily worried about RTA (real time assistance) cheating, so I'm not sure why that's the response they're giving me. More worried about bots and outright collusion. You can also use RTA without datamining, so their response doesn't fully make sense.

    2) They're missing the point, perhaps intentionally. Funds confiscation, whether returned to the victims or not, is the biggest enemy of cheating rings. In poker, it takes money to make money. If you have been banned for cheating from a traditional poker site, then sign up again under a fake account, deposit, and are discovered, you will lose your deposit and any winnings you gained. They're not going to refund your deposit and send you on your way. Therefore, cheating rings risk LOSING money if returning to sites where they have been previously banned. On Phenom, there is no such risk. The only way cheaters will lose money is if they actually lose it during poker play. If Phenom catches cheaters returning to the site under fake accounts, they can ban the accounts, but the cheaters keep 100% of their funds!

    3) The provision to release the identity of cheaters isn't a bad one (though it does bring up the problem of false positives). However, that is only useful when the cheater has a good name to protect. Guys in Belarus recruited to cheating rings don't give a shit if their name is released.

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    Jason Mo absolutely owning them on Twitter.

    First he posted this analysis below:

    https://twitter.com/cuntycakes123/status/1825670090005893199
    https://twitter.com/cuntycakes123/status/1825673053847847063
    https://twitter.com/cuntycakes123/status/1825675173439353082
    https://twitter.com/cuntycakes123/status/1825678343284703262


    So basically Jason is saying that there is simply too much data to be sent per hand between all players for the RNG (random number generator) to work on the blockchain. And he's further noting that, if they do the RNG off-chain, then it's no better than any RNG on any site, where you basically need to trust their methodology without any proof it works.

    Matt Valeo, who appears to be the main owner and CEO of Phenom Poker, attempted to clap back, but it didn't go well:

    https://twitter.com/cuntycakes123/status/1825700201887412353
    https://twitter.com/cuntycakes123/status/1825703590226448697
    https://twitter.com/Phenomaly/status/1825705947945382111

    https://twitter.com/cuntycakes123/status/1825708477639176349
    https://twitter.com/cuntycakes123/status/1825713593964441733

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    The main complaint by Jason Mo is that Phenom Poker's CEO (Matt Valeo) admits that there's still a shuffle being done off-chain, but the data being used to perform the shuffle comes from each player, and is encrypted.

    Valeo claims this is better than normal site RNGs because data for that generation comes from each user, and thus no single user can use it to recreate the RNG for himself.

    Mo counters that this is useless. He claims that getting this data from users introduces new potential vulnerabilities, as decryption of such data will make it easier for someone to reverse engineer the RNG at that point. He is basically saying that you might as well generate this stuff internally, rather than get it from users, where there's no way it can be intercepted. Additionally, since the actual random number generation is done off chain, there's no way for users to verify it's legit -- the whole point of doing it in a "trustless" fashion to begin with!


    Mo is right about all this, but that's still not the main problem.

    As I said, the huge glaring hole in this project is the inability to take money BACK from caught cheaters.

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    All the technical BS doesn't matter ... at the end of the day this site will be a fail site just like all the others bc of one thing "liquidity" ... fish are not going to understand any of this and therefore will never play making the site a ghost town just like the regulated sites ...

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    Did a show last night, all about Phenom Poker:





    The Phenom Poker owner, who I invited to listed, had a lot to say. See next post...

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    Owner Dan Druff's Avatar
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    Well, that's a response, all right!

    So here is my response to his response...


    I stated that I wasn't sure who made up the existing ownership, but that collectively they will start off owning 50%, and the players will own the other 50%. This was what I learned from your initial post about Phenom on your own website. If most or all of these people vote the same way (which is fairly likely in most cases), the players will have almost no say, even if somehow they do manage to collectively obtain a little more than 50% ownership. True "voting for the direction of a company" cannot occur when people aligned with roughly the same interest and vision hold disproportionately large pieces. I still hold that the "player ownership" thing is a gimmick, and the players will have no real power.

    Regarding the site pros, I will concede that Chris Hunichen does have a lot of crypto knowledge, and perhaps Brian Rast does as well. However, of the remaining site pros, who else does? How many of them have spent time studying or reporting on online poker from a security standpoint? Honestly, this looks like you handed off pieces of ownership to pros with somewhat recognizable names, in exchange for them all posting essentially the same message that Phenom Poker is going to be the future of online poker. I'm sure they believed most of what they wrote, because your sales pitch to them was likely convincing. The selling points of "you control your own funds at all times", "the random number generator is fed by inputs from players in encrypted fashion, so no one person has full access", and "the players become owners and have a say in the direction of the site" all sound great, provided you don't think about them too hard.


    Regarding the main point I raised -- that you can't keep cheaters out of the community:

    You said, "You claim someone can make unlimited accounts to cheat. Simply not true. Not only do we have sophisticated security practices to find and remove this behavior, but we also do KYC. So banning someone means banning their identity. If they try to use a different identity to come back, we have a whole array of ways to figure out it's the same person or group. Not nearly as easy as you're trying to claim. Many other sites it is easy to do and one of the reasons we are here to begin with. Weird hill to die on when you consider the only other prominent crypto poker site openly advertises 'No KYC crypto poker'. We're going the opposite way and clearly care about this stuff."

    The sophisticated cheating rings have a lot of ways to evade detection as they load more and more bogus accounts on the system. Ask ACR if you don't believe me. Your inability to seize their funds is the biggest flaw of your site. Just because the other crypto sites fail to do KYC doesn't make this problem go away.


    Finally, your site is not legal to operate in the US. You can pretend it is, but it's not. I don't really care if it's legal or not -- I've been playing on unlicensed and illegal online poker sites for over two decades. But I can't imagine any scenario where a real money gambling site (with a rake) is considered legal in the US.

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