Denver man creates online poker system that includes a real deck of cards

[The Buzz]

Gene Gioia is one of thousands, perhaps millions of Internet poker players who has started at his computer screen after a bad beat and proclaimed "online poker is rigged."

Gioia would unwind by playing poker online in his hotel room at night. But that was very different from sitting at a table with other players and handling real cards.

For example, his three-of-a-kind and full-house hands frequently got topped.

“I even got beat with a straight flush by a higher straight flush — things I’d never seen at a real table,” Gioia said.

Audit trails and checking the integrity of things are in his blood. Gioia thought about starting his own poker site, where players could verify the authenticity of the deal.

His business idea was dormant for several years, until his daughter pointed out a 2006 newspaper article about online gambling that highlighted the financial success of a popular poker site.

She whacked Gioia with the paper and told him: “You should’ve done this,” he said.

And so he started Gioia Systems LLC. His biggest challenge was how to differentiate his site from the fast-growing number of popular Internet poker sites.

“The answer was almost instantaneous: Play with a real deck of cards,” he said.

Gioia turned to his brother, Andy Gioia, who worked for a company that made high-speed printers. They configured a machine they call the “Real Deal” to shuffle and deal cards continuously. It has the ability to transmit the results to computer servers that can manage hundreds of games simultaneously, Gioia said.

The system stores information about every hand dealt and makes it available for later audit should players want it.

That could be a big draw when tens of thousands of dollars are at stake, as they often are in online poker tournaments, Gioia said.

Gioia assembled $1.1 million in investment from friends and family and built his company, which employs five people.

Gioia Systems plans to launch a demonstration site, www.realdealpoker.com, in a month, hosting games for no money.

By attracting players, Gioia hopes to secure an angel investment and fund a full-fledged poker site on servers in the British Channel island of Alderney, the host of many international online gaming website servers.

He hopes to have the poker website hosting real wager games and drawing revenue this year.

Buzzy thinks that this system may be more likely to allow cheating in the end, because assuming the hands dealt would be stored in a database, if anyone ever got hold of that database, they would have some powerful information to use in the future. Imagine, based on seeing the hole cards, the flop and the turn, being able to predict what's going to come on the river? Seems like a silly idea to me ... what do you think?

http://denver.bizjournals.com/denver...1200%5E1698594

[kumen]

do somebody can work it??

[LiveCasinoPartners]

I read the press release. There's nothing really groundbreaking unless he has real dealers via webcam. Otherwise, he's going retro.

What he is selling is "realness".

[fiveaces]

Personally, I hold back when I bet for real money online because I cannot be convinced that the site isn't somehow manipulating the game. Not sure what you could possibly mean by having a machine physically deal cards as being "retro." Take advantage of recent technology I say, remove the possibility of software influence to online poker and return it to a real game of chance. Wake up people!

Online poker is really a ticking bomb. Look at the numbers worldwide and you will probably find that participation has neither decresed or been significantly hurt by the laws prohibiting online gambling in the US. Something like this could be the fuse that the industry desperately needs. I know that the existing big sites are doing very well but there is a vast amount of potential out there.

If you think you can get that kind of quality gaming ANYWHERE on the web right now you are simply not paying attention.

[Doolally]

I can't see it attracting any more poker players than an ordinary poker site.

However, it could be a massive idea if marketed correctly to the Asian market, who tend not to trust random number generators and may be tempted with the realness mentioned above.

[playerace]

If you think all poker players play online now you aren't keeping up. eCOGRA's survey show that 50% of players that play online don't trust it! What about guys like me? I'd love to play online instead of having to drive to a casino if I knew I could trust it. I am not the only one.

[fwild_1]

Buzzy, we have been studying the problem for 3 years. We are built by poker players to provide a game that we would want to play on. You are absolutely correct, a stored database on the game servers would be susceptible to hacking form both external and internal sources. However, there are a number of safeguards in place to make sure we eliminate both outside and inside people from reaching the data. The data remains on our server until immediately prior to game play, the deck is then randomly chosen and transmitted to the game server where it is presented to the table. At the table, a cut is made by the player with the dealer button, thus re-ordering the deck. We have an outside computer security company working with us to review our proceedures and they will use ongoing suprise audits of our code and proceedures to make sure no one can cheat the game. We, of course, cannot be sure no one can manipulate a game - there are some pretty smart people out there. But we are going to continually look at our security and upgrade if we see deficiencies. Thanks

[The Buzz]

Buzzy, we have been studying the problem for 3 years. We are built by poker players to provide a game that we would want to play on. You are absolutely correct, a stored database on the game servers would be susceptible to hacking form both external and internal sources. However, there are a number of safeguards in place to make sure we eliminate both outside and inside people from reaching the data. The data remains on our server until immediately prior to game play, the deck is then randomly chosen and transmitted to the game server where it is presented to the table. At the table, a cut is made by the player with the dealer button, thus re-ordering the deck. We have an outside computer security company working with us to review our proceedures and they will use ongoing suprise audits of our code and proceedures to make sure no one can cheat the game. We, of course, cannot be sure no one can manipulate a game - there are some pretty smart people out there. But we are going to continually look at our security and upgrade if we see deficiencies. Thanks

Thanks for the response. Buzzy is still curious why this is any more "random" than a random number generator? And is the cost of all this extra work (it's pretty intensive labor to manually shuffle a deck of cards thousands, perhaps millions of times) passed on to the player as extra rake?

[fwild_1]

We are not making the claim that our cards are any more random than a really good random number generator which constantly changes the seed based upon a mechancally random event. It is our contension that RNG's are susceptible to manipulation with near miss programming such as was used in video poker or progams that overlay the random number generator to cause better than average starting hands. Both of these are documented in the industry literature. Our system eliminates these manipulations through the use of the GameCheck function, the cards must be dealt in the order presented, just like in a normal game played with cards. There is so little extra cost generated by our Automated Dealing System and such high margins in the industry (a common EBITA is over 50%) that no increase in rakes will be necessary.

[CityGuard]

It doesn't exactly scream "trustworthy" that you have opened multiple accounts and are also posting disguised as a player. This kind of tactic really undermines the positioning you are trying to achieve.

[fwild_1]

I am sorry. I thought it was pretty transparent that I was involved in the company and speaking for the company. My name was mentioned in the article in the Denver Business Journal and used for the posts, or close "fwild_1".

[CityGuard]

Yes, I think you intended to be transparent that the "fwild_1" account you are using is a representative of the company. However, it appears that the playerace account that is based from the same IP address is intended to appear as a player endorsing your idea rather than a staff member.

[fwild_1]

I did post from another account that 1 time. It absolutely, positively won't happen again. I am new to this blogging thing and I learned something. I am the marketing guy - not our IT director!

[fwild_1]

I replied right after you sent the last message. I don't know what happened with it. Hopefully I will have better luck with this one. Yes, I did post the one under player ace trying to stimulate conversation. I learned something, it wasn't a good idea! Sorry. I realize that it undermines our efforts - we are all about honesty and integrity. Won't happen again - anywhere!

[mma]

We are not making the claim that our cards are any more random than a really good random number generator which constantly changes the seed based upon a mechancally random event. It is our contension that RNG's are susceptible to manipulation with near miss programming such as was used in video poker or progams that overlay the random number generator to cause better than average starting hands. Both of these are documented in the industry literature. Our system eliminates these manipulations through the use of the GameCheck function, the cards must be dealt in the order presented, just like in a normal game played with cards. There is so little extra cost generated by our Automated Dealing System and such high margins in the industry (a common EBITA is over 50%) that no increase in rakes will be necessary.

How many hands an hour does this system shuffle?

[fwild_1]

As currently configured each Automated Dealing System can provide 32,400 decks per minute to the table. Of course, there could be multiple Dealing Systems.

[Swami John]

I have been a poker dealer for 16 years. Over those years I have dealt quite a few "bad-beats". When online poker arrived on the scene I was excited by the ease and quickness of the games. I soon learned of the unfairness. So many big "bad beats" that were unrealistic. "But you see so many more hands online." True, but I average dealing one Royal Flush a year, maybe two quads a week working 40 hours a week and dealing 30-40 hands per hour. I also average dealing one bad beat of aces full of jacks or better beaten- per year. I see and hear of this type of bad beat on a near daily basis online. I am hopeful that realdealpoker.com and their CutnShuffle system, hand audit, and other player safety systems (is there anything to track player collusion?) are what they say they are. This would revolutionize online poker by making it truly trustworthy.
No online random number generator can truly be random. It is an equation. Equations are exacts, and therefore can be predicted.
So Fwild_1, How does this Cutnshuffle system shuffle random? That is the true key.

[fwild_1]

Swami John, I hate to tell you this, but in the study that Dr. Robert Hannum did of our decks he found that they were almost completely random - much better than a hand shuffle in a casino. You can see his paper on our website gioiasystems.com. Every shuffle is proceeded by a wash and then shuffled three times. We designed the system to play like a real game in a card room, to include burn cards!

[Swami John]

The shuffler can scramble (or wash as they say in some parts of the country) the cards? Shuffle Master can't touch that. I can't wait to see this! Any other special additions you can tell us about before your launch?

[mma]

Swami John, I hate to tell you this, but in the study that Dr. Robert Hannum did of our decks he found that they were almost completely random - much better than a hand shuffle in a casino. You can see his paper on our website gioiasystems.com. Every shuffle is proceeded by a wash and then shuffled three times. We designed the system to play like a real game in a card room, to include burn cards!

How is this system able to do a wash, three shuffles, AND deal out 32,400 hands per minute? Is that a typo? Does this system go fast enough to shuffle 32,400 different hands a minute?