Going through Phil Ivey’s lawsuit against FullTilt Poker. No, not the news tidbits about the lawsuit but full text of his complaint filed by heavyweight lawyers in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Without question Phil is one of the most popular poker players ever. Celebrities often cultivate a friendly public persona (they call an image) toward their fans. Image is important to them because it feeds the flame of their celebrity status and provides them some economic opportunities. I often catch myself thinking what a real human is like behind a shiny facade of carefully managed publicity.
A lawsuit is a rare chance to catch a glimpse of what Phil Ivey wants. A real Phil not a public figure, celebrity, poker icon Phil Ivey. That is because lawsuit involves spending lots of money, personal time commitment, and long wait to play out. After all of the above is done favorable results are not guaranteed. That was a long way of saying lawsuits are not fun. You must have a darn good reason to start one. Additionally, highly paid lawyers carefully put in writing what you really want. So let’s read on.
Ivey’s complaint contains 65 statements of fact. They are roughly split into three categories.
- 5-10 statements are boilerplate legalese and a plea for recovery of attorney costs.
- 2 statements claiming reputation damage, loss of promotional opportunities and lost income worth $150M or more. This one is clever because first claim states $150M is players’ deposits held by FullTiltPoker. Second statement claims loss Phil Ivey suffered in the same amount of $150M. That well placed ambiguity led many media outlets to report that Phil sued on behalf of all FTP players who are stuck for money. - I did not find explicit claims to that effect in the complaint. But I am not a lawyer. What do I know?
- The rest of fact statements, besides a few statements identifying who Phil is, are about non-compete clause in his agreement with FullTilt. The complaint goes on and on about unfair and predatory nature of the non-compete agreement. The bulk of the complaint’s text describes what harm has come to Phil from this onerous non-compete clause and pleads to relieve Phil from that contract.
The non-compete clause does sound pretty harsh. According to Phil’s complaint it prevents Phil from any competitive activity for as long as Company [TiltWare] exists. Wow! Phil should have had a lawyer look it over before signing.
Ok. That was a summary of the complaint itself. What do you make of it? The way the complaint is structured with heavy emphasis on non-complete clause and a passing reference to $150M in damages suggests the following. Phil and his legal team devised $150M damages claim to be a proverbial “stick” to motivate FTP to come to terms. The complaint does not appear as if team Phil is serious about recovering those “reputation” damages. The terms they expect FTP to agree to is to terminate that non-compete clause. That is what Phil truly wants.
All that makes a lot sense - Phil just wants to move on with his poker career and endorse, invest in and promote some other poker ventures. That is what I would want being in his shoes. That is what anyone would want and that is human. The rest is just marketing.
PS: Downfall of FTP is a fascinating story which reads like a good thriller. Stories like that do not appear often in online poker world. I wish to write more about it but I need motivation. Do let me know if that is something you want to read about.
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The good, the bad and the ugly.
Let’s look at two high-profile, recent security accidents in online poker world. These accidents, in my opinion, were unavoidable. They were bound to happen. Then we analyze what went wrong. Perhaps in doing so we can also debunk some myths.
First the facts: On May 6th 2010 pokertableratings.com (PTR) reported that they were able to hack into Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet (together known as Cereus Network). Word network in poker jargon means that both sites use the same software and share players pool. PTR engineers were able to steal login credentials as well as intercept players’ hole cards in real time - the holy grail of playing perfect poker. It turned out that encryption used to secure communications between poker client and server was weak. That is an understatement - it was ridiculously weak.
Less than three months later on July 26th 2010 PTR reported that Cake Poker network, featuring sites like Doyle’s Room, were subject to the same vulnerability only more egregious.
These are cold facts. These lapses are shocking considering how much money is involved. That only shows that online poker is still young, very young industry.
Previous online poker security scandals, such as Absolute Poker scandal in 2007, always involved greedy insiders who would play while looking up information on other players. These latest are different, showing that online poker software is vulnerable to low grade hacking. Not all online poker software, only one from incompetent vendors. Pick them wisely.
If it is custom it must be good. Really?
Cake was more transparent than Cereus in their communication with customers. We learned why they ended up with a lame security that they did. Essentially encryption feature was turned off or rather lost in a rush to release a next software update. Replaced by custom quickie, make-believe security algorithm. Here is quote from Lee Jones, poker cardroom manager for Cake, who handled PR following the accident.
“Finally, as regards the statement on our website that we use a twofish encryption algorithm, that is, unfortunately, not correct. We used to use a twofish algorithm implementation but discovered an error in the implementation and were switching to a new algorithm. The current algorithm was a "placeholder" until the new one was rolled into the program. The incorrect statement on the website is our fault and we apologize.”
The result was a possibility of snooping on someone’s hole cards. Wait a minute. Who would do such a thing? Who would turn encryption off? Technical answer is developers who were working on the software. The real "gate keepers" of any commercial software release are testers of course. In this case it is very likely that QA either did not test at all or were simply uninformed of the change in security mechanism.
Security is hard
Let us return to the sentence above describing what went wrong. The keyword there is custom. The issue is that engineering proper security is hard. Security requires a different mindset and skills different from a general software engineering skills. On top of that, security is not a feature but an architecture. Due to those factors it is next to impossible to outsource security. Do you think that a architect who designed residential homes and office buildings can design a secure building (prison)? Of course she cannot. If she gets a chance to do so, such prison will be breached on day one.
Software engineers are like an architect generalist. They are not trained to do security. If asked to produce secure software they will produce amateurish custom security with holes all over. That is exactly what happened with Cake and Cereus. Custom security is only appropriate when specific skills are available and expense is justifiable.
What did I mean by security isn't a feature? Unlike most features security is not localized within a software package. Security design starts from looking what is valuable information and how software system can be attacked. Usually attacks can come from different angles. Analysis of possible attacks will, in turn, influence or affect design of the whole software.
Such analysis is a special skill most software developers do not have.
Well what do you do if you cannot invest substantial sum into hiring security architect? Go with a standard security implementation. Since you would be making use of something not specially fitted for your own problem its overhead would be higher. That is the cost you pay for your peace of mind. In the world of web using secure http protocol is standard. In native client server software there is not single, dominant security standard. Here I will not go into comparing particular security products and technologies. You can learn more about online poker software from my post.
At the beginning I mentioned debunking myths. A widely held opinion that custom made software is more secure is a myth. This article explains why properly done custom security is a very expensive option. Most projects cannot justify that expense and resolve it by short cutting security. I hope that myth is permanently debunked now.
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In this article we look inside poker software to see what it is made of. We compare different technologies used in building poker software. Finally we peer into the future by looking at trends changing online poker. Before we dive in I must say that I evaluate online poker software differently than most poker informational sites on the Net. Poker room reviews, a mandatory feature of every poker affiliate site, focus on usability and non-software aspects like whether games are soft, loose etc. Instead we look at underlying technologies powering every online poker product in the market today. How is such information useful? You might use it to evaluate different poker packages if, say, you are shopping to buy one or are evaluating which poker network to join.
Few years ago most poker products were Windows or Mac applications for a single player to play against AI simulated (poorly) opponents. Advent of Web made it feasible to develop software to play against human opponents, across network, in real time. Online poker as we know it was born. I will focus exclusively on online multiplayer poker software as representing latest step in poker evolution as a game. Step that continues shaping poker industry today.
Any online poker package has two major parts: a client and a server. Client is what you see on the screen when playing. Server brings multiple players together to setup a hand or a tournament and keeps scores. That is why you often hear online poker sites advertised as multiplayer. That just means you are playing against human opponents. What features a poker software package needs to be considered of commercial quality today?
- Playing various flavors of Texas Holdem Poker. Possibly other less popular poker variations like Omaha, Razz and others.
- Playing full 9 or 10 handed tables as well as short-handed and heads-up tables.
- Tournaments and lifetime leader boards. Most packages these days offer a variety of tournament formats such a single table (Sit-n-Go) and multi table (MTT).
- Lobby. A navigation screen where players find their preferred game.
- Bankroll management. A key feature sometimes called cashier.
- Social features.These include capabilities to chat we other players. To Invite players to play a specific game or table.
- Keeping stats and notes on other players. Many packages have stats summarizing player's own history by numbers. Most are pretty superficial. They do not extend into helping a player to play better. Poker Stats is a hot feature and I expect to see more competition and emergence of a leader in this niche.
Now let us look what technologies used in creating online poker software.
Poker software comes in variety of choices. Some are pretty to look at while others run faster. Yet another offer a bewildering array of features. Inside, all of them are built on one of three base platforms. Those are (1) native client (2) flash based client (3) pure web or browser based client. I spoke of client because that is where poker software is really different. While server side software differs between vendors. The differences are not categorical. A useful way to think about sever is to imagine it as just a database that is aware of poker game rules.
Native client means that software is written for a certain OS such as Windows or Mac OSX. Key practical outcome of software targeted to a specific OS is lack of portability. No portability means that if you have a client for platform A and you want to produce a client for platform B you have to start from scratch. On a plus side such approach allows good control over client performance and makes User Interface choices easy by basically following conventions of target OS. In the world before 2005 this was a reasonable approach. User base was heavily dominated by Windows based PCs so producing a windows client would get you to market. Afterward you could choose to worry about, say, Mac. Although most software vendors chose not to. Fast forward to 2011 - platform choice has become a lot trickier. Mac has got its mojo back and has grown like wild fire. Linux has appeared as viable choice and a plethora of mobile personal devices such as iPad emerged. Windows, while still a major player, is gradually losing market share. One thing is crystal clear. A proposition to develop a native poker client for each platform is simply too expensive. Let’s compare that with Flash.
Flash based client is a hybrid approach sharing traits from the other two. On one side Flash does require a download like a native client. I find it ironic that some poker rooms call Flash client - no download poker. First thing you usually see after clicking on it is a download progress bar. On the other hand Flash runs in a web browser window similar to web client. It is important to understand what Adobe Flash is to appreciate capabilities and limitations of flash poker client. Flash is an application platform running on top of OS. In plain English, Flash is a miniature OS in itself with a single purpose - rendering animated graphics. Flash requires a one time installation. Then web browser learns that Flash is installed and agrees to share screen with Flash content. This is a key point worth repeating: communication between web browser and Flash player is limited to screen sharing. A lot of awkwardness playing poker on Flash client stems from that simple fact. For example if you ever refresh a page in the browser, you lose all state and have to start from lobby. Pressing Back button is usually highly disruptive too.
Flash based poker clients flourished sometime after 2006. Flash popularity was based on its advantages such as ease of distribution, single look and feel, and portability between Windows and Mac. Single look and feel, Flash provides, was desirable for poker industry where look carries much brand information. With regards to portability table below shows Flash support by major platforms today.
OS | Flash Support | Comment |
| Windows | Yes | |
| Mac OSX | Yes | May be discontinued in the future as explained here |
| Apple iOS | No | |
| Android | Yes | |
- True instant, no download access.
- Universal Portability. Indeed it is hard to find a platform without a decent web browser. Web being the most widely used platform ever - the reach is truly universal.
- Integration with social web. Social started as a simple chat feature. Players seated at the same table could exchange short messages with others. Then Zynga extended that to concept of friends and capability to send each other silly “gifts” (little images like a flower or a wine glass). The trend is toward combining games, not just online poker, with whole host of social features provided by platforms such as Facebook, Orkut and others.
- Bankroll management. The biggest drawback of native poker clients, in my opinion, is fact that they do not handle deposits and withdrawals of funds inside the client. Problem is mostly due to real money processing being highly proprietary to each money processor. The whole transaction is lengthy (especially withdrawal) and opaque. Web based poker holds promise of fixing that because all payment processors have web interfaces and APIs. Eventually money handling will be instant, transparent and managed inside poker client itself. Such development would be very significant and could possibly double number of people playing online poker. As a footnote: In case of US that dream is also pending resolution of regulatory issues.
Building real, fully functional web applications is pretty new. Hence tools are rather less mature then in cases of Flash and native development. In fact, immaturity is a biggest negative aspect of web development. Things taken for granted in using other approaches, for example sound, are not standard yet. However that is changing. Top corporations as well as huge community of developers have been investing heavily into web technologies.
Let’s look at where things could be in a few years provided they continue on their current trajectory. Windows will continue to fade away. Being slowly edged out by netbooks, tablets, Chromebook, and other portable devices. Flash will be around for a long time. However it will shrink back into a niche it was intended for. Its overall reach will be reduced because Flash is not friendly to mobile devices where battery power is important. Web applications will become increasingly prevalent and slowly replace majority of existing native poker applications.
In conclusion: we looked under the hood of poker software. Hopefully this information may help you understand poker software on a deeper level. It may also help you to figure out where you would want to play or what to expect from various poker rooms. Perhaps you are evaluating different poker software vendors with a goal of licensing their software. If that is the case, you now know a few questions to ask each vendor.
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