Playing poker for Bitcoin on Blockchain.poker — Blockchain Technology at its best
By: John A. Paz
Tags: Bitcoin Cash, Poker, Bitcoin, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency

Playing poker for Bitcoin on Blockchain.poker — Blockchain Technology at its best

It’s the dodgiest good time you can have on the internet, legally (apparently), and a great example of the practical application of Blockchain Technology. John A. Paz Sep 8·7 min read

Pandemic Causes Rise in Online Poker

Once upon a time, a pandemic hit, and us sports fanatics were left reeling with only our thoughts to commiserate with. The discomfort of silence when there should be joyous sounds of crowds roaring and athletes competing on weekend afternoons was a reckoning for me.

The listlessness of bored sports fans fueled a boom in online poker. Popular sites like PokerStars.net and World Series of Poker all saw huge increases in membership and daily usage. But those sites for many people in the U.S. are restricted to only allowing players to use pretend money, although this isn’t difficult to get around.

Blockchain.poker

I don’t even remember how I first came about the site, it very well could have been a random Google search for “cryptocurrency + online poker,” because that’s what life was like during the early days of the pandemic.

But Blockchain.poker quickly replaced the awkward MoneyApp shuffling circus required to play real poker using other popular online apps. Another alternative was to go back to Zynga poker, but nobody wants that (“all in!”). Here’s a review of what’s to like, and not like, about the site.

The Good

Blockchain.poker is a purely poker site with a simplistic no-frills interface that works with a few cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin. If you like poker, and you like real stakes, it’s hard to beat for a quick game on your phone or organizing games across timezones and locations.

In the early days of Blockchain.poker, it was glorious

There were tournaments with real stakes daily, and the weekends were filled with rapid-fire games with strangers where many Satoshi changed hands over banter in the name of Texas Hold’em.

I’m an average poker player, at best, but during the New Age of Blockchain.poker popularity there were many fish, and everyone ate. I actually did unusually well my first week, and turned $50 into $250 in a few days, playing low stakes cash games and small/medium-sized tournaments. All the betting and prizes were done in cryptocurrency, which I had to acquire first on my own. I managed to use those winnings to go and lose money at other games, so all is balanced in the world of my mediocre poker playing.

The lowest stakes possible

Considering I was playing very low stakes, the equivalent to $0.25/0.50 blinds (no limit), big pots were not unusual — $15-$50 pots at the lower stakes! And there are several tiers of stakes much lower. Ultra-low stakes, the likes of which no casino can offer. You can sit down with $0.50 worth of crypto and play for hours, not evening doing well.

That first week I converted that $50 buy-in into Bitcoin Cash (BCH), which is cheaper and faster than it’s big brother Bitcoin (BTC), the OG, the one you’ve probably already heard of This post isn’t a shill for BCH, as I only use it to occasionally play poker with, but it’s important to point out the benefits of using BCH to play poker: Very cheap and fast transactions, and a modest valuation more akin to fiat currency.

The lobby of Blockchain.poker

In fact, the stake can get so low it’s actually free to play. The site will give you 100 Satoshi — a 1/1,00,000,000 of a Bitcoin, that’s about $0.06 — to start with. You don’t need to create an account either, and it’s all anonymous. No personal identifying information is required to play either. You can add a password and attach the account to an email address later if you like.

There’s a lot to like

I’m not going to sit here and pretend I have high standards, but the site keeps me coming back because it’s reliable, and has enough perks and features to keep me interested. I keep my expectations modest, and try not to play too long or too often. The more you play the more chances you have to lose. Now, on to the not-so-great stuff.

The Bad

Is Blockchain.poker too good to be true? Well, sorta…

Legal gray area

The cost of all the anonymity is legality. They ask no questions so they assume no responsibility of legality of the players or their local laws. There’s no real idea of how long it will remain able to exploit the legal loopholes it uses to avoid all the same trouble its mainstream competitors have to go through.

It’s so basic it hurts

The site seems like it was designed by an early AI designer who was told what websites looked like in the 1990s. It’s also extremely light on slick transitions, and can feel janky at the best of times. I wouldn’t be surprised to see many people scared off trying to use Blockchain.poker simply because its design is so poor and outdated. Add to that the occasional design bug and you’ve got a recipe for distrust.

Anyone familiar with the any modern poker app will also be very disappointed, as the basic-ness of this site will likely get on your nerves.

The cryptocurrency learning curve can be steep

This was not my first venture into the world of crypto. Though I was not fortunate enough to have caught the initial wave of Bitcoin in the early days, I did dabble in Dogecoin (DOGE) a bit in its infancy. The appeal for me was that I could actually mine my own DOGE, and because it cost next to nothing I was less worried about getting ripped off or accidentally losing it. I didn’t hold on to any of that DOGE, unfortunately, but what I kept was a bit of familiarity with how cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology works. I already trusted the systems and understood the basics of how wallets work, how to obtain currency (partially true, I just Googled it), and the basics of converting money into crypto back and forth. Even with my familiarity doing this it still took me a bit to figure it out while not getting hosed on fees or exchange rates. This part of Blockchain.poker is not sexy and turns a lot of people (i.e. my friends) off about playing there. It can feel like a lot of work.

Anonymity always comes with a price: in this case its safety

It’s not a surprise that you’ll usually find a troll or two lurking in these poker rooms. There is a chat function that’s included and enabled by default for all accounts, and it is not moderated, monitored, or regulated automatically in any way. That means anyone can say anything they want, to whomever they want. People from marginalized groups don’t need me to explain why that’s problematic, and it would not be fair to not also mention this dark side of Blockchain.poker.

Poker will always have the potential to bring the the worst out of someone, especially if someone is losing. It’s called going Tilt.

Image credit: How To Recognize The Tilt

Tilt is a poker term for a state of mental or emotional confusion or frustration in which a player adopts a less than optimal strategy, usually resulting in the player becoming over-aggressive.

When someone is losing they tend to compound the problem by acting irrationally to try and rattle their opponent. It’s not uncommon, but in this entirely-anonymous poker site some folks will use nasty insults to try and get under your skin. It’s not so frequent as to be pervasive, but not unusual enough to be surprising. The site has a handy mute function for those who refuse to let racists, misogynists, and bigots ruin an otherwise fun time with strangers on the internet.

Lessons Learned

What Blockchain.poker showed me was the potential for blockchain technology. I’ve honestly been thinking about it from a purely financial perspective for a long time, transactions for goods and services.

Blockchain technology can be for any kind of interaction that needs to be verified. Checking things in and out. Changing something. Things that cannot afford to be done wrong could all benefit from implementing blockchain technology.

The implications for other kinds of interactions using blockchain was unlocked for me in playing online poker. I’ve wrote this blog post in my mind several months ago, but now I felt ready to publish it to share my experience. I also created a Medium publication in hopes to share more of my bumbling through the world of blockchain and crypto.

Blockchain.poker is a fun time, and it’s not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. But if you’re into online poker, or you just want to play around with some free crypto, you should give it a shot.