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.
We are building 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.
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.
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.
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