The Virtue Poker team has been hard at work since the completion of our token sale in May, working hard towards bringing the Virtue Poker platform to market. We’ve listened to your feedback and understand that we need to communicate project updates to our community more regularly.
We are taking a number of steps in this direction, starting with The VP Monthly. This update contains input from each team within Virtue Poker so our community can understand the progress being made in each domain. We will continue to listen to your feedback as we release these updates monthly, roughly on the 15th of each month.
Development
The Virtue Poker development team worked over the past few months on optimizing the current Alpha.
New features include:
- New support for Short Deck Hold ’em: an exciting poker variant played with a smaller number of cards in the deck (36), which leads to plenty of action.
- Enhanced gameplay preferences: including an option to sit out, and an option to chose to auto-muck a losing hand
- Hand Result Display: A display on the table felt of the end result of each hand
- Removal of “Muck/Reveal”: In prior releases, it was possible to to muck a winning hand by clicking “muck” on showdown. It was a difficult issue, and was a result of the way Virtue Poker’s peer to peer card shuffling system deals with private key sharing. The development team solved this problem and now the winning hand is always exposed.
- View Folded Cards: A player’s folded cards are now always available to view during a hand by drifting the mouse over the player pod.
The Virtue Poker Team will be releasing our Alpha +1 later this month to our token buyers.
Marketing
After we completed our token sale, our marketing team’s focus immediately moved towards executing our World Series of Poker marketing plan. We launched two main campaigns:
- The WSOP Main Event Promotion, whereby Virtue Poker bought every VP token buyer who contributed 150 ETH or more into the 2018 WSOP Main Event, plus 5 lottery entries. The Virtue Poker team hosted these players in Las Vegas during their WSOP play.
- The Piece of Ivey Sweepstakes, in which we bought 30% of Phil Ivey’s action in 10 WSOP tournaments (and a bonus 5% in the $1 million Big One for One Drop) and gave his winnings to 10 sweepstakes winners. Each winner won $3,414.
These campaigns significantly boosted the Virtue Poker brand, and led to over 15,000 people signing up to learn more about Virtue Poker over the campaign period. In addition, our Team Virtue players, Phil Ivey, Dan Colman and Brian Rast, wore Virtue Poker gear throughout.
We achieved some significant national TV exposure as a result of extensive coverage of Phil Ivey during the ESPN Big One for One Drop broadcast.
We also saw substantial branding effects from Brian Rast’s bracelet win, which was broadcast on PokerGo and Twitch.
Our next promotional announcement will be around our Alpha +1 release, so stay tuned.
Hiring
The Virtue Poker team added three new team members since the completion of our token sale, bringing our total team size to 16.
On the development team, we moved one of our part-time developers, Jose Toroma, to full-time. Jose previously worked at Playtech, the world’s largest B2B provider of online gambling software, and has been working on improving the efficiency of our game engine as well as adding new game formats to the platform.
Dan Morris joined the team as our new Head of Customer Acquisition. Dan previously worked at Machine Zone (Game of War, Mobile Strike), and employed advanced data-driven customer acquisition and retention techniques to help catapult Machine Zone to industry leadership in mobile gaming.
Regulatory/Business Development
We hired international accounting and consultancy firm Baker Tilly to help us accomplish two initial goals: (1) incorporate Virtue Poker in Malta and (2) assist in the preparation of materials necessary to submit an application for a gaming license.
Since the completion of our token sale, we have successfully progressed on both of these initiatives. We plan on completing the incorporation process in August, and submitting the initial materials needed for an application for a gaming license by early-to-mid-fall.
If you have any additional questions or comments, feel free to email support@virtue.poker and we will respond in a timely fashion to your inquires.
And thank you for your continued support and being a key part of Virtue Poker’s future vision for online poker!