Virtue Poker, a decentralized peer-to-peer online poker platform, has teamed up with poker professionals Dan Colman and Brian Rast to upend the online poker industry in building a blockchain-based poker application built using Ethereum.
ConsenSys began incubating Virtue Poker in May 2015.Virtue Poker aims to address the vulnerabilities that plague the online poker industry, such as mishandling player deposits and tampering with the integrity of games, by using a combination of a P2P card-shuffling protocol called Mental Poker and smart contracts on Ethereum.
“The lack of transparency and accountability in the practices of many online poker companies presents a great opportunity for blockchain technology to showcase its utility in a manner that will satisfy both players and regulators,” says Virtue’s Co-Founder, Ryan Gittleson. Joseph Lubin, Founder of ConsenSys, said “Combining advanced techniques from cryptography with the Ethereum blockchain architecture which assures a shared source of truth for any application built on it, Virtue Poker represents a much needed breakthrough for the online poker industry: the world’s first provably fair poker platform.”
Brian Rast, known online as “tsarrast,” is a 3-time World Series of Poker Bracelet winner, and is joining the team as an advisor to the company. Brian won the $1,5000 Pot-Limit Hold’em event in 2011; and won the $50,000 Player’s Championship twice in 2011 and 2016, with heads-up victories against Phil Hellmuth and Justin Bonomo respectively. He ranks 10th all-time with over $20 million in live earnings over his career. “I’ve become very interested in the cryptocurrency space this year and am excited to work with the Virtue Poker team to bring this new type of poker platform to market.”
Also joining as an advisor is Dan Colman, best known for beating Daniel Negreanu and winning the $1,000,000 buy-in Big One for One Drop at the 2014 World Series of Poker. Dan has made over $28 million in live earnings in his career, sitting 3rd all-time. “Virtue Poker is an innovative solution that I believe can add a lot of value to online poker, I’m excited to be a part of the team.”
Virtue Poker is planning a token launch and will announce further details in the upcoming weeks. Anyone who is interested in Virtue Poker or its token launch can visit the Virtue Poker website and sign-up for updates. The Virtue Poker white paper can found be here.
Interested viewers can check out Brian Rast on PokerGo in the “Poker Masters” beginning next week on September 13th.