In legal limbo, Second Life poker rakes in profits
By Eric Reuters
SECOND LIFE, April 3 (Reuters) - Cinomed Tweak checked her cards and eyed her opponent. The flop fell, and she pulled a straight. “All in,” she typed confidently. But as the pixilated cards came down on the virtual felt at the Myth Casino, her opponent scored a flush on the river.
The stroke of bad luck cost her L$5000, or about US$18.60. Sometimes that’s how it goes playing Second Life poker.
“I actually have learned 90 percent or so of my poker skills from Second Life,” said Tweak, who declined to reveal her real name. “I usually play about an hour a night, sometimes all night Friday and Saturday.”
The Texas Hold’em poker craze has come to Second Life. Over L$3,000,000 a month in rakes are collected throughout Second Life, according to industry watchers, and the growth is outstripping that of Second Life itself.
Casinos typically collect 10 percent of the buy-in for tournament-style play, or between 2 and 4 percent of the pot for cash games. The big blind can vary from anywhere between L$4 to L$600 or more per table.
Mith Patel, known in Second Life as “Mithik Vavoom,” owns the Myth Casino, one the three largest poker houses. Combined, the Big Three take in about 75 percent of the Second Life poker business, said Xess Dix, editor of slpokerplayer.com and consultant to the casinos.
Patel opened his casino in Second Life over a year ago, making him one of the first virtual poker entrepreneurs. “When I first started Myth, the situation in Second Life in regards to poker was grave,” Patel said.
The problem was players didn’t trust the honesty or fairness of Second Life poker. Patel built confidence by hiring dealers and pit bosses to keep his casino staffed on a 24/7 basis. Now Patel said he’s seen pots in excess of L$250,000. “Once a reputation of fair practices was set, it really didn’t pose an issue,” Patel said.
The release of the Virtual Gaming Accessories (VGA) 2.0 table and HUD system, road-tested for bugs at the Myth Casino, was instrumental to the growth of poker in Second Life. The VGA tables are widely considered the most stable and professional means of playing poker in-world, and all of the Big Three poker rooms use them.
Ironically, Easy Wheeling, co-creator of the L$26,350 VGA poker tables, isn’t a fan of the industry his inventions helped create.
“My intention was that people could have a personal table to have friends and family over to play a game,” Wheeling said. Wheeling said he and his partner have earned US$44,000 selling the tables since their release last November, of which US$20,000 was made in the last 30 days. Casinos account for less than one-fifth of his sales.
Wheeling is worried that the explosive growth of the Second Life casinos will attract unwanted attention from law enforcement. “Now we have all these wannabe casino-style operators with their grandiose ideas who might ruin it for the rest of us,” he said. He rattled off reasons why he thought his VGA poker tables were unsuited for professional gambling: Lag, the instability of the Second Life environment, the possibility of collusion between players and a handful of known, minor bugs. “If there was a way to shut down the casinos in Second Life, without taking away the ability of people to run home games, I wouldn’t be against it,” he said.
Players say Second Life’s immersive environment creates a unique poker experience. “You get reads on players,” said slpokerplayer.com’s Dix. “You can do tells off people in Second Life. People fidget in their chair.”
“Playing poker in SL, you have pit bosses and dealers saying ‘Hi, do you need anything?’” Dix said. “You don’t get that anywhere else. Outside Second Life, if there’s a table glitch, you have to email support. Here you IM the casino owner.”
Uncertainty about poker’s legality looms over the industry, but so far the casino business is booming. T0xic Scissor, owner of the Four Deuces Casino, another Big Three operation, reported the same growth rate Myth Casino’s Patel did — 30 percent per month. Monthly profits at his Four Deuces are L$400,000 and rising, and Scissor is working with a new coder to develop game variations like Omaha, High/Low, and multi-table tournaments.
The Four Deuces only opened to the public on October 23 of last year. “The sims right now can only comfortably hold 40 users,” Scissor said, citing lag. “I believe a lot more two sim operations are in order.”
Back at the Myth Casino, Tweak plans to keep playing Metaverse poker as long as it’s allowed. Compared to other sites, poker in Second Life is more social, she said, and it attracts a higher caliber of player. “Places like PartyPoker tend to be flooded by people who think ‘all-in’ is the only raise worth making.”
(Click here to read more about the possible legal dangers of Second Life gambling)
