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Online Home Poker (2 Viewers)

DoubleEagle said:
I got the same email. However, we have a game running every night. I have no idea how it is running so high.
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Likewise, I only have the PM software sitting on the instance, I'm only sitting at about 16GB (most which is the OS), not sure how they're getting so close to 30GB on the report.
 
I've been using Poker Mavens for a few years now, but only recently has it really taken off. I have a Gold license and host my poker server at Interserver.net It's a 2 slice Windows 2016 server (2 x vcpu, 4 GB of RAM, 60 GB SSD) for $20/month. This more than handles the load. During a 21 person tournament with a ring game going also, the cpu never went above 2-3%and the pokermavens process never used more than 90MB of RAM. That is extremely lightweight.

It's a private, invitation only server. We do two weekly tournaments and run ring games almost nightly. My player base is 40 people that are either in our weekly game or friends of people in the game. We all live in or around Brantford/Cambridge/Kitchener area of Ontario, Canada. I created a quick website on GoDaddy. (brantfordpoker.ca)

Cloud hosting is not necessary, but I did not want my Rogers home internet to crap out during a tourney. Also it my ESX server at home went down, there goes my poker server as I used to host it on a Windows 2008 virtual machine out of my basement.

We use jitsi meet for voice-video chat. Everyone is loving it and the response has been bigger than I expected.

We do interac transfer and also use a designated banker system. No rake, no other money at all. If 20 people enter a $20 freezout, then the total prize pool is $400

I get lots of positive feedback about the experience.
 
Welcome!

naked_eskimo said:
My player base is 40 people
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I'm surprised you went Gold for only 40 people. Since you've been doing this for quite some time, I'd like to know if you have any tips here for people regarding:
  1. Banker secrets (or how to manage the bank more smoothly)
  2. Have you ever accidentally ended a game
  3. How do you handle chops
 
I've had a license for Poker Mavens for a few years now, but it never really took until social distancing. In fact, I hadn't even spun up the server for a couple of years until 6 weeks ago. I was hosting it out of my home using an off lease enterprise Dell R710 (12 cores, 132GB of RAM, 2 TB SSD) server running ESX. The performance was fantastic. Poker Mavens uses next to no resources. Low cpu, low memory, and very low bandwidth. But as friends started to invite friends and the user base grew and I suddenly found myself running two weekly tournaments and pretty much nightly ring games, I got nervous. I didn't want to be sitting with egg on my face and a bunch of disappointed players if my server died or my Internet blipped out briefly. So I decided to buy a cheap cloud server. And I now have my virtual machine at home as a backup or easy migration away from cloud hosting.

Banker secrets? Don't have any at the moment. We do pretty much the same as some others here. I made one of my trusted players a remote admin. He is often the banker as well. People use Interac transfers to send buyins and then he (or me) update the player balance. Next morning, the user account balances are what needs to be paid out by the banker. No balance carrying at all. That would become a nightmare. Even though I make no money off hosting this, if I added a payment portal, I'm pretty sure that would be asking for trouble. Even with no rake.

I have never accidentally ended a game. Had a couple of tournaments that were less than ideal until I got a better feel for what I wanted for starting stacks and blinds structure.

We don't have chops. We only do freezouts. Usually the top 3 get paid. Will adjust that based on players. Next time more than 20 play, I'll change it to top 4 get paid. No one has ever suggested a chop. If they did it would be easy enough to do, I guess. The banker would just need to be told how much to send to each player.

I bought the Gold license at the time because I think there was some limitation that bothered me. I don't really remember now. But I am glad that I do have the gold license as I do use an ssl cert for my site. Also, Gold license now includes fractional chips. They used to only be offered in the Pro license. That was a huge pain because our weekly game is .50/$1

I wish the software had a tournament clock. Kent is pretty open to suggestions--and this one makes just about every wish list--so we will probably see one at some point. I was running some tournament software on my pc and then sharing that application in my Jitsi window rather than my webcam, so that those who wanted a large, real time clock with blinds schedule, could just click on my tile in Jitsi. It worked fine, but scheduled breaks kind of knock things out of sync. The tournament software knows to break every X levels based on how I configure the tournament in PM. But in the actual gameplay, a break will not start precisely at the end of 4 rounds as some hands may need to finish first. So it was a bit of juggling that I can't be bothered to do anymore. Especially, since with the most recent patch Kent added popup statistics to the pot Total box if you just hover your mouse over it.

If anyone is aware of any tournament software (or even just tournament clock) with a built-in web server, I would love to know about it. I looked all over. I even purchased blinds valet as I misunderstood a comment on another forum that called it web software. I took that to mean that I could serve a website that displayed the running tournament details. That was not the case with blinds valet.
 
I guess this is sort of a banker tip, but if you are using Interac e-transfers, it is much smoother to register for auto-deposit. Having to verify the password associated with multiple transfers can become a pain in the butt. One caveat that I learned: if you register for auto-deposit, you will no longer be able to e-transfer to yourself.

Sounds odd that anyone would want to, but I do. I etransfer from my main bank account to my gmail address and then from there it is easy to select the financial institution where our mortgage is. So, I had to unregister for auto-deposit. If you don't need to send Interac e-transfers to yourself (more specifically the email address you registered for Interac transfers with), then I strongly recommend registering for auto-deposit if you plan on being the banker for something like this.
 
naked_eskimo said:
I guess this is sort of a banker tip, but if you are using Interac e-transfers, it is much smoother to register for auto-deposit. Having to verify the password associated with multiple transfers can become a pain in the butt. One caveat that I learned: if you register for auto-deposit, you will no longer be able to e-transfer to yourself.

Sounds odd that anyone would want to, but I do. I etransfer from my main bank account to my gmail address and then from there it is easy to select the financial institution where our mortgage is. So, I had to unregister for auto-deposit. If you don't need to send Interac e-transfers to yourself (more specifically the email address you registered for Interac transfers with), then I strongly recommend registering for auto-deposit if you plan on being the banker for something like this.
Click to expand...
Agreed+++

Now if I could just get all the players to do the same. I’m tired of having to send the security answer three times because they can’t seem to read the first two emails
 
Players never read email. It's so annoying. I created a website so that I didn't have to constantly explain how to connect, and play,etc. I still get the same questions all the time. How do I show my cards? How do I see the next blind level, etc, etc, etc.

Comes with the territory I guess.
 
naked_eskimo said:
I guess this is sort of a banker tip, but if you are using Interac e-transfers, it is much smoother to register for auto-deposit. Having to verify the password associated with multiple transfers can become a pain in the butt. One caveat that I learned: if you register for auto-deposit, you will no longer be able to e-transfer to yourself.

Sounds odd that anyone would want to, but I do. I etransfer from my main bank account to my gmail address and then from there it is easy to select the financial institution where our mortgage is. So, I had to unregister for auto-deposit. If you don't need to send Interac e-transfers to yourself (more specifically the email address you registered for Interac transfers with), then I strongly recommend registering for auto-deposit if you plan on being the banker for something like this.
Click to expand...

Just setup a new email address or if using gmail and '+bankname' to your email address and register that on the secondary accounts interac autodeposit
eg email+bankname@gmail.com email will go to email@gmail.com.
 
Since we are on the topic of Poker Mavens (would a dedicated thread be more appropriate, rather than comments spread over a couple of different threads), this might be the place to discuss any tips, etc as well as answering general how to questions.

For example, I have some custom art (themes) that someone shared a few years ago on the Poker Mavens forum. Most of them are pretty meh (beach theme, valentines day, support the troops, etc), but a couple are pretty snappy. There was even a theme based on that "other chip site" that used to exist. I also have a custom two color deck graphic with Kem gold arrow backs if anyone is interested.

Right now, my ring games are featuring this table graphic:

bluffing-logo-table.png


Kem 2 color deck:

kem arrow gold.png


I haven't dabbled in custom chip graphics. Partly because the chips are so tiny that I am not sure it would be worth the effort.

Custom avatars can be done (I created my own), but the software has no real utility to help with this. You need to edit a pic down to 48x48 pixels (I believe that is the current size for ver 6.x), and then upload it to an user account and then that user will see that one custom avatar in their account options.

I've had these custom graphics sitting around for a long time. I'm not sure how file sharing is done here, but I could zip it all up into a very tiny file if anyone is interested.
 
I am trying to setup a Poker Maven trial, and am having an awful time. I joined this site as I was searching the internet for answer for setting up a Poker Maven server, and it seems this is the most active place to get answers. Even moresore than the PM support forum. AWS seems to be the way to go, But for whatever reason, I cannot connect to the pokermaven server from the internet. I think I have opened the 8087-8088 ports in the AWS firewall while I was inside a remote desktop intance and on the EC2 dashboard, but I am very obviously doing something wrong.

The only thing I see that is different from a few of the photo posted here is that I have 2 security groups listed in the AWS control panel. I have one called launch-wizard-1, which allows inbound port 3389. and I have a different security group called "default" where I added ports 8087-8088 to inbound rules. I wonder if this is causing my issues.

It seems that having multiple security groups is what was causing my issue. I dont think both security groups were attached to my instance. Now I have the ports forwarded on the proper security group and it has fixed my problem.
 
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deltahedge said:
I am trying to setup a Poker Maven trial, and am having an awful time. I joined this site as I was searching the internet for answer for setting up a Poker Maven server, and it seems this is the most active place to get answers. Even moresore than the PM support forum. AWS seems to be the way to go, But for whatever reason, I cannot connect to the pokermaven server from the internet. I think I have opened the 8087-8088 ports in the AWS firewall while I was inside a remote desktop intance and on the EC2 dashboard, but I am very obviously doing something wrong.

The only thing I see that is different from a few of the photo posted here is that I have 2 security groups listed in the AWS control panel. I have one called launch-wizard-1, which allows inbound port 3389. and I have a different security group called "default" where I added ports 8087-8088 to inbound rules. I wonder if this is causing my issues.

It seems that having multiple security groups is what was causing my issue. I dont think both security groups were attached to my instance. Now I have the ports forwarded on the proper security group and it has fixed my problem.
Click to expand...
Yes it is. Add them to the group. The one that had RDP in it.

@deltahedge take a look back through this thread for my posts. I have examples of setting up the firewall, doing the elastic IP, etc:

https://www.pokerchipforum.com/threads/online-home-poker.54141/post-1052724
 
Are most of you guys having players connect to your server through an IP address, or through the Briggs soft server lists? or through a website? I would love to direct players to a website that I own but I'm not sure how to accomplish this.
 
deltahedge said:
Are most of you guys having players connect to your server through an IP address, or through the Briggs soft server lists? or through a website? I would love to direct players to a website that I own but I'm not sure how to accomplish this.
Click to expand...

I own my own domain (for example bearmetal.com), so I have them connect directly to poker.bearmetal.com. Easy to remember.
 
For all the people hosting or using Poker Mavens, has the issue of 'trust' come up and discussed by your players? Any concerns with 'super user' account or other security related issues that your players may have brought up (I believe it's the first search result when looking up Poker Mavens). This is a common issue when dealing with online poker, especially hosted software that technically can be compromised.
 
kk405 said:
For all the people hosting or using Poker Mavens, has the issue of 'trust' come up and discussed by your players? Any concerns with 'super user' account or other security related issues that your players may have brought up (I believe it's the first search result when looking up Poker Mavens). This is a common issue when dealing with online poker, especially hosted software that technically can be compromised.
Click to expand...

I think there are two groups that run PM on here. Those who run big games with lots of members, and those who are just trying to stay sane during quarantine with smaller sites of family/friends/friends-of-friends. In the 2nd scenario, the site is only as honest as the operator. No software is perfect. But if you trust the operator, then I don't think it's a problem.

I have a pool of around 20 people. Some are friends-of-friends, but they trust me b/c their friends trust me. I keep our site updated to the latest versions at all times so that if there is a bug, it gets patched. In other words, there's no question about it since nobody questions my integrity.

For the larger sites that go beyond friends, it's an interesting decision to make to play on them. Obviously, if you see a site stuck at an older version, that's cause for concern (especially if that site is on a version that's suspected of having an exploit). But again, if the operators are long time members here, I think that goes a long way towards trust.

Again - at the end of the day, a site is only as trustworthy as the operator.
 
I have my own domain and web page. I have a huge PLAY NOW button on the website ( brantfordpoker.ca ) You can purchase a domain name pretty cheaply and then either use dynamic dns if hosting on your home internet, or if your cloud hosting has a static ip, then create an A record for that static ip.


I have a player base of 40 accounts. It's invitation only, friends or friends of friends. No trust issues.
 
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kk405 said:
For all the people hosting or using Poker Mavens, has the issue of 'trust' come up and discussed by your players? Any concerns with 'super user' account or other security related issues that your players may have brought up (I believe it's the first search result when looking up Poker Mavens). This is a common issue when dealing with online poker, especially hosted software that technically can be compromised.
Click to expand...

I discussed this a few times with my players up front, during a fun money only game we had first to get people comfortable with the format and promote the idea that using mavens with video chat was about as close as we'd get to a real game. I fall into the second category that @BearMetal notes above, I'm limiting my mavens player pool to only folks I've played with live with and a couple of their friends. I've been playing with these guys for years, so I have no trust issues with any of them, and I'd say the feeling is mutual. I'm also hosting a few private family games for friends, and I've noted the same to them - only invite folks you trust.

The easiest way to cheat online is to play with a few guys together; having a group chat/text/phone call to team up and share info on hands live. We typically have most guys playing on the live video chat, so imho this limits the temptation to cheat in this manner. Sure its not fool proof but it helps.

I went with the privately hosted mavens server over a bigger online platform like pokerstars or pokerrrrr because I thought it would be more secure & in my control, and upgraded to the pro version tied to a domain that's got a SSL cert to further secure the site. Maybe a super tech could still hack that, but for the handful of $20 buy-in games I'm running, they'd be wasting their time.
 
Irish said:
Maybe a super tech could still hack that, but for the handful of $20 buy-in games I'm running, they'd be wasting their time.
Click to expand...

I guess this all goes back to my other comment about a site is only as secure as the person who administers it. I'm a software engineer with a background in reverse engineering protocols. I'm sure that if I wanted to, there would be a way that I could find some kind of exploit after a while. But again it boils down to trust. Because my players trust me there's no concerns about it.

When you consider that all of these other sites out of your control have all sorts of bots and player detection algorithms to keep people in the game just long enough to have them lose money, then I really don't think PM stands out as insecure.
 
The executable for the software has sha1 and sha256 digital encryption. You can verify this signature any time yourself by right clicking the exe and selecting digital signature, then click on either sha1or sha256 and select details. There you can see the date of the signature and if the signature is still ok (i.e. the file has not been altered since the signature). Altering the exe is the only way to expose otherwise unavailable information and is the only way to hack the cards, according to the developer.

I don't know what may be revealed in the tcp packets seen by the server, but I doubt if it is plain text hand information. I haven't bothered to confirm that as I am the only one with console access to the server to even be able to run Wireshark or tcpdump. As I have no interest in cheating anyone, I have not bothered to look at a packet capture. Also, my site is ssl encrypted, so even if anything useful was in the packets seen by a client, they would be encrypted anyway.

I also have no trust issues. My server is invitation only and our user base is all friends that I play our weekly home game with or their friends that have become interested in joining us online due to the stay at home orders.

Collusion is possible, as noted already, but there really is nothing that can be done about that, and since it's a fairly close circle of people, I'm not really concerned about that at the moment.

Given the number of times this week my top pair top kicker has been run down by some crappy two pair on the river, I doubt anyone suspects me of cheating :)


dig-sig.JPG
 
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Packet capture also becomes more problematic when secured via TLS. Since the Pro version added this support, I would think that many of the Pro servers are running this. The downside here is that none of my players who even know to ask to see this screen. They have no idea how software works. To them, it's just a magic little square on their computers.

But the point is that this is all more trustworthy than some random poker site that needs to make money off of the players.
 
As mentioned, the Pro version now offers TLS encryption. It will cost on average about $20/year to maintain a certificate.

If you are running the Pro version with a certificate, be sure to apply the patches that Kent sends out. There was an issue with the Pro version where ssl encryption would be set to No on a server restart. Then the server would not turn on because the config was pointing to ssl certificates, but ssl was turned off. So, be wary of that and patch or at least read the patch notes and apply the patch if there is a fix that you need. The ssl toggling to off on a restart has been fixed as of two patches ago in ver 6.16
 
It used to be when I first purchased my Pro license several years ago that I could hardly ever get anyone to play. It seemed that if we didn't meet in person, then no one wanted to play. I had not even turned on the software for a few years. Now, there are games running nightly and two weekly tournaments with pretty decent turnout. So far 21 is the peak number for a tourney, but we never dip below 14. I often wake up and look at the logs and see that people were playing a ring game until 4 or 5am. I work from home, but I still need to get up in the morning, so I can't play everyday until the wee hours, but plenty of others can it seems.

I am hopeful that some of this may stick around after the lockdown. I imagine that the constant ring games will happen far less frequently, but I would like to see the tournaments stick around in some form. Perhaps weekly only, perhaps even monthly only. No one has the space to hold an in person 20 something person tournament, plus not all 40 of us live a convenient distance for an in person game. I would be happy to keep the server up indefinitely if we can keep this group together as an online tournament group. It only costs me $20/month to host the server (or I could just go back to hosting it on my own server in my house even).
 
naked_eskimo said:
I am hopeful that some of this may stick around after the lockdown.
Click to expand...

Nope! Not me! Poker is all about the camaraderie for me. Seeing my friends, drinking something good, etc.

naked_eskimo said:
No one has the space to hold an in person 20 something person tournament, plus not all 40 of us live a convenient distance for an in person game.
Click to expand...

OK, that I get. I think that if people wanted to really do a larger tournament, then the software still has value. As for the player distance thing, 90% of my players are local to me. So, I do feel bad about that other 10% that would then get excluded when things return to normal.

My hope is that when lockdown ends and the world is safer, we'll shift to "mostly" home games again, but the occasional Poker Mavens tournament for those far away.
 
Oh, I am very much looking forward to getting back to live home games. But a large portion of the new players that I have met through hosting my online Poker Mavens server, are never going to play in person, I don't think. It started as an option for our weekly home game. The user base for that is about 8 - 10 regulars. Some weeks 6 people play, some weeks 8, kind of thing. But some of the friends of friends that have been playing our tournaments seem to be great guys, but I doubt they would drive 2 hours or more in some cases, to play our home game, nor would we have the space for that many new players in the host's basement.

Keeping in touch with some of these guys via a monthly online tournament would be something I would enjoy.
 

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