The platform is supported by World Poker Tour champion and professional poker celebrity Phil Ivey.
On Friday, Virtue Gaming, a decentralized online poker platform built on the blockchain Ethereum (ETH), launched the first play-to-win digital poker casino in the United States.
In the US, only six states (Nevada, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Michigan) have legalized and regulated online poker. The country has been slow to act on the issue due to concerns that international poker platforms will steal revenue from domestic and land-based gambling. Furthermore, even in these states, poker platforms must obtain licenses from each individual jurisdiction to operate.
As a result, US residents are often unable to access popular online poker platforms such as PokerStars or 888 Poker available to players around the world. To address this issue, Virtue Gaming proposed a game-to-win configuration where the platform provides users with 500 Virtual Player Points, or VPPs, worth approximately $147.37 USD.
Players will receive them free of charge upon registration. Players who meet the minimum play time requirements in cash games and tournaments can withdraw their VPP to USDT. US players can compete with players from the rest of the world who transfer VPP, ETH or other encryption to Virtue Gaming’s locked sidechain smart contracts to play the game. To avoid cheating, the platform implements encrypted peer-to-peer scrambling for all decks.
Virtue Poker Casino User Interface | Source: Virtue Poker
According to the law, “the points or credits that the game or contest sponsor provides to participants free of charge and which can only be used or exchanged for participation in games or contests offered by the sponsor” are outside the legal scope of a bet or bet and could theoretically give the game model some regulatory space to gain. To date, there are currently over 25,000 non-US players on the platform.
