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Poker is gambling - winners make money by taking losers' money, that is well understood. In Play 2 Earn my understanding is that it's not gambling, instead mon

Poker is gambling - winners make money by taking losers' money, that is well understood. In Play 2 Earn my understanding is that it's not gambling, instead money "magically" appears from merely playing the game. The only way for this to be sustainable is if the output from playing the game is something that someone else finds valuable and can't be automated (otherwise why not automate it?) like Mechanical Turk or the various captcha-solving services. I don't believe this is the case, so the only other answer is that the buy-ins from newer players are used to reward existing ones - aka a Ponzi. Alternatively, it could be that the system isn't even a Ponzi and is instead bankrolled by the parent company which itself is bankrolled by clueless investors not realizing the above (Play 2 Earn will only work if the entire system produces an output that someone else values enough to pay for and can't get said output elsewhere for cheaper).

tptacek 4y ago
That's not a useful definition of gambling. Lots of things that aren't gambling are zero-sum.
milesvp 4y ago
Poker is actually not that much different than what you describe. My father played a lot of poker in card rooms. He talked a lot about losing strategically to the fish, to keep them coming back. Without the fish, there generally is no poker ecosystem since money generally follows the button, and without particularly weak players money just tends to change hands. And since there is a rake at most tables, you need a constant influx of money just to support the play. There is common wisdom that the rake can kill a local poker ecosystem. There can be a lot if good games for weeks or months, then all the weak players can’t sustain any longer, and all the medium players start losing and lose interest, and there’s no one left to win money from and games get harder to form.
soco 4y ago
How can money appear "magically"? Not even crypto just "appears", and a fiat much less so. Somebody is pumping money into that system - casual gamers, no idea.

tptacek 4y ago

That's not a useful definition of gambling. Lots of things that aren't gambling are zero-sum.

milesvp 4y ago

Poker is actually not that much different than what you describe. My father played a lot of poker in card rooms. He talked a lot about losing strategically to the fish, to keep them coming back. Without the fish, there generally is no poker ecosystem since money generally follows the button, and without particularly weak players money just tends to change hands. And since there is a rake at most tables, you need a constant influx of money just to support the play. There is common wisdom that the rake can kill a local poker ecosystem. There can be a lot if good games for weeks or months, then all the weak players can’t sustain any longer, and all the medium players start losing and lose interest, and there’s no one left to win money from and games get harder to form.

soco 4y ago

How can money appear "magically"? Not even crypto just "appears", and a fiat much less so. Somebody is pumping money into that system - casual gamers, no idea.