U.S. Site Duplicate Poker Discontinues Operation

Despite a 28 percent rise in revenue across September and a database of 250,000 players, Duplicate Poker, an online poker site legally serving American residents in all but 12 states, has discontinued its operation on ambiguous troubles with its bank.

"We have no idea," Daniel Flamberg, the company's chief marketing officer, told IGamingNews by telephone Friday when asked why the company's credit was pulled. "We're assuming it's part of an overall anxiety with credit."

Duplicate Poker launched in 2007, offering players a skill-based variant of poker. The game, developed by the company's chief executive and former international bridge champion, Pinhas Romak, pits players sitting in corresponding seats at different tables against one another.

Here's how it works:

If a game of Duplicate Poker has 20 players, 10 could be seated at table 1, 10 at table 2 -- the player in seat 1, table 1, would oppose the player in seat 1, table 2.

In a game of Texas Hold'em, then, the deck at both tables would be shuffled identically so that the player in seat 1, table 1, would be dealt the same hand as the player in seat 1, table 2.

The player at seat 1, table 1, would defeat his opponent at table 2 if, say, he played a series of 10 hands more successfully by winning more -- and losing fewer -- chips.

Mr. Flamberg said that as the crisis in the American financial services industry grew, so too did Duplicate Poker's traffic -- rendering the credit pull all the more untimely.

"We had an amazing September, and as the economic situation worsened -- at least in our case -- people were playing more poker, because at least in a poker game, they have some control," he said. "They could use their skill to some advantage whereas, in the stock market, you're just a cork bobbing in the ocean."

Since Duplicate Poker closed on Oct. 5, Mr. Flamberg said he has been raising venture capital and is mulling a strategy to relaunch the business.

"My hunch is, if there's a savvy player out there who has ready cash, they could buy up the assets and refloat it quickly and easily," he said.

"I'm imagining there may be an investor or an existing poker company that would say, wow, we could get this on a firesale. The alternative might be one of the offshore companies saying, look, we could own this -- we could have a legal foothold in the U.S., build this up and, if and when the laws change . . . " he added.

The company's software was proprietary, he said, and the business model was simple: A 6 percent rake on games, dependent on volume. Because the company's offering was skill-based, it could accept United States deposits by credit card -- American Express, Visa and MasterCard -- and offered check-by-mail withdrawal services.

An industry insider who spoke on condition of anonymity called Duplicate Poker's software "adequate" but said the operation was hurt at times by usability issues and the possibility of collusion.

With regard to usability, the rate of play could be problematic, the insider said. As every table had to be synchronized -- or risk the game's propriety -- Duplicate Poker plays as fast as its slowest player. And because the rate of play was slower than a standard online game of poker, long-term player retention was difficult to secure.

Concerning the possibility of collusion, the insider said, it is possible for a group of players that coordinate to unfairly increase the odds of winning the game. If two players collude in a game of Texas Hold 'em, for instance -- one at seat 1, table 1, one at seat 3, table 2 -- the player at table 1 could call his partner and disclose his hole cards. His partner at seat 3, table 2, therefore, would know how to play against the player at seat 1, table 2.

The insider said that while the organization of the tables could be randomly shuffled, the possibility of collusion could be made less likely but, ultimately, not entirely preventable. The result was lower-stakes games.

When asked about the quality of the company's software, Mr. Flamberg said that over the course of 18 months Duplicate Poker's game ran publicly, there was a continuous process of feedback and improvement.

"There were dramatic improvements, time over time," he said. "That said, there were certainly a healthy number of people who like the game, there were probably an equal number of people who didn't really think it was for them.

"If you're looking at it from an investment perspective, you don't have to be a PartyPoker or FullTilt to have a very profitable sustainable business," he continued. "I think we were on trajectory to go there. All the indicators -- all the data points -- were pointing north. But the bank account was pointing south."