Fair Poker Closes – March 31 SHUTDOWN Imminent

The history of online poker sites contains inspiring stories of rooms that started from virtually nothing and went on to achieve massive success and popularity. This is not one of those stories. Rather, we bring you the latest word on a site that started from virtually nothing…and remained there. We heard whisperings on Thursday, March 10, 2022 that crypto-based internet poker room Fair Poker is shutting down for good. We investigated and discovered that these rumors are true.

News Breaks on Telegram

The first hint that something was amiss came shortly after midnight Thursday when a concerned user posted an email that he had received from Fair Poker:

Dear Fair Poker user,

We regret to inform you that Fair Poker will be closing down. The shut down date is March 31st, 2022.

We noticed that you have a withdrawable balance on your account. This is an email to remind you to withdraw that balance.

If you do not withdraw your funds by the shut down date then that balance will be considered forfeited.

If you have any questions, please reach us on telegram: https://t.me/fairpoker

Best Regards,

The Fair Poker Team

Surprised by this missive, the user took to Fair Poker's Telegram channel, inquiring “Is this real?” A participant named “Daniel” and identified as “owner” in the Telegram group replied, “Yes.” He then elaborated:

Announcement Regarding Fair Poker Closure

He went on to say that the site's software was for sale along with other components of the operation: website, player database, et cetera. “Price open for negotiations,” according to Daniel.

We wonder how the software can be sold given that Fair Poker is listed as an open source project on github. Perhaps newer versions of the software are proprietary and thus able to be sold to another party.

Fair Poker Key Info

Fair Poker wasn't just a cookie-cutter internet cardroom content to do things the same way everyone else did. No, this entity aimed to bring significant technical prowess to bear in order to implement a means of ensuring that the dealing was fair even if a player didn't trust the company itself or the other players.

Fair Poker deployed its provably fair shuffling techniques, which employed advanced cryptography by having each user participate in shuffling the cards. By distributing the shuffling workload in this way, with multiple stages of encryption generated using private keys known only to each user, there's no centralized authority or server that can rig the deck. It also means that it's impossible for anyone to know what anyone else's hole cards are while in the middle of a hand.

Fair Poker Website Image

Fair Poker used the popular crypto-currency Bitcoin for all cashier functions as well as gameplay. When it launched in May 2019, it welcomed users from around the world with no country or state restrictions although later on, new customers had to check a box indicating that they were not from the United States or United Kingdom. No identification or personal documents were required to play or withdraw funds.

Fair Poker initially debuted offering just No Limit Hold'em cash games but later expanded to include Pot Limit Omaha and tournaments.

Fair Poker For Sale

Our staff reached out to Daniel, the owner, and we learned that he is attempting to sell the whole kit and kaboodle.

The entire Fair Poker suite is for sale and that includes the website fair.poker, the domain, the player list, the software, the backend, you name it

Some of you might ask why one would want to buy this considering that it is "open-source". We thought the same thing and asked Danile, he replied:

The open source part is the game only and the provably fair algorithm. - Fair Poker Owner, Daniel

So there you have it, everything is up fro grabs. If you would like to get in touch with Daniel, simply contact Professional Rakeback via email, skype, or contact form and we will pass along this information. This could be a good buy for any of you who happen to own "Poker Clubs" and are tired of paying egregious fees to your software providers!

When asked about the price we were told that "Everything is negotiable."

Good luck potential buyers, contact us and we will put you in direct contact with the owner of Fair.Poker.

What Went Wrong?

With crypto support, cross-platform compatible browser software, and its unique security features, it appeared that Fair Poker had a promising lifetime ahead of it. However, it was never able to acquire a sufficient amount of traffic for organic, self-sustaining growth. Not only did it lack the player volume to serious challenge the leaders in the online poker realm, it couldn't even really compete effectively in the smaller niche of crypto-only cardrooms.

Creating enough liquidity to run a poker website is difficult. It is a catch-22 type problem. One needs solid advertising and to do that, one needs affiliates to help. While Fair Poker did offer a very high commission to ProfessionalRakeback.com in years past, we declined to offer this website because there were no active players and sending traffic and players to an empty website does not work (we've tried that before, never again). 

Also conspicuously missing from Fair Poker was a prop team. A prop team is a group of players who are typically paid an hourly rate to sit at empty tables and seed games and/or receive 100% or more rakeback, again, to start games from scratch. We suggested this to Fair Poker but they were not interested. Another lost opportunity.

While the reasons for Fair Poker's failure are undoubtedly multi-faceted, we surmise that a large reason for its lack of success was that it simply tried to solve a problem that didn't exist.

There have been a wide array of scandals and shenanigans involving online poker, including providers that have stolen money from customers, rings of bots infesting cash game tables, multi-accounting in tournaments, and DDoS attacks interfering with proper gameplay. However, only a couple of cases have ever emerged of insiders using knowledge of hole cards to cheat. And in only a single instance was a faulty random number generator responsible for game security issues.

All of the instances where Fair Poker's technology could have made a difference occurred more than a decade ago. In general, modern online poker rooms don't suffer from the kinds of problems that Fair Poker attempted to solve, making its efforts ultimately irrelevant to prospective players.

Thus, Fair Poker committed its scarce resources in a way that failed to yield much fruit. It would have perhaps done better to focus on marketing or social media, which might have helped it grow a larger player base.

Moving Forward

All current users at Fair Poker are strongly urged to withdraw their funds before the March 31 deadline. After that, they will most likely want to find a new poker home for themselves.

Fortunately, there are quite a few alternative offshore poker sites to choose from. You can read up on them in this guide to online poker for USA players.