The Steem Poker League at Lucksacks.com has been around since June of 2017.
Support
Yes we've been around since June of 2017 as a not-for-profit Steem game and it was a good run for awhile, but support for the SPL from the Steem Community has dwindled to a point that we can no longer support SBD Freerolls, much less pay for hosting and development of new features.
To date we've paid out over 14,000 SBD/STEEM!
So What Now?
I don't know.
I've spent nearly a year working on this site at 10-16 hours per day and I hate to just let it die. There are a few ideas I've come up with, but when I ran them by the hosts none were particularly interested in transitioning to a new way of doing things. So my hands are somewhat tied due to this.
Right now, the easiest option on me personally is to simply shut things down and move on to greener pastures elsewhere. The Steem ecosystem has been rampant with scammers and abusers since I arrived in 2016 and despite many fine people trying to make it better, it's only gotten worse.
The fact that you have to pay a bot to even make the trending page shows that there is very little to no interaction from humans on the Steemit website. We have over 6,000 Followers, over 960 players and yet the SPL receives only 75 upvotes on an average post. How's that for engagement?
Leadership
When I look at the leadership at Steemit, or lack of it is more accurate, I cringe. This platform was one of the greatest ideas ever ... hell I even claim to have helped inspire it with a BitShares forum rant years ago ... that's how good I think it is! =)
But, when there is no solid leadership at the top any longer and no coherent direction for the future outside creating an even greater haven for scammers with SMT's, all while users pleas for simple website updates go ignored for years ... I think it's time to reassess things.
Reassessing Things
So, that's what I'm doing. This is me reassessing things. Want to help? Chime in below with suggestions! =)
I'm up for whatever it takes to keep things going. If that means learning how to run payouts and host my own mini-league, then I can definitely learn. I think a lot of the hosts are just hesitant because it sounds like a lot of work and time and many of us already spend too much time on Steemit and the SPL :-)
I know this is a smart and supportive community, and if people want it to continue (which I absolutely do...this is my favorite aspect of the blockchain, I love SPL!) we all need to rally around this cause, come up with the ideas needed to keep it going, and execute.
Can we setup an SPL live discord chat to discuss what is needed, and where we can go from here? I know there was some sort of chat a month or so ago but I wasn't able to hop on.
Thanks for all of your hard work making this an awesome place that gives us a home on Steemit and a cool place to play freeroll poker. I am forever grateful.
And as for the leadership of Steemit itself, I am concerned about that as well, and not sure what to make of all of that. I don't think we should all ignore it which some major whales have seemingly been doing.
Whales are the leadership of Steem(it) by definition. they can elect the witnesses and they can decide how the blockchain proceeds. That's the beauty of the platform. But they seem to be too happy continuing to reward rape with vote bots and whatever other garbage they're doing... It's less effort than actually curating quality content.
Good point. It is really hard for top-level content creators who don't have large YouTube followings already to make it at all here on Steemit.
Just depends on the amount of effort you're willing to put into building the following that you want to have.
very well said.
Yes I can set that up.
However, I prefer to type it out so that I can easily recall ideas. I get lost in all the voice chat and they rarely seem to stay on topic very long in our chat. ;)
Yeah, sure, that sounds good
what SPL stands for?
damn. I just noticed that author of this topic is @SPL :)
Steem Poker League :-)
thx for your reply. I appreciate
Could you not set up the freeroll tourneys where it would require an upvote on steemit to play? Post the tourneys ahead of time and make upvoting a requirement to play? Those would be the ones set up by you only, unless other hosts make it a requirement also. Couldn't you also setup a special one-time tourney where you announce it on steemit in a post, invite all who want to play to come to lucksacks? You could give each person who upvotes a generic onetime lucksacks name to let them get involved and play. Names could be something like donkey1, donkey2, etc. If they get in the money, then manually send to steemit account. Just a few thoughts.
Requiring upvotes to play = possible legal issues for the site owner.
And honestly, even if we required all players who play to upvote, there are not a lot of players in our league who have an upvote worth more than a few cents.
So the issue is, we need to attract players who have larger Steem accounts. =)
But people with larger Steem accounts don't need a few SBD from a freeroll poker site. #catch22
So, if we could just get a few to upvote daily, we'd be OK most likely. But I'd rather they also play.
Regarding some of your other thoughts...
Those things can be easily done with the solution I proposed a few times to the hosts over the last month. You guys would be the ones choosing who could play in your tourney's with your own custom inter-league type system, if you wanted, or just use the current player pool.
I've already created the tool so you all can add your own tourneys, get emailed the results and got a second batch payment tool made to give you all a few options. It's all fairly simple to use once you learn how to do it the first time.
All that would need to be done would be to add in the player selection mod and it's ready to fly and that likely wouldn't take long at all to get knocked out.
Going this route also opens up possibilities for the site to expand into other cryptocurrencies as well as a front end play chip site for fiat that could possibly support itself.
This sounds amazing! Would it change the freeroll aspect or that's up to the "hosts", who I'm assuming are the "donators" for the freerolls?
The only thing that changes in the above scenario is who is doing the payout for the freeroll. The SPL would no longer host a freeroll, and we're basically at that point now anyway due to lack of post rewards.
Might as well make the most of it! :)
lol for some reason I thought I was responding to @rawdawg
You should put together a marketing plan and raise money with an SMT! There might be some willing participants who invest in this manner. Easier said than done I know! I wish you the best and thanks for the post!
If it weren't illegal that would be a great idea! ;)
I hope that the SPL doesn't die. I know that there are many of us (not thousands, but many), who appreciate the SPL and enjoy playing each other. The poker league is a great community. Let us know if there's anything we can do
Yes, agreed, it is an amazing community, and we need to work to help it survive.
The whole point of decentralization is you don't need leaders, the problem is not the lack of leaders. The problem is that the system is flawed, which to be fair is hardly surprising seeing as this is one of the first attempts at a decentralized social platform.
The fact that you pay upvote bots and they give you back money is just ridiculous. Voting for yourself should not count either. The votes of real people are diluted.
Steemit (which I mention above) is NOT decentralized.
I can agree with you on Steem.
Hi, this is a great community and I have been participating from Day 1.
I would hate to see this dwindle away, Yes I was one of those players that didn’t upvote SPL posts, now I religiously do.
This is actually the least and easiest thing I can do to give back to the community.
I haven’t played in the ring games, is this raked? If not, this is an option.
Another option, potentially is betting on other steemit users on who will win a particular tournament. For instance, a user can bet on me to win the Sunday 50 SPL storm, and if he/she wins they receive 50% of the rewards from that betting post etc
I can't wait to join the poker leagues here once I get my main laptop fixed.
You have been upvoted by @rentmoney thanks to @jmehta who nominated your post in our Followers Appreciation Promotion !
You want too much personal information. It's not worth giving this up when I can just go to a casino or a poker site which I can sue for a breach on information. Maybe it's for legal reasons and it's understandable, but I'm out. Good luck with your quest.
I agree...
Sounds to me like u need a real money poker site to keep things afloat because freerolls are just going to cost u money. I bet there are tons of legal issues with that but I'm sure someone will do it at some point, if they can address the legal concerns.