

Betable: Bringing real gambling to social casino games - wilfra
http://venturebeat.com/2012/07/09/betable-could-disrupt-social-casino-games-by-cleverly-fusing-them-with-legal-real-money-gambling/

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dsrguru
Is it definitely clear that it would be legal for a startup based in the U.S.
and with American founders to use Betable? It wasn't until "Black Friday"
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_(2011)>) that it became clear the
U.S. government viewed NLH poker as a game of chance, and Googling I've done
in the past suggests that certain aspects of the government's intrepretation
of online poker's legality remain vague. So is it a definite that what the
U.S. government viewed as criminal money laundering was not that Americans
were taking income from running online casinos but rather that those three
casinos were allowing Americans to gamble? Or was it that those casinos made
money off of their American customers? I.e. would a gambling site that didn't
take a rake and just ran on ad revenue be allowed to have American customers?
(I assume not, but then I'm unclear what the alleged money laundering charges
were.)

So to make a medium-length post short, I'm an American citizen. Would I
definitely be allowed to use Betable? If so, this is great news for me.

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wilfra
"is it a definite that what the U.S. government viewed as criminal money
laundering was not that Americans were taking income from running online
casinos but rather that those three casinos were allowing Americans to
gamble?"

It is definitely that they were allowing Americans to gamble.

"would a gambling site that didn't take a rake and just ran on ad revenue be
allowed to have American customers?"

This definitely would not be allowed.

You mentioned the money laundering charges a couple of times. Those were
ancillary charges. The primary charge was that they were operating an illegal
online gambling business i.e. letting Americans gamble on the internet.

"I'm an American citizen. Would I definitely be allowed to use Betable?"

It is not illegal for an American company to offer real money online gambling
to citizens of other countries where it is legal and regulated. So Zynga could
get a UK gambling license and offer online gambling to UK citizens. It is a
long, slow, difficult and expensive process - Betable has already done it and
is allowing others to leverage their infrastructure (legal and technical).

~~~
dsrguru
Thanks! Would companies using Betable need to get licenses from the same
countries that Betable already has licenses from (which so far means the UK)
or would Betable's licenses mean that users of Betable would be covered as
well.

Edit: Just discovered the 50/50 revenue share. That's going to turn away a lot
of potential customers.

~~~
cellis
Also don't just jump into this shit unless, you know, you have legal counsel
that specializes in gaming. It's _still_ a huge risk. E.g. U.S. customers
could circumvent and bet on your site. Guess what, you're on the hook for
that!

~~~
davidtyleryork
That's incorrect cellis. Betable is handling all gambling, so any gambling-
related legal risk (such as US customers gambling) is strictly our problem.
This is why we have advanced geolocation, IP and identity checks.

~~~
cellis
Incorrect that U.S. developers of a game implementing Betable could be targets
of legal action? Or incorrect that your software is circumventable?

Here's another question. Is Betable willing / able to provide legal counsel to
U.S. developers who get squeezed by the FBI?

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T_S_
Can anybody explain to me how much value I can give the user in a "gamified"
app before it is considered gambling?

~~~
wilfra
These are the three criteria, all of which must be met to be considered
gambling:

-prize (they have to get paid money or something of value)

-consideration (they have to pay to participate)

-chance (so skill games are exempted i.e. chess)

If any of those is missing, it is not gambling.

Zynga Poker does not have a prize but they have consideration and chance, thus
it is not gambling. There are legal subscription poker sites (i.e.
clubwpt.com) that do not require people to pay, so no consideration - but they
have chance and a prize. Not gambling.

We ran a leaderboard contest last month to get some more alpha testers and
gave $500 to the top 10. It was free to participate (no consideration) and our
game is (we think) a game of skill, not chance. So we were confident it wasn't
gambling and thus was legal.

Consult your attorney before making any business decisions, but thats the gist
of it.

~~~
gregpurtell
I think the idea is that Betable lets you do real gambling, but for games of
chance. Not sure how it works with their platform to make it legal, but that's
what the article claims their service is

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dminor
Only players in places where gambling is legal can participate. So a US
developer could make a game using Betable's API, but it won't be US players
gambling.

~~~
davidtyleryork
That is correct dminor :)

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gamingfiend
Have you guys been evaluated/certified by an independent testing lab?

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rcrowley
We're audited multiple times a year. Our UK Gambling Commission license
compels us to be audited against their codes of practice and additionally we
have the correctness and security of our systems audited independently.

~~~
gamingfiend
Can you put your audit results and/or certifications on your web site?

We would like to use you but having been in the cash gaming business in Europe
and to an extent in the US, we won't touch a vendor unless we know they are
some way to GLI-19 compliant.

~~~
rcrowley
Betable's license number from the UK Gambling Commission
<http://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk> is 000-023328-R-307313-003. We're
audited (by GLI, incidentally) against their codes of practice.

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wilfra
Was surprised not to see this on the front page. This is pretty big news:

"Today, the company has received an undisclosed amount of money from 25
investors including Greylock Discovery Fund, FF Angel LLC, True Ventures, Dave
Morin (ex-Facebook employee and current founder of Path) and Yuri Milner, the
Russian investor who took big stakes in Facebook and Zynga. Those are big-name
supporters who believe that Betable has a shot at raising the average revenue
per user and average customer lifetime value for social games.

Among the other investors are CrunchFund (Michael Arrington’s fund), Marc
Abramowitz (first investor in Palantir), Scott Belsky (founder of Behance),
Auren Hoffman (founder of Rapleaf), Sean Knapp (founder of Ooyala), Howard
Lindzon (founder of Stocktwits), Matt Ocko (angel investor in Zynga), Joshua
Schacter (founder of delicious), and Arjun Sethi (former CEO of Lolapps)."

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joshu
misspelled my name again. damnit.

~~~
davidtyleryork
D'oh! We're sorry :(

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haberdasher
If there are any Android game devs that are interested in being alpha
integraters for a similar (but better?) gaming layer, please email:
contact@atstakegames.com

