VersusPoker Web Platform
Overview
About VersusPoker
VersusPoker is an online, browser-based poker platform that allows users to host and join games with friends. It focuses on creating an easy, optimized experience for friends to play together from anywhere.
Services
Saritasa was always quick to come up with ideas and suggestions we didn’t think of in the beginning, and their ideas made it to the final product. Moreover, everyone we worked with was fantastic, and they definitely cared about the project. Overall, it was an excellent experience.
Jack WassermanCo-Founder of Versus Poker
Their Challenge
Flashback to the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Everyone is on lockdown. The only options for socializing are video calls with friends. People are forced to get creative with how they maintain friendships.
Avid poker players, Paul and Jack Wasserman, a father/son duo, scoured the internet for an online solution to replace their regular in-person games. The problem? Despite the numerous online poker platforms, none were built with socialization in mind. Top platforms allowed users to compete against strangers, but could not replicate the experience of a home game with friends. Often these platforms lacked flexibility, locking players into specific time limits or rules. After months of research, they decided if the perfect platform didn’t exist, they’d build one.
“What are our dream features? What do we love?” Paul asked. They knew the game, understood what other platforms lacked, but needed a way to translate those dreams into reality.
Our Solution
Building an online poker platform is no small feat. Poker is a notoriously complex game when played in person. Creating a home-game experience online is tall order, and not one to be undertaken lightly. Given our passion for complex, innovative projects, it’s no surprise that Saritasa was up to the challenge. After multiple years of development and intense product planning, we can confidently say that VersusPoker is the best online poker platform available on the market.
VersusPoker is the first, and only, online poker platform built with the social experience at the forefront. Built by poker fans, for friends, family, and online communities, VersusPoker transforms the way users play online.
Our Approach
What Saritasa Did
Complex Business Logic
If you think a real-life game of Poker is complex, wait until you try to build an online poker platform. Not only did our team need to account for the hundreds of thousands of different game outcomes, but we also had to factor in the “online” component. From determining what happens if a player disconnects to if the host crashes, there’s plenty that can go wrong in a live online game that needed to be accounted for. Our team of expert developers built the backend and game engine in Python, while the frontend was built in Angular.
Custom Video Live Streaming
VersusPoker stands out from the competition because of the emphasis on the social experience of the game. Users aren’t playing against faceless strangers, they play on live video calls with friends and family. This led to some complex logistics. It is not a group call like Zoom or Google Meets, but rather separate cameras all live streaming to the same web browser in real-time. Our team used Jitsi, an open-source video conferencing platform, as a base for the video experience. The result is a fluid, yet extremely custom service. The arrangement of videos changes depending on the number of players (up to 9) and based on the game itself. For example, if two or more players go “All-In”, the interface shifts to a “Heads Up Showdown”, pitting the competing players against each other to replicate the experience of a real poker tournament.
Data Tracking & Statistics
Every action, every play, and every game in VersusPoker is tracked and stored, creating a deep well of data to pull from. Users can see their statistics on basic things like; win/loss percentages, the amount of money they’ve won/lost, etc. But VersusPoker goes even deeper. Users can see how many times they raised, how many times they put money in the pot when they didn’t need to, how many times they got “screwed on the river” (aka the last card in the flip), and so much more. During games, players are also able to compare their stats directly against the other players. A user can see how many times they won or lost against a specific person, or how much money they’ve won/lost to them. The platform was designed to provide richer data the longer you play on the platform.
Live Browser Game
VersusPoker is available to play on web browsers, no downloads necessary. The goal was to make the game as accessible and easy to play as possible, so anyone can jump on and play a game with friends. To make a live game work on a browser, the system tracks, and records every action. Traditional APIs wait for a signal to send or receive data, but in a situation like a live poker game that would cause latency. Instead, our team used a type of API called a “web socket” which constantly sends data, allowing the game to be played live with little to no latency.
