It's been a long time coming but thanks to @shaunmza we now have batch payments!

Automated Payments

In the near future, after we finish building our databases for hand histories and tournament results, we should be able to automate the entire payment process and have daily payouts once again. For now, we at least have weekly batch payments which makes my life much easier and almost guarantees no errors on payout.

When we started the Steem Poker League we were small and only had a game or two here and there, so paying out manually was not a problem. But now that we've grown to over 400 players, manually paying became a grind that I dreaded each week.

My biggest fear was making an error because repeated task bore me and when you're doing 30-50+ payouts to different people each day it becomes an eye blurring, lip drooling task. So I reduced the amount of games and length of time for payouts until we could get batch payments going.

Website Updates

Now that this is out of the way, we can spend our time focusing on making the website even better and more enjoyable for all players. Recently we've fixed some issues with registration, we're working on the Add Chips issue on the homepage (you can reload on the poker server itself until then) and we're building a database for hand histories and tournament results.

What this will allow us to do is offer up realtime stats on Lucksacks.com and pretty much have stats on just about any category we choose. This will allow us to easily hold even more competitions and offer more ways for players to win! The possibilities are endless : Most KO's, Bad Beat Jackpots, all kinds of Leaderboards, Biggest Winners/Losers for time period and on and on.

I hope to also automate the Team Up Leaderboard at some point and make it a recurring theme on Lucksacks.com because I think it is one of the more popular games we offer. In the future, if funds allow, we would like to not only have an end of Season prize pool, but offer up weekly Team awards for the highest point total and highest player point total.

We have other plans that I don't want to get into at this time publicly, but our hope is to make this site even larger by going outside of the cryptocurrency ecosystem and tapping into the fiat audience as well, but most importantly ... doing it legally.

SSL?

We've had SSL on our poker server since the first week in operation, but very soon we will satisfy the request of others and put SSL on the frontend as well since we are now ready to start working on it.

Finances & Operators

Our post rewards are divided up like this ...

• We take a 50/50 STEEM/SBD payout on the posts.
• The SBD goes towards Tourney Payouts.¹
• 50% of STEEM goes to @bigpchef.
• 50% of the STEEM goes to @tuck-fheman.
• I keep my part of the STEEM in the @spl account.

Monthly Costs

• $50 for hosting.
• I cover all development cost for the site out of my pocket.²

Who's in charge here?

• The poker server and website is owned and operated by @tuck-fheman.
• The poker bots used for training are owned and operated by @tuck-fheman.
• Most all posts made for SPL are by @bigpchef, others are by @tuck-fheman.

Who else do I need to know about?

@internetguy

When I originally set up Lucksacks website, our site sucked because all of my time was spent on the backend getting the poker server set up properly. Luckily @internetguy came along and helped me set up a frontpage with some nice features to really get things off the ground.

Later I upgraded the frontend to use session keys to offer more flexibility and security, while he built PokerTool.com and really started creating some great stats and his new Badge Awards for players on Lucksacks as well as many other contests.

@bethalea

Recently I bribed @bethalea with an XBox One to speak well of us publicly. So if you need someone to talk about the Steem Poker League on your show, please speak with Beth. She also handles most of the moderator duties in our chat.

Thanks!

Thanks to everyone that supports the Steem Poker League with their upvotes! To date we've paid out nearly 5,000 SBD/STEEM to players since we started just a few months ago and it would not have been possible without your continued support.

A special thanks to @ats-david for his continued support!
^{...despite not being the inspiration for the SPL.}

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^{1 I do at times hire a Steemian to do an odd job for the SPL and pay them in SBD. But I generally donate more than that back to @spl out of my own pocket. See the blockchain if in doubt. ;)}

^{2 I have paid out minor jobs to SPL members from SBD. All website/poker server development cost is out of my pocket.}