Researcher Robin Linus Unveils Two-Player Bitcoin Poker Protocol Using Existing Network Rules

Stanford researcher Robin Linus has unveiled Bitcoin Poker, an off-chain cryptographic protocol enabling two-player limit Texas Hold'em without requiring network upgrades or soft forks. The protocol revives an unfinished 2008 experiment by Satoshi Nakamoto, using Taproot, adaptor signatures, zero-knowledge proofs, and presigned transaction paths. Games operate off-chain and only settle on-chain for dispute resolution and timeouts. Instead of a full deck, nine cards are generated per hand, yielding collision-free deals 48.025% of the time. The reference architecture comprises 56,132 logical nodes and roughly 8.4 MB of setup data, preparing in 26.39 to 27.26 seconds in desktop browser trials.