What are the odds he wants to open an online casino?
I've actually considered writing my own poker software as well, just for fun. The toughest part IMO is the RNG. The rest of it's pretty basic.
Just make sure it has a great name. Something like Big Juicy Odds does not make me want to play there.
<snip> (for example duplicate poker is giving a free $10 to anyone who gets an account, if you do something like that everyone would at least try it out, and if you can get them hooked, the ones who bust may reload. <snip> .
You will probably need to spend another couple of hundred thousand (maybe even more) to get some good advertising to spread the word about your site.
The free $10 is like play money....
Not really. If you have 10K members and you offer a $10 bonus to your next 2500 members; if your original 10K members take that $25K from the new members (probably donks), you better have the $25K to pay the old members the money they rightfully won from the new players. All monies deposited, no matter the method, needs to be able to be funded.
Just though I'd chime in as I have quite a bit of knowledge about this. Unless you have $10,000,000 (yes, 10 million dollars) sitting around, don't even bother.