My friend Shane Bettenhausen has a gambling problem. I'm not talking about the kind where I need to hand him a pamphlet with a sun setting on the cover and he uses it to wipe away his whiskey-infused tears. I'm talking about the kind where he just doesn't pay out his losses. (Shane: You still owe me about $300, by the way.)

My friends and I used to put small cash bets down on our head-to-head video-game matches: one dollar on Soul Calibur here, 50 cents on Tetris Attack there...that sort of thing. Shane's steel-grip on his wallet notwithstanding, they generally made our multiplayer sessions more fun and exciting.

Ryan DeSanto knows what I'm talking about. He co-founded Playhem.com on the idea of getting small groups of friends together to play against each other for cash and prizes. This approach is much more intimate in scale compared to what giants like Virgin Gaming are doing (read my interview with them here), but that makes it much more accessible and less intimidating, too. What's a few bucks -- or prize-redemption points, if cash bets aren't your thing -- between gaming buddies?

See what DeSanto has in mind for you and your friends in the interview below. It's quite interesting, and you can check it out for yourself with Playhem's open beta, which starts today.

Bitmob: Virgin Gaming's the big boy on the block. How can you compete with them?

Ryan DeSanto: While we're in the same space [as Virgin], there are intrinsic differences between what we do and what we see the rest of the space doing. Virgin has more of a top-down approach, where they have big, splashy tournaments with 256 people and the best person wins. While people get excited about that, we're doing more of a bottom-up approach.

We see value in people competing with people that they know and trust. They're engaging in the same activities that they're already doing -- which is playing games against their friends. We're just an extension of that where they can come on our site and compete against people that they know and trust for awards and prizes.

Bitmob: Right now, Playhem is mainly focused on sports games, but Virgin recently announced an exclusive deal with EA Sports. How do you compete with that?

RD: We're still able to support EA Sports titles because of a function they built inside of their games. In terms of competing -- while we may have some general similarities [with Virgin Gaming], when you look at the specifics, it's very different.

I've been an avid gamer my whole life. I love competition. I love the games. However, I'm not one to travel to a tournament or even play one online to find out who the best in the world is, because I know that I'm not the best in the world. But that doesn't mean that I'm not interested in this style of competition.

What I enjoy doing is playing with my friends, with maybe a couple of dollars on the line in a "let's make it more interesting" way. The focus is still on the fun aspect of the game and the competition, with the reward being something ancillary, on the side, to make it more exciting.

People aren't competing on national scale. They're competing amongst trusted friends. We feel that trust is much more important to our users [than matchmaking via skill rankings].

Bitmob: What's the most amount of money exchanged between players on Playhem?

RD: The largest tournament we've had so far had a $10 entry fee for four people -- so a $40 pot. And with head-to-head matches, about two and five bucks.

We're not trying to create a semipro gaming environment where people come here to make a living. We're just giving people the opportunity to spice up the action amongst friends. They're not [using Playhem] to try to pay the rent. It's similar to fantasy football or skins golf -- those have been our main inspirations around creating this. We have preassembled micro-communities of friends just trying to have a little bit more fun.

Bitmob: Any plans to get into non-sports gaming?

RD: Certainly, yes! We have intentions to get into the first-person-shooter space. We already see the fighting-game crowd engaged in this type of activity; we see our platform as an easier way for them to connect with people they want to play with, to set up their own tournaments.

Bitmob: What other genres are you looking at?

RD: Racing as well. The three main genres we're looking to expand into are racing, fighting games, and first-person shooters.

Beyond that, we have plans for people to compete in single-player games, asynchronously -- for example, getting a high score then challenging [their friends] to top that.

Bitmob: Have you had to deal with any players who have gambling addictions?

RD: Not currently. We don't really see this as a form of poker or anything like that. We don't encourage that at all. Like I said, the highest wager so far is $10. But even more than that, the majority of our players compete for points to redeem in our rewards system.

We start off everybody with 100 points, and when you get to 3,000 points, you can trade those in for a game of your choice. At 10,000 points, you can get an iPod Touch.

But no. We haven't seen any gambling addictions or anything like that.

Bitmob: How do you monetize all this?

RD: Right now, we take nine percent of any money risked, whether that's in a head-to-head match or a tournament. And right now, our points system is entirely free. We don't charge for points, but we've been considering options [like selling points].

Bitmob: So if a player loses all of his points, how does he get more now?

RD: They just ask us for more points, and we give it to them.

Bitmob: Doesn't that devalue the points then, if players can just get more whenever they want?

RD: Oh there is no cash value on those points.

There are multiple ways for people to get points. The primary way is to wager your points against your friends. Also, every five matches they play, they get 200 bonus points. After every single match they complete, they have the option to post the results to Facebook or Twitter, and they can get 25 bonus points for each of those. So even if you're not the best gamer or even if you're the worst amongst your group, still over time, you have the ability to gain enough points to get something meaningful.

Bitmob: How do you verify the winners?

RD: Right now, we hook into a function that EA built into their games, where after every match, their servers send us the results. We use those results to verify the outcomes of head-to-head matches and tournaments. It's literally automatic and takes about five seconds after a game ends.

Bitmob: In the future, when you get into fighting games and shooters, is the plan for the same type of automated functionality?

RD: We've seen a couple other companies in the space try to progress with a manual-verification process, where it's really determined by honesty -- where the loser has to admit that he's lost. What we've seen from that is a lot of frustration on both sides, from the people operating the site to the users. It's just not plausible that everyone will be completely honest.

Bitmob: So you want to automate it, always? Even with non-EA titles?

RD: That will require interfacing with the people who make the games, and we're actively pursuing the relationships that will make that possible.