title: When to use Paxos (real practical use cases)?
body: <p>Could someone give me a list of real use cases of Paxos. That is real problems that require consensus as part of a bigger problem.</p>
  
  <p>Is the following a use case of Paxos?</p>
  
  <p>Suppose there are two clients playing poker against each other on a poker server. The poker server is replicated. My understanding of Paxos is that it could be used to maintain consistency of the inmemory data structures that represent the current hand of poker. That is, ensure that all replicas have the exact same inmemory state of the hand.</p>
  
  <p>But why is Paxos necessary? Suppose a new card needs to be dealt. Each replica running the same code will generate the same card if everything went correct. Why can't the clients just request the latest state from all the replicated servers and choose the card that appears the most. So if one server had an error the client will still get the correct state from just choosing the majority.</p>