thanks.

One of the reasons players might not want to deposit though is because the owners of SwCPoker want to remain anonymous which is stated on their website. New players who visit the site and see this are probably going to think who is in charge?, is this site a scam? etc etc and not deposit.


Is there a bit more info to this site regarding this ^^?

They made a bunch of promises for new features coming at the beginning of the year, then cut features and abandoned their Bitcointalk thread instead.

There were other reasons before that, but that one pretty much put the nail in the coffin.

Yeah, I can understand new players that might feel that way. I guess you just have to check out their reputation and history and base your level of trust on that.

As I said above, I do trust them... but either way with bitcoin you don't need to leave a large balance on the site so you can protect yourself.

Especially after what happened with the old site I think it's totally understandable why the operators want to remain anonymous. They take privacy and security of player funds as the #1 priority so it makes sense.

Had the operators of the old site not been protected they might not have been able to give everyone their bitcoin when they closed.

I agree, I do wish that they were more active on the forums and social media.

But I can confirm that they do plan to advertise when they release the new software. Unfortunately that's taken longer than anyone had thought.

Speaking of the rake differences above... I made a Google sheet to calculate rake taken in a given pot on 3 bitcoin sites. I don't like speaking negative about other sites, but the difference is important to point out.

Here's the rake for a standard 50 chip pot at a 50nl table:



https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...w_A/edit#gid=0

A lot of players left because they 86'd the promised "lifetime freerolls" for obtaining the required krill (player points). While crappy, it didn't bother me personally because I never played them anyways.

A lot of players left because they had an over-rake bug and were aware of it for quite some time. They asked players "in the know" to keep quiet about it. They issued refunds but did not send out players HH's so we could independently audit the issue. They said refunds were final and that's all there was to it. This certainly rubbed me the wrong way.

Anonymous owners - LOL! Ticking time bomb? I have it on good authority that Micron or whatever his name is, is still the majority owner. But shady is shady.

Withdrawals - At it's peak, it was 20 chips or the equivalent in USD of $200 to withdrawal. Kill the micros then you kill the small stakes and so on...

Site Staff - Yes, I am referring to Glitch. I have gone through periods where I think he's okay and periods where he is the worst. All in all, he is unprofessional and basically serves no purpose on the site except to impose his opinion on players and chat ban those he has a personal dislike for.

Rake race - When they abandoned the rake race is what killed my reason to play. As a rec who is a losing player, I was able to play a variety of games which had more of a gamble to them and decrease the professional players edge (I would of won the first week they stopped and I missed out on a .350 bitcoin reward when I was expecting it). I could put in volume and play pretty big stakes because I could afford it, but not be left with nothing at the end of the week. Making top 5 in the rake race along with rakeback would give me 50-60% of my losses back most weeks and made it not so expensive to have this hobby. Winning weeks would be better with the rake race and overall it was affordable.

With all the reasons above stated, even with incredibly low rake, it's glaringly obvious the mistakes that put to sleep a site that was already struggling. No new players were being brought in through advertising and there are no referral bonuses for new players because of the way there system is set-up to be anonymous.

Sorry this is so long. Sorry to see SWC die. Those who know who this is know that I am a fish, but I didn't mind that part...

It is downright weird that the site w the lowest rake around, most variety of games, and cashouts that only take hours, doesn't actively promote their site.

This is what action I can tell from the lobby and playing:

4-6 Nosebleed limit/draw players play what must be scheduled matches every week.

The HS big bet HU players don't get much action - but when they do, it's really good.

12 game mix and draw games get action most days at mid/high stakes, but rarely at full tables. The same games get action every day at micro/low stakes w more ring action.

Pineapple OFC gets micro/low/mid stakes action every day.

Big O/Big O8 gets micro/low/mid stakes action most days.

PLO/NL ring games run every day, but only at micro/low stakes.

It is disappointing that they have only followed up on 1 (lowest rake) of their 3 promises for early '18. Social media presence and fun promos for the smaller players would've helped their traffic a lot. I don't even care about the new client, if it ever comes.

But because cashouts are super fast, they spread the fun games, and there is little to no risk of botting/collusion imo - it's the only public online site I trust w my money.

Some players have left and new players have joined. Some players I never thought I'd see again have made cameos. I wish everyone would come back bc low overall traffic is their biggest issue.

I made an account there a few years ago but have never played...every time I log in to check the games there is nothing running that interests me. Very strange that there is nobody playing there. You would have thought that Bitcoin poker would be the future after Black Friday. It might simply be that many people don't have bitcoin and don't want to be bothered figuring out how to get it and deposit it.

I still play although only have time to play at night. It helps to be just as comfortable heads up as you are 3-6 handed. If not, you will be on the sidelines waiting for a game to fill. Great site to work on omaha variants as they are actually more popular than NL.

The following games are most popular and get consistent 6-handed action with waitlists:

0.01/0.02 & 0.02/0.04 PL Big O/8
0.01/0.02 & 0.02/0.04 PL Courchevel H/L
0.01/0.02 & 0.02/0.04 PL Big O

After the cost of getting btc on these games are small stakes at about $20 and $40 buy-ins (btc @9kish now). Higher games run but don't expect 5 or 6 handed. Also, 4-card Omaha never runs unless 2-3 handed. 4-card omaha kinda sucks once you're good at 5-card. And every weak player would rather play 5-card.

If you seed all 6 of those games you will get action in less than 10 mins.

Also, those games are rarely raked as 0.01 only comes out every 0.4 making most small pots rake free. I've gone dozens of hands hu without a rake just cause most hu Omaha hands end b4 showdown.

There are new accounts I see every month so somehow people are finding seals. Also when you see the site is dead that should get you excited as when you sit you know the fish will play YOU rather than on a bumhunt site with 8 headsup players waiting for action. I get annoyed when I'm not first as I gotta play the reg rather than fish for a fish.

Yeah I agree that you have to be willing to start tables to get action.

And also that the BTC-only nature of the site might keep some away. Many sites take BTC or other crypto, but they also take fiat.

Still, it's nice to play against people that are more like BTC enthusiasts that found this poker site, than against serious poker players who play on every site they can. More than once I've had to explain the rules to my opponent when I see them showdown flushes and straights in lowball draw games.

Agree with everyone about social media. I know that they're busy working on the site, so maybe they need to bring someone else in to run their social media accounts.

About the people running the site being anonymous... I don't see any other option right now if you're running a bitcoin poker room open to players everywhere in the world. Being public means that you're not only the target of governments that want to shut down/arrest you, but also of hackers and people who will physically kidnap you and demand ransom in bitcoin. The team being publicly unknown is what keeps the site and my balance there safe. If you can't accept that and put some level of trust in them based on their record then that's OK, these sites just aren't for you.

Yeah, I think that's where the majority of the players are... on the sidelines waiting for a game to fill so they can join.

When I have time I try to join games that I see running HU just to build the table. I haven't had the time recently, but will try to get back to it as much as I can.

About the higher stakes games, seems like there's been an increase in action there recently. A couple weeks ago there was a 60/120 2-7 TD (~$600/$1200 at the time) game running that was fun to watch:



Last week there was a 25/50 NLHE (~$225/$450 NL) game that ran HU (with someone on the waiting list). Didn't get a screenshot of that one unfortunately, but it was really cool to watch those stakes again.

And multiple days over the last week I've seen 2/4 NLHE running HU with a handful of different players.

They offer stakes up to 100/200 NL and 60/120 in the mixed games. It's the perfect site for those games - play from anywhere in the world, no personal info, simple and free deposit/withdrawal, etc.

So if the site can keep getting that action and become known as the place for nosebleed games that might help bring in attention and smaller stakes players.

At what stakes does the rake become irrelevant?

I would help start a nightly low stakes 10 game or 12 game. Anything higher and the game integrity starts to crumble imo. I've forgotten the SN but I swear I was playing against a super user or Phil Ivey himself when the rake races were going on a while ago.

I remember other people were posting the same and it went unresolved. Somebody came in threatening to expose seals if they weren't paid and the dude stopped posting. It doesn't matter anymore.

The rake is irrelevant at all stakes.

That's why we dont understand how bovada/chico/wpn players refuse to do the math.

Don't talk about starting 10/12; just do it.

You will have more luck individually seeding each of those games tho.

Yeah there were low stakes 12g ring games going last night and this afternoon and some midstakes 12g last night. There was $85/170 USD limit holdem earlier today for a while. 2 guys are playing 60/120 (500/1k USD) triple draw hu right now.

The rake is so low and insignificant at this point. The guys playing 60/120 are paying about $0.50/hand pre rb. If another player joins they pay like $0.80-$1.00/hand pre rb.

We've had a small 12 game mix running 4-5 handed the last two nights. If you sit the fun games, people will show up eventually.

players shouldn't have to sit for hours at stakes as low as 100nl or lower waiting for action.. The action should just always be there at stakes that low. Mix game player pool is small so I understand that part.

I also understand that promotions and advertising costs money, and that the very low rake prevents them from advertising and running promotions without running out of pocket. Pure speculation but i doubt SwC has recouped the cost of the "new" software and promotions due to the low traffic. At this point the software is just sitting empty besides the sporadic games.

But nothing is stopping them from reaching out to reputable crypto/bitcoin books that don't offer poker. I would be shocked if books weren't interested if SwC offered a 60-70% cut of all rake generated by their customers.

Most poker sites simply don't survive very long without a sports book attached and or major advertisement spending.

Yeah I wish there was constant action. That would be ideal.

You have to leave the states if u want that.

I have access to pokerstarNJ and it's basically a high rake site with same amt of action as seals. Shouldn't have to wait for hours for action but if I'm gonna i at least want low rake.

Your idea for a sportsbook is brilliant tho.

but its tough considering seals is breaking even most months.

It wouldn't cost seals a dime. Giving big kickbacks to sportsbooks that bring in players is the cheapest and most efficient way to move forward imo. Even getting one book on board would quadruple traffic.

The layout is backwards as well. Headsup tables should be hidden by default in options, and the holdem tab should be last, not first.

I agree that their (admirable in many ways) stance of "BTC and poker only - no banking - No dox - we stand for poker and privacy" is hurting traffic for the standard PLO/NL midstakes+ games that are available 24/7 on some sites.

It hasn't really hurt them as much in the mix games (other than the BTC only part) bc those games are obv only spread by SwC.

If they added a casino/sportsbook and even allowed other crypto, in addition to BTC, it could do nothing but help traffic. It is refreshing to see a site forego profit for staying true to their utopian version of online poker, if that's what they are intentionally doing. But times have changed since they launched this client in 2015 when BTC was the only major crypto around.

They have P2P and offering other cryptos would be a major step forward.

As much as it might help their bottom line, I don't see them giving in on their 'poker-only' philosophy and offering the casino or sportsbook, though.

Hmmm,,,

My instinct is that it would cost $$ to run a sports book or contract one.

I think it they eliminated holdem altogether would be an interesting, brave move. And no heads up tables is another good move.

I don't think the holdem tab location has any effect.


Let's change the tab tho. Will that increased traffic. ?

Agree. And it's especially gross for the people playing on other bitcoin sites that are paying $20 rake in a $500 pot. On at least one of them they don't show the rake amount taken on the table so most probably aren't even aware.

That seems like the most obvious group to be brought over first. I don't want to go there or to their threads to talk bad about the sites and try to poach players though... that doesn't look good. So I guess I'll just keep trying to get the word out among players and hope the knowledge spreads. If anyone knows someone that plays on one of those sites share the rake calculator posted above with them and watch them throw up.

They do plan to spend money on advertising when they finish the software. I don't know when that'll be and I'm not trying to defend how long it's taken. But I do know that they want to advertise and run promos.

I understand not wanting to pay money to advertise yet, but I do think they could do more on social media for free. Even if it's just targeted to reminding current players to join a game.

Seems like the best way to bring in more players for now might be just having people become affiliates and recruiting people they know to join. There's one guy that has signed up at least a couple dozen new players recently.

Agree. Over the years they've taken the stance that they don't want to be related in any way to "gambling" besides poker. Not sure if that's for legal reasons or just their preference, but they seemed strong on that point.

You have a good attitude and genuinely want the site to succeed. Your post is quite misinformed.

Either A) SwC books the sports itself and prints money or B) you come to an agreement w an existing sportsbook and the agreement makes money for both parties. Either way, adding a sportsbook makes any poker site more money.

Eliminating NLHE and/or FLHE is a bad idea. How many times have holdem players drifted into other games where they barely know the rules while they wait for action? I've seen it happen a lot. Or players who are transitioning from NLHE purposefully to mix games and want to have the option to play both. Or rec MTT players win some chips and then bring it to a mix game cash table. Eliminating holdem would cause a significant drop in traffic.

And he's not insinuating that changing the lobby tab will effect traffic . . . he's just pointing out a minor annoyance.

You are maybe right that eliminating HU tables isn't a bad idea, but SwC could use any action they can get and many of the big bet players at HS mainly want to play HU. So you're 1 for 4. Baseball season is here, but .250 batting avg might not make the cut hehe

You're missing my main point. I'm saying their model is and always has been one of the worst of any online poker site. It's always been geared towards the hardcore, high volume, poker nerd/ HU and short handed specialists.

It has to be one of the most anti rec friendly sites I have ever played on when you consider their model (don't forget about the low take too). And that's exactly why the lobby is filled with specialists hoping a (now) rare bitcoin poker degen shows up.

SwCs only strength is that it spreads mix games with low rake. And yet if you glance at the lobby and prior promotions it appears they offer mix as an afterthought. What's worse is that they've done no advertising or any other methods to get additional traffic. There are probably thousands of mix players in the US alone and swc can't even get ~30 regs to play at the same time. It's a massive $ mistake on their part and a damn shame for all the people that play and are interested in mix in the USA.

Another thing... with the exception of PS, the rest of the long time poker rooms that have survived are all attached to a book in one way or another. And some of the best online games I've played in were attached to a sport book as well. There are plenty of bitcoin degenerates around, they can be found at all bitcoin sports book sites that don't offer poker.

Yeah I agree with both of you and cannot defend everything about seals. Obviously eliminating holdem would not be good.

But you keep going back to the point of low traffic like I can control that.

What do you want me to do other than starting games?

go and play bovada or wpn or whatever.

You complain but don't have a solution or an answer or an alternative.

There's nothing you or me can do since we don't own or manage the site. I'm just posting in the hopes that someone affiliated with site reads this or the information somehow gets passed along to them to consider making the right changes to the room. I thought Macau (if I'm wrong my mistake) had managements ear that's why I posted.

If bovada or wpn spread 10 or 12 game and they had action I would play there but they don't.

I hear ya.

Fair enough.

I agree with both of you, for the most part. Unfortunately, I have management's ear in the same way I have my nephew's ear - they both barely listen to me and only when I offer ideas that please them. Management always responds to me in a quick timeframe, respectfully, and in a personal manner. But I limit my emails to them to just a few per year, so that they hopefully recognize that I'm not the "boy who cried wolf" and the issue(s) I'm bringing up are serious and immediate. Such as when BTC was 20k and they were raking up to almost 1 chip per hand at 2/4 fixed limit(40/80 USD).

SwC (w the current mixed game software package) didn't always used to be like this. I'll try to give a synopsis of what's occurred from my PoV. The exact dates are foggy so forgive any small errors in the timeline:

mid 2015 - I start playing and tell some friends (some of whom are tough pros and some of whom aren't) that there's finally a place to play online the same fun games we like to play live. There's a healthy rake environment, tablestarter 50% rb was in effect, BTC had low fees and a fairly low price, and there was a healthy reg/rec ratio. Plus, the leaderboard drove a ton of action and the site could easily afford to pay out 1 BTC per week bc BTC was still in the $300-$500 range. So plenty of games and profit. The model ISN'T for the poker nerd/high volume/shorthand specialists during '15/'16.

2016 - Everything was about the same, except BTC price was higher, which made rake higher. And games got slightly tougher as the weakest mixed game whales slowly left. But everything was still basically decent, overall.

2017 - BTC goes to 20k, fees and rake are very high, alt coins become more mainstream, leaderboard is now gone, and there is little incentive for anyone to play. In mid-2017 after an email explaining why their site is dead (I focused on rake), they lowered rake 12 hours later. Some players came back and some didn't.

By end of '17, I write them again about rake as BTC has gone from like 1k-20k over the course of the year and at mid/high stakes people are paying up to $17/hand! They dramatically lower rake, which returns SwC to the lowest rake site around. Some players came back and some new ones join.

In same email, I also suggested that they should get rid of tablestarter rb, as it had by then become a boon. The 4th player never sat in ring games when the rake is so high AND you don't get 50% rb. So they eliminated it. I also suggested they re-introduce fun, low-cost promos that would bring a lot of recreational players back (as poster Trevado alluded to). I suggested they ramp up their (free) avenues of promoting the site, to let people know that their rake is the lowest, they offer games that even Stars can't offer, and payouts only take hours. They haven't done these things.

2018 - Due to the lower BTC fees and a rake structure that was meant to account for a 16k-18k BTC price, some players return and many new players join. But games are def tougher than they were in '15/'16. As they are on all the sites. I think as Stars has made poker less of a priority, some of those players have started to make their way to SwC.

The pains that SwC has gone thru mirror many of the other unregulated US facing sites, for some of the same reasons. Bovada/Ignition used to be a goldmine for some limit games and I've heard it may have even been more true for the big bet games; their lobby changes killed a bunch of games. Merge has pretty much given up on poker in favor of the bigger slice of the pie that . ACR/WPN and BoL/Chico have terrible optics, revolving around the botting/colluding/cheating narrative, most of which seems deserved.

Is it much better for the ROW sites? I don't know as much, but from watching the Stars lobby, it looks like they are suffering as well. The online poker economy or whatever it's called, has undergone a lot of trauma over the last few years. Like any economy, it's hard to put your finger on just one issue and say "Aha! Once we fix X, everything will go back to the way things were 7 years ago." I guess Black Friday was online poker's exception.

Live poker is thriving, however. HS games, in public casinos and private hotel suites are constantly running w some fish - at virtually every stake, variant, and format. But online poker, at least in the US, where the average rec in a casino has no clue what site to turn to for a safe and fair game that isn't full of pros using solvers and other software, is virtually dead imo.

SwC at least offers a fair game, at any stake. Nosebleed players are some of their most notable new players, prob cuz the rake is so low and they can still play the games that get nosebleed action on Stars, like 2-7, FLO8, LHE, Badugi, PLO/5 cd PLO/Big O8. It's fun just to see $500/1k played on a US site. It's also fun to play $0.25/$0.50 12 game mix or $2/pt open face for a lot of players. We don't have to worry about collusion and bots in these games yet, at least from what I've witnessed on SwC. The rake is super low. My funds have been safe for 3 years running.

So for me and pretty much any US players - except for the very top of the heap who can compete w the ROW players and their solvers/scripts/bots and their VPNs to play Bovada or ACR/WPN, where they don't even have to VPN, I don't know where else to play on a half-decent public site. And yet, there are still rarely more than 2 dozen players playing at once on SwC.

There will be some sort of poker boom when ring-fenced player pools are eliminated and online poker is finally regulated at the federal and int'l level, as US online poker can't sink much further down that it already has. But that may take at least another half dozen years or longer, for all anybody knows.

By far, the softest games in the US are the live games and if you can beat 200 NL online, then you can prob crush 2k NL live. I used to think that the ratio of live skill/online skill was like 4:1 but now I think it's more like 10:1 or more, which is an indicator of online poker's trend downwards.