SwC has "suffered" like many other unregulated and regulated sites because their model is catered towards the wrong demographic. Bodog/bovada/ignition has always had and continues to have some of the best games on the internet in terms of fish/reg ratios.... because 1. It's a sportsbook first, poker room second and 2. Their target demographic has always been recreational gamblers.

I really think swc has the potential to be big amongst mix players. There are many players who would like to play mix but can't because they don't know about seals and they don't spread it in the area. I also feel that many current mix players from all over the country would try swc at least once. But they have to adopt bovadas model, a model that has remained relatively unscathed over the years.

I'd bet they aren't advertising right either. They should be spending those dollars on the ground in areas that spread mix instead of wasting them on online ads.

Nobody is disagreeing w you. But you don’t understand their motives. Their ethos seems to be “poker w privacy.” They don’t wish to dilute their poker purist product w a sports book. Profit is not their main objective I guess.

They don’t bother spending ANY advertising dollars afaik.

And of course adding a sports book would bring in more rec players that hit parlays for $10k and then dump it back in a poker game (and vice versa). I’d love for them to bring a sports book onboard bc I don’t care about their “mission statement”. I just want more action against the weakest players possible.

If you could combine the bodog player pool w this software, we would have an exponentially better spot. But they don’t seem intent on growing. They seem to be happy flying under the radar and not ruffling any more legal feathers.

When the nosebleed guys are playing, SwC is making hundreds of dollars an hour per table in take off them. That’s alone seems to be enough for them.

When you barely have any employees and not looking to really grow, based on their lack of social media interaction and promotion, they seem to be content to not be a major site. Maybe they’re already wealthy, as it often seems like nobody is “minding the store”.

tl; dr They will never compromise on their poker-only stance imo, thus a sports book will never be in the cards

I have a theory though that seals is not making much money. It costs a lot of money just to have the games running 24/7. They give away a few chips a day in freerolls. They have to pay support and take their own cut of the rake each month or whatever. If you do that math on the rake generated they do not make much money.

Take your example and the high stakes flh or 2-7TD players. They play at 150 hands per hour heads up. In 150 hands X 0.07 is a little more than 10 chips which is almost 80 bucks an hour. But all those players are at least sly seals so it's less than 60 bucks an hour. Also, there prolly is less than 10 hours per week of actual high stakes action maybe less than 5 on average.

More commonly there is my situation : I played a guy last night heads up on a 6 man table in 0.02 PLO Big O/8 for about an hour and a half (can't believe I couldn't get a third in 90 mins but whatever) So only the big confrontations passed the 0.4 rake threshold and the rake was always 0.01 or one time it was actually 0.02. No way in hell we paid more than 0.1 in total rake which is about 80cents before our rakeback. So to host a typical small stakes match seals only made a little more than 50 cents last night.

Where are they making this money hand over fist?

Could be the reason new software is delayed and not much advertising?

The 12 game mix has run every night this week, and the tables are getting fuller! At least we aren't heads up anymore. :-)

Alright you hooked me with the 12 game i'm attempting to deposit now

Pretty new to this though, let me just make sure I'm not missing anything - one chip = ~$7 at the moment?

Yup, from a few pennies to $20 and now 1 chip = $7

I think the action on SwC is better when the price of BTC is down or going down. When it was $18k, people were clutching every chip and weren't buying in. When bitcoin is cheaper, so are SwC chips, and I see more people looking to buy them in the lobby so they can gamble.

Yeah it helps cause I mostly play the $14 and $28 buy in cash games (btc7k, 2&4 games)

December I could only really play one stake b/c btc so high.

I really feel they need micros to build the site. Either do 2000 chips to a coin, have 0.01/0.01 blind tables, or take everyone's balance out to 3 decimals and do smaller stakes.

Someone who wants to buy 20 or 50 bucks worth of btc for the hell of it on a sunday night won't have much fun playing cash games as that is only a few buy ins if that.

Also, if you have micros, you will easily have a higher active player base which is important to the site gaining some popularity.

I've played on this site for a while and bought ~20/sold more than 150 chips to different people on the site. I'm sad to report that this site is too dead to consider investing time in.

What they really need is a site that lets you buy BTC (via Coinbase or whatever) with dollars at current price (+ markup) so the total amount of chips on the site increases. Not enough people are proficient in crypto currency and own a wallet to keep the ecology going.

The way it is now, there are a few people playing super highstakes (what I assume are scheduled matches as SWC still has HU games and super low rake) and the occasional lowstakes games with nothing in between.

Unless they find a way to make BTC more accessible to a broader range of players, this site is gonna stay under 100 players forever.

The less volatile BTC is, the more action there has been, as Naked pointed out. Still, as I open the client now, I only see a Big O$400 game, $0.70/$1.40 12g, Big 0$30, $7/$14 razz, and a NL$30 full 6m game. There are also 3 small stakes tourneys running. A few solid players are sitting and waiting for action.

The nosebleed action seems to have mostly dried up in the last couple weeks but there are a handful of new regs that have helped keep the mid/hi mix games running over the last month.

SwC is exclusively linked to BTC. Not even crypto in general, but strictly BTC. Their "marketing department" is basically this thread (which is prob why many of the newer mid/hi regs are decent). The rake is super low, which recs don't really care about. There are no promotions other than rakeback based on your krill level. Recs do care about fun promos.

Management doesn't seem to worry about whether the site grows. They certainly aren't trying to spend any money on promoting their product to new rec players. It's being run like a turnkey business w 1-5 employees. I've accepted it bc the rake is beatable, they pay within hours, and there hasn't been any evidence of bots/collusion in the shorthanded mix games I play. But there is much left to be desired in terms of traffic.

Fwiw, I asked someone that used to be in the business about this, and his thoughts were that if their costs for processing are low, which they are, and they spend nothing on marketing, they could be profitable from operations on a surprisingly small volume. That also goes for most BTC gambling operations.

That's what I think their model is. Given the legal problems a "former" owner faced when he allegedly operated the site while residing in the US, it might not be the worst idea.

very recently signed up for SWC. deposited ~10 chips just to hopefully fire off some competitive mix at super low stakes. i'm hijklmnop and will be sitting everything at the lowest till im not any more... i'm currently walking badugi/baduecy/badacey but will sit within the week. who wants some?

Hi, Kevin! If you sit the 12 game in the evenings, people will usually show up. I'll be on there tonight and will come sit at your table if you're there. Hope to play cards with you soon!

When was the last time someone received an affiliate payment? My last one was Feb. 26th. Didn't think too much of it until I saw this in the trollbox:

I wish they would be upfront about issues until keeping quiet until multiple people start noticing that the rake isn't adding up right, they're not getting affiliate money, etc. The trollbox is not an appropriate place to announce problems with the affiliate program.

I'm really enjoying the crap out of the nightly 4 chip cash big O/8 game that seems to run alot.

Requires a lower bankroll than omaha hi and position is even more important.

Also, there is usually a maniac or two at the table who always seems to be killing it. Well not always but some huge 900bb stacks etc.

They will 3 bet from small blind with like 346QTds as if that can be correct. But then they are taking advantage of the fact that they will bet pot on flop and every hand is a dog to flop a hand they are willing to stack off with. So there's something to it.

Great game. Tons of action.

It wasn't even announced lol. That was Glitch answering me in the chatbox, as my affiliate had no idea why he wasn't receiving his payments. I'd guess another couple weeks til it's fixed.

I sent them an email and it was confirmed by support, who always seem to be helpful and respond quickly to my concerns but still haven't figured out a way to keep me from losing.

Payouts/Deposits still getting done within hours, but the fact that they didn't even send their affiliates a heads up makes it seem even more like this is 3 (honest) guys in a basement taking bong hits and running the site. I'd say they should re-name the site 5 Guys (like the restaurant) but I'd lay 2/1 they don't even have that many employees.

Whatever I'll take the stoners who pay fast and aren't greedy over most of the other sites out there. But count this as another head-scratching Spicoli move by SwC "management".

Hello, seems like most of the seals have all but given up on the mobile client. What's the new timeline look like?

Good Bryan Micon Interview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOWuEUGJKRY

55:00 - swc talk.

rest of interview: I find his talk about bitcoin and crypto in general the most interesting. In particular, he is more knowledgeable imo about crypto than Doug. It's tough to keep up with what he is talking about sometimes. If you read between the lines he is still making a profit from seals. he based out of Antigua.

Back when SWC previously shut down my brother had an account with $25ish worth of BTC still in it. Since it was such a minimal amount, he never bothered to withdraw his balance (even though I told him to). Does anyone know if his balance is still accessible? Obviously it's worth substantially more that $25 now.

No, I don't think so. I believe there was a window available to withdraw and then the funds became unavailable.

Hi... I was trying to play alittle of microstakes HUNL... however I saw one guy who wasnt giving me action and sat out but wanted to play other people... so what I was wondering, would it be allowed for me to open a different account having a 2nd screenname or is this against the rules?

not doing it before I get the OK ... so hope you can help me out here

The fact that you have to ask shows that you probably already know this isn't a cool thing to do.

it also isnt a cool thing to sit at tables whole day and quitting me after 25 hands because im no crazy money donating maniac. Im asking if this is legal in terms of their site rules not if thats cool.
They can just do some KotH style table opening system and its all good