That depends on the site. The only site I've actually deposited on is Seals and there you play in chips which are worth 1/1000th of a bitcoin. Kind of glad I didn't deposit on BTConTilt since they seem to have disappeared. I do have about 1 BTC of freeroll winnings I'll lose if they never come back but oh well.

One way to protect yourself from potential exchange losses is to keep most of your money in USD (or whatever) on an exchange and only move small amounts to the poker site as needed. For example, you could move 3 buy-ins over at the start of your session, reload if needed, and then cashout at the end of your session, immediately re-selling your BTCs for USD (or whatever). Obv if you do this you're also "protecting yourself" from the possibility of earning money when the exchange price is rising.

really worth watching
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc3sKwwAaCU

<3 the BANK CREDIT hypodermic needle.

I've been playing exclusively bitcoin poker lately. I'm fortunate enough to know people who will buy bitcoins off me for usd, but that will become more common over time. This is real money.

Someone sent me the url infinitipoker.com and they are apparantly a site coming up this spring that will be accepting Bitcoin as a payment option...they say that it will be easier to get your money in and out (which I guess would be a good thing) but they don't say anything about whether or not US players can join...any thoughts?

Signed up for and am enjoying Seals. Had no problem getting hooked up with Mt Gox & Dwolla. And the play is donkish to good, software not bad, it was my first real online poker in a year. Bitcoin value is going up so my teeny bankroll is growing in value and I know how to cash it out. Hooray!

Coin price has been stable near $5 for a while now. Seals is having a big (for Seals) tourney on Sunday.

bitcoin is the answer for criminals, not poker players.

In case you haven't noticed, the ones trying to move poker player funds in US become criminals.

Actually, I suppose Bitcoins are a last-resort answer for poker players. They were designed to completely and permanently stop the government from controlling voluntary interactions and its citizens money. They currently are used in a drug-trafficking site which is overtly and blatantly doing illegal business and the government appears unable to do much about it. So allowing online poker is kid stuff by comparison.

It's good to have Bitcoins as an ultimate fallback though because they will allow, by force, us to play poker online if we so choose, and the deposits, cashouts and bankrolls will be so much safer and more accessible that it will be like night and day.

A criminal by this definition is anyone who does something that his country's government doesn't want them to do. Think about that for a second.

Yeah, same with cash...

so what is the status on this? are there any legit bitcoin poker sites?

As at 19:30 EST, on Seals with Clubs:

ONLINE NOW: Players: 51 Tables: 5



I think this is the largest bitcoin poker site right now...

Poker would be the answer for BTC. Even with the explosion of the darkw3bz drug market, BTC is the least stable currency in the history of the world

The only ones I know of are Tor hidden services. Most are laughably and obviously fraudulent.

links broken for me, but I found another copy on youtube.

Watched like an hour so far and I can sum it up with "banks screw everyone by lending more money than exists, and they're allowed to do it."

Does he ever get to a point where he details how I can take action or live my life differently in any way?

I'm all for the masses being educated, but unless that education can be used for benefit or action in some way, it's equally as useful as learning the names of all 150 pokemon.

seals with clubs comes right up on google. It's small, but playable, and obviously not fraudulent.

There was a site called btcontilt that was based on the same code as sealswithclubs. They had some problems with their hosting company and were down for a while, and are starting back up. This time they are using a downloaded client rather than web-based.

Actually there are 649 now

I've received some e-mails about Infinit Poker and I think it was suggested somewhere that they will accept BTC deposits when they go live. I haven't looked at the beta software myself but I think it's open to the public for playmoney trials. If the e-mails are correct, Gavin Smith has something to do with it (a sponsored pro, perhaps).

I've played some on Seals, and it's my favorite of the ones I've tried. They have an hourly freeroll and if you hang around DD or follow Micon on Twitter you might be able to get in on the live broadcast freeroll or receive some free chips. I've had no problems with deposits or withrawals but my understanding is that it's more difficult than it used to be to get started using Gox/Dwolla so new players might want to research alternate exchange/processing methods.

There is another site I can't remember the name of that gets a lot of traffic but last I looked they only offer NLH.

I would much rather see a regulated real money US market but in the meantime these sites allow you to splash around a little if you have small amounts of money that you're comfortable putting into play. One positive is that you can move money around pretty fast relative to what we're seeing with the USD sites. Anyone attempting to do so however should realize that there's a considerable amount of risk involved.

Hmm, I didn't know there were ones operating on the clearnet.

edit: I was going to provide a link to some of the ones I was referring to, but I don't know how mods here feel about .onion links.

My god... kids these days

Can we get some more information about the Pokemons plz? I only know 2 of them and can't find a comprehensive picture guide with names.

BTC on a steady rebound too.

looks great, except its now summer and they haven't updated