For buying bitcoin I'd recommend Coinbase or Circle... with a slight personal preference of Circle.

If you use a credit card you can get the bitcoin instantly, although there is an extra fee. If you want to use your bank account they hold your bitcoin for a couple days until the ACH transfer gets there.

Setting it up is just like any other e-wallet type site - you give them your routing numbers and they make a couple small deposits in to your bank account. You verify the amounts and then you can make your purchase.

After you verify your account I think Circle will release up to $100 worth instantly even on a bank purchase.

Once you have your bitcoin you send it to a new address you create on Blockchain, and from there to SwC. You're doing that extra step to avoid making direct transfers between Coinbase/Circle and SwC.

So the process will be:

Buy on Circle -> Send to Blockchain -> Send to SwC

To withdraw and convert to dollars you just do the reverse:

Withdrawal from SwC -> New Blockchain address -> Circle

I know that it can seem confusing and like a hassle at first, but it really is pretty simple and easy once you actually do it.

Has anyone else had any problems with tables freezing/disconnecting? I have only played a few sessions since the new site launched and have run into problems almost every time. Makes it pretty much unplayable for me.

A 40 year old male or some random kid in college who hasn't heard of bitcoin isn't going to go through the hassle of making all of these accounts. That's probably the most laborsome part of the process, when I could just deposit using a CC in 2 seconds. They don't know anything about speed of payouts...they just want to deposit, play, and busto it. I got annoyed just making accounts at all of these places to where I almost gave up.

Live in the USA and thought about trying out SWC and/or Betcoin


Thanks for the info. As I said in reply to the guy above, just sucks having to make accounts at all of these places. Seems easy in theory, but Exmo seemed a little more difficult. I'll check out Circle and see if easier. Exmo just had 5-6 different processors to sign up through, and I had no clue which was the best...they just showed fees. Trying to limit how much my info is spread around the interwebs lol. Appreciate the help!

This EXMO.com looks like it might be a Russian site. Rotsa Ruck

I've been playing on SWC for a week I like the site but here are the problems I've encountered:

Lobbies aren't accurate, some tables show players in lobby but they're not there if you open table.

The client needs to be restarted once or more per day. Message pops up while playing, sometimes I can ignore it, other times it automatically shuts down.

Limit games allow you to raise when it should not be allowed. I bet 100 player 2 goes allin for 5( less than half bet) player 3 calls and now I have the option to raise!?

Second to act in limit games, button says "bet x" when it should say "raise x"

This is true and annoying but poker is a very small part of Bitcoin gambling and gambling is a fairly small part of the Bitcoin ecosystem. The fish aren't necessarily hardcore computer nerds but dice and ponzi gamblers, enthusiast investors, and people who got into BTC because of its black market usefulness. These people are quite bad even when they're sober, which isn't often.

There has been a lot of maintenance at random times, but they will reimburse for pots lost to DC on their end. Played a badeucy hand w Micon and I couldn't pat - he sent me an email and 280 chips without verifying anything, went on my word alone. Pretty amazing customer service ime.

I can't even login right now

I know how you feel, I felt the same way when I first started with bitcoin. I spent a week just researching and trying to decide which confusing process was the best.

But that was years ago. Today Coinbase and Circle make it so much easier. They work just like a Paypal or Neteller. They're both US based, fully legit, and they make it really simple to navigate the site and buy/sell/send.

Agree with only wanting to have to give your info to one site. At least this way only Circle has it instead of some unknown credit card processor that regular sites use. Even SwC won't have your personal info.

You can also search to see if there is a bitcoin ATM in your area. You'll end up paying something like a 5% fee, but you get to use cash and you receive bitcoin instantly.

Did it late tuesday night, still haven't gotten it. Should I plan on emailing them if I don't get it by this upcoming tuesday?

hey i need swc$(20$) can ship on stars or skrill, can somebody help?

I know this question has been answered before, but I can't seem to find it.

How can I play SWC on a mac?

Anyone else having trouble with this morning's update? First, it told me that the software was already installed on my pc, so I deleted it and downloaded again from swcpoker.eu. Then it wouldn't work. I clicked the icon but nothing happened. So I tried to delete it again, but this time it wouldn't delete. So I tried to download it again. The pc asked me "do you want to overwrite?" and I clicked yes. It seemed to install fine but then again when I click the icon, nothing happens.

Yep, that's exactly what just happened to me.

Yep, not able to play

I get prompted to update SWC then get this error message:

http://gyazo.com/ca8885aa518f70d07d70aac7f3086cd2

Unable to open atm.

Did same thing to me

Fiddled around a bit and the problem seems to be related to the file ws2_32.dll. There is one in the Program Files\swc folder and another slightly larger version in the Windows\system32 folder. I tried copying that one into swc and it didn't help.

Ill post my brief history of playing with seals. This morning I do the update and open up two tables of 5-10 PLO and 40-80 badeucy, after 10 min, Im involved in two pots where I get pat 6 badugi and 3 bet and KKxx and 3 bet, on PLO turn, I CR pot turn on KJ73 board and take 1 with 6 badugi when client freezes and crashes (for the second time today)

Over the last week or two Ive had countless instances where I have been unable to see my cards, gotten disconnected, been unable to click any anytions or etc. Fortunately some regs on here like MacauBound have been cool enough to check it down when it happens and etc, but thats often not the case and its cost me hundreds-thousadns of dollars (certainly thousands when I count lost action when people quit me because of software problems)

Id love to say thats been my biggest problem with them, but its not. After having a bad session the other day my balance seemed pretty low and I looked at cashier history to see manual debit -$9,900 chips (double credit). I guess there were two instances spread out over a week prior where I left a table (I didn't leave but it crashed on me 20 times a day and I guess I was sitting out when it crashed or something) and was credited twice. I never noticed this because I often play a wide spread of games and limits with lots of tables open so have little idea of what my balance is +/- 3k.

This is concerning to me (1) they never told me, there was no email or communication whatsoever that there were just taking $2500 from my account that I thought I had. they could have emailed or sat at any one of the tables Im on every day and gave me a heads up.
(2) I hope that its correct, they did show me a log of me joining and leaving tables and it seems to be correct, but I can't be 100% certain (3). I had withdrawn two times between the first double credit and their correction, I don't see how they can't realize their mistake over the course of a week and two cash outs ....
(4) The most important, I cashed out from SWC-waller-coinbase-bank (luckily given recent BTC performance) this is somewhat annoying process and I left enough on SWC to play the limits that most often run (40-80 to 60-120) conformably. I had enough in my account where I could take a big loss and not worry to much about having to redeposit etc, so I play a bigger session (if it goes bad I have enough left online for normal games) which goes poorly, then afterwards my account is debited another 10k in chips and now I'm relatively short on there. had my account been corrected over the previous week and was actually 10k lighter I likely never would have played the bigger session. I treated it as a free roll which it clearly wasn't.

Now I really don't want to go through the trouble of going bank to seals again given the fact that when I do get action, it rarely lasts more than 10 min without the client freezing or its ends up with me getting it in with the nuts and the client crashing.

They know there is a problem with the update and have talked about it on their bitcointalk thread. Apparently Micon doesn't give a crap. The exact error is:

They need to set a standard for dealing with DC and make it widely known, esp when we're playing anywhere from 40/80 up to 2/4. It's inconsistent at best, blatantly unfair at worst, considering what they've put you thru as a HS player willing to sit many tables of many games and yet they refunded me the WHOLE pot after an email to Micon w/o even referring to HH (maybe bc he was playing w me when the issue happened?) My few interactions with Micon have all been very positive and have left me feeling like they really cared about what I thought (complete opposite of Merge, for ex). But there needs to be consistency on this issue - either tell people you are completely playing at your own risk and there are no refunds so that they can decide for themselves with full disclosure, or set up a process for reviewing DC hands and provide refunds, particularly when there is bigger money involved. Gl and thx for sharing.

Haven't had issues with the software this afternoon yet, so still hoping things improve considerably. But Seals should get out in front of this issue.

I've had the same issue before and for some reason I had to turn off my antivirus to get the client to open (Windows 8) and once the software was running I could turn the antivirus (webroot) back on. It's a mystery to me as I'm not tech savvy.

He did email me and say he would go through the HH which I appreciate but it still likely won't be a fair outcome, example I'm dealt 2345 badugi in badeucy button opens and i 3 bet and get DC. I get 3 bets back when my equity is substantially higher, obv times we have worst of it when we DC but I generally just ignore those as I would have lost anyways

After seeing other people have trouble I was prepared for the worst but it actually worked for me.

It's probably dependent on which Windows version you have... but on my Win 7 laptop I went to the Start Menu -> All Programs -> swcpoker -> Uninstall swcpoker

Then downloaded the setup.exe from the website and let it run.

The tips they posted for people having trouble:

I'd guess if that doesn't work you could try emailing support.

A couple of the new options I can see are a "Display Chips Received Dialog", which is nice. It's under "General (More)" and wasn't selected by default.

And now there's a "Blocked Chat" list that shows who you have blocked and allows you to unblock them.

I read all that at the other forum and have tried all those things and more. I sent an email to support with the exact error message and have received no answer. I downloaded the software again just a few minutes ago and tried it all once more. It still does not run.

I'm running XP Pro SP3 that is as up to date as possible in Virtual Box. I know it's ancient but I'm not going to buy anything newer just to run one program. All my real stuff runs Linux.