SwC Poker
SwC Poker Review
Seals With Clubs (SWC) launched in 2011. They were the first bitcoin poker site. I’ve played many hands there but in order to write a balanced review I did extensive research to see what others thought. While doing this I came across both complaints and compliments. I want to share those with you now, before I get to the meat of the review.
The biggest complaints I found are:
- The competition can be stiff during the weekdays. My guess is that this is from the remaining pros that didn’t move out of the USA post-Black Friday.
- Users have to deal with bums – people that would create accounts and troll tables for handouts (free bitcoin).
The most common compliments I found are:
- Super fast deposits and withdrawals. Seals With Clubs quote up to 1 hour for deposits and 12 hours for withdrawals. But it sounds like they beat those times, no sweat.
- Super soft games during the early mornings, late evenings and weekends. I think this offsets the complaints above about stiff games.
- Player to player transfers is allowed. (Most (US) rooms have stopped allowing P2P transfers.)
Overall, users rated Seals With Clubs a 6.4 out of 10. That’s equivalent to a ‘D.’ If we were comparing SWC to, say, Carbon Poker or Bovada, I might agree. But since neither of those rooms take bitcoin, that’s not a reasonable comparison.
Instead, I think we should compare them to another bitcoin poker site, such as Betcoin Poker. In that case I think Seals With Clubs deserves a much higher rating / grade.
How much higher? I’ll get to that in a second. But first, read my review of SWC below to learn more about their promotions, games and software.
Wtf! No Deposit Bonus?
One thing that disappoints me about Seals With Clubs is their lack of promotions, namely a deposit bonus. This might’ve worked a couple of years ago when there wasn’t any (bitcoin) competition. But nowadays it seems that a new site is launching every other day. And most of them offer deposits bonuses. That includes Betcoin Poker, the closest competitor to SWC.
Here’s another way to look at it. PokerStars, the most popular poker site in the world, continues to offer a deposit bonus to this day. If they can offer a deposit bonus, then I think Seals With Clubs can (and should) too. That aside, they do offer a couple of small promotions.
The one I like the most is their 50% rakeback offer. You’ll get 50% of your rake back when you play in 2-3 handed situations on non-heads up cash tables. This is their way of saying ‘thank you’ for starting and keeping cash games running. I would jump on this offer right away too. If their traffic continues to increase I would expect them to take it down.
Another promotion they have is their VIP program, the main benefit of which is cash back. The program works like any other VIP program – you play real money games, earn points, and receive perks based on the number of points you have.
The problem I have with their offer is that they made is so darned confusing. Each ‘point’ is called ‘krill.’ And the amount of krill you earn each hand or tournament is figured out using a mathematical formula like this:
√(rake) multiplied by (5 / players dealt) then multiplied by any other bonus factor currently in effect and finally rounded down to the nearest tenth of a Krill.
The Krill earning calculation is: squareroot(entry fee) rounded down to the tenths place and multiplied by 2
Huh? It doesn’t make sense. What’s important to know, though, is that you can earn as much as 50% cash back and ‘GrandMasterSeal’ status. You’ll just have to earn 10 million krill to get it. Other than that SWC offers guaranteed tournaments. I’ll cover those in the next section.
Questions & Answers