SwC Poker Review 2026

Licensing & Security

SwC Poker holds no gaming license, and its footer shows only a copyright line and a signed Bitcoin message, with no regulator, license number or company name anywhere on the site. The FAQ says the organization “chooses to remain anonymous”, and the About page describes a small team of humans.

Two independent profiles agree that it isn’t licensed. So if SwC refuses a cashout or closes your account, there’s no regulator to complain to, no company to take to court and no published rulebook to point at, which leaves you relying entirely on the goodwill of a team whose names you will never know.

Encryption & Security

SwC does a few things right. The site uses a Let’s Encrypt certificate, and the footer is signed with a Bitcoin address, so you can check you’re on the real swcpoker.club. SwC also says player funds are never used for operating expenses and are split across several wallets, though that’s SwC’s own word.

The gaps are bigger. There’s no two-factor authentication, only a username and password, and SwC publishes no RNG certification or provably fair shuffle. Seals With Clubs had a breach, too. In December 2013, under the Seals With Clubs name, 42,020 hashed passwords were stolen, and they were stored as SHA1 hashes, which are weak.

On the tables, bots are banned and SwC says it monitors and fights collusion, with reports going to support by email or Telegram. Trackers and HUDs aren’t banned, but an independent profile says they don’t work with the software, so in practice you play without them.

Reputation & Player Reviews

Player reviews are thin and mostly negative. On Trustpilot the swcpoker.club profile scores 3.2 from a single review, and that reviewer edited it in March 2026 to say support no longer exists and bots are plentiful. The old sealswithclubs.eu profile scores 2.1 from nine reviews, with complaints about rigging, bots, collusion through chip transfers and pots given to the wrong player.

The complaints online are loud enough that I would not keep more there than I’m ready to lose.

The Seals With Clubs Story

Seals With Clubs launched in 2011 or 2012, depending on the source, and in February 2014 a Nevada Gaming Control Board agent opened an undercover account. On February 11, 2015 investigators seized equipment at the Las Vegas home of Bryan Micon, the site’s public face, and Seals shut down that month with player funds said to be intact.

Nevada called it the state’s first internet gaming prosecution. Micon pleaded guilty to operating an unlicensed interactive gaming website, a category B felony, and in November 2015 he got a $25,000 fine and up to two years of probation. He also gave up 3.0996 BTC.

SwC Poker says it opened at the end of February 2015 with different ownership, staff and software. It inherited usernames and Krill but no funds or passwords. When Seals closed, some of its assets went to Micon to build a new Antigua-based room, but no source names him as an owner of SwC Poker today.

General Terms

SwC publishes no terms of service at all, so the house rules and FAQ are all you get. The FAQ says SwC “does not discriminate by country of heritage or residence”, and the client lists every country as open, the United States included, with a minimum age of 18, or 21 in Latvia. These are the rules that do exist:

• No KYC: only an email address is needed to open and use an account.
• Households: players from the same home can play, but not at the same tables or tournaments.
• Account sales: accounts can’t be sold or transferred, and a bought account is confiscated.
• Chip transfers: player-to-player transfers are allowed but can’t be reversed.
• Rathole timer: every cash game has a one-hour rathole timer.
• Penalties: they run from a warning to permanent closure, and evading a ban can cost you your funds.

Being open to Americans doesn’t make it legal where you live. No US state licenses SwC, and Nevada has already prosecuted its predecessor, so check your own state’s law first. A lookalike site on a .io address calls itself an informational guide to the room but has its own Play Now and Sign Up buttons. The real room is swcpoker.club.

SwC Poker has no welcome bonus and no bonus code to hunt for, so don’t waste time looking. Its value is Krill rakeback, paid daily in cash chips with nothing to wager. The 5% you start on is thin, but it climbs to 50% and never resets, which makes up for the missing welcome.

Welcome Bonus

SwC Poker has no welcome or deposit bonus, and there’s no SwC Poker bonus code to find. The promotions page lists Krill, Thursday Doubles, no-rake micro tables and freerolls, and nothing else.

The only code on the sign-up form is an optional referral code, which tracks the affiliate who sent you. SwC pays affiliates 25% of the revenue from referred players for life, so any site promising you an SwC bonus code is really just asking for that referral.

I don’t miss the bonus much. The value at SwC comes back to you as you play, through Krill.

Ongoing Bonuses

Hourly freerolls start at half past every hour Eastern Time, with 30 minutes of late registration, prizes from 50 to 200 chips and a daily theme from Mixed Game Monday to 6-Max Sunday. They’re small, since 200 chips is 0.0002 BTC, but they’re a genuine free way to learn the software.

• Thursday Doubles: two 100-chip tournaments at 9pm ET, each with 4,000 chips guaranteed.
• Krill leaderboards: weekly and monthly races, with weeks running Monday to Sunday UTC.
• Table Starter Bonus: double Krill for hands played two- or three-handed at six-seat tables and up.
• Rake-free satellites: series satellites charge no fee.

Then there’s the Bad Beat Jackpot. It stood at 268,694 chips, or 0.27 BTC, on September 30, 2026, and it pays when you lose with Aces Full of Kings or better at jackpot tables from 5/10. The record hit was 6.451984 BTC in April 2023, and the first of 2026, in March, paid 418,955 chips.

The jackpot isn’t free, though. Jackpot tables rake 5% when four or more players are dealt in, and a fifth of that rake funds the pot.

VIP / Loyalty Program

SwC Poker rakeback comes as Krill, and it’s the best reason to play here. You earn it on every raked hand you’re dealt into, not just the pots you win, and it’s shared equally at the table whatever you put in. Cash-game Krill is the square root of the rake times 0.4, split between the players dealt in, and tournaments earn the square root of the entry fee times 0.4.

Krill never resets, and it moves you through 16 seal ranks. Your rakeback rate rises with each one.

You join automatically, and rakeback is paid daily straight into your account. The Baby Seal rank at 50 Krill also unlocks table chat. It’s a fair, simple scheme, and 50% at the top matches BC Poker’s best VIP rate.

Wagering Requirements

There is nothing to wager. With no bonus there’s no playthrough, and Krill rakeback lands as cash chips you can withdraw or play with straight away.

If you’ve ever lost a bonus to a 60-day clock, this is a nice change.

Cash Games

Game choice is where SwC stands out. It publishes rules for 27 games, from Hold’em and Omaha to Big O, Courchevel, Short Deck, 2-7 Triple Draw, Badugi, Badeucy, Badacey, Stud, Razz and Open-Face Chinese, plus mixed games. In September 2026 it added Double Board and Bomb Pot tables in Hold’em and PLO, plus Drawmaha 2-7 and Drawmadugi.

Stakes run from 0.10/0.20 chips at the no-rake tables to a 5K/10K No-Limit Hold’em table listed in the lobby. A chip is one millionth of a Bitcoin, so at a $100,000 Bitcoin price, which I’ll use for dollar figures here, that’s $0.01/$0.02 up to $500/$1,000.

Traffic is small, and the sources don’t agree. One traffic tracker ranks SwC 27th with a 30-day average of 68 players, while the site’s own counter showed 118 online at 69 tables on September 30, 2026. Expect a few busy games at a time rather than a lobby full of tables.

Tournaments

The lobby listed 487 tournaments when I looked. The Sunday headliner is The Big BTC, with 50,000 chips guaranteed for a 2,000-chip buy-in, which is about $5,000 for $200 at my conversion. The Medium BTC guarantees 30,000 and the Sunday 12-Game guarantees 15,000.

SwC’s series are small, but they run often. The 2026 March Madness series had 94 events over 17 days with 1.6 BTC guaranteed. The 2025 Bitcoin Series of Poker held 113 bracelet events, drew 4,809 entries and paid out 2.676 BTC, and its Main Event had 70 entries and a 150,000-chip prize pool.

There’s also a Holiday Series of 63 events over 10 days with 1 BTC guaranteed, and a Bitcoin Poker Championship in November.

Rake & Fees

SwC’s rake is low, and it’s no flop, no drop. No-limit and pot-limit games are raked on this scale.

• Up to 0.10/0.20: 0%, and the no-rake Hold’em and PLO tables let you run it twice.
• 0.20/0.40 to 5/10: 4%, capped at 8, 15 and 28 chips for two, three and four or more players.
• 10/20: 4%, capped at 12, 20 and 32 chips.
• 25/50 and up: 3.6%, capped at 15, 25 and 40 chips.

At my conversion, a 5/10 table is $0.50/$1, and its 28-chip cap works out to $2.80. That beats ACR Poker’s $3 cap at five or more players, CoinPoker’s $5 and Stake Poker’s $8 at similar stakes. Fixed limit runs 4% at the bottom and 1% at 1000/2000 and up, heads-up tables are 4%, and scheduled tournaments charge 5% or less, guaranteed ones 6% or less and sit and gos 2% or less.

SwC reviews rake as the Bitcoin price moves and keeps an archive of old rake tables, which is a nice touch.

Casino & Sports

There’s no casino and no sportsbook. SwC is Poker only, with no Slots, no live dealers and no betting.

That’s either its weakness or its charm, depending on why you’re here, because a room with no Slots and no sportsbook has nothing to sell you between hands and no reason to keep you away from the tables. It’s the reason this score is so low, but it also means every player at the table came to play Poker.

Deposits

SwC is Bitcoin only, plus Bitcoin Cash. There’s no fiat, no cards and no USDT, Ether or Litecoin, and every table plays in one of two currencies, BTC or BCH. Bitcoin Cash tables have been running since April 2021.

There’s no minimum deposit, and SwC credits you down to a single satoshi. A Bitcoin deposit credits after one confirmation, which usually takes 10 to 30 minutes.

That suits anyone who already holds Bitcoin, and it is simple. Everyone else has to buy it somewhere first.

Your Balance Moves With Bitcoin

Because every table plays in chips, your balance moves with the Bitcoin price. A win of 1,000 chips is always 0.001 BTC, but what that is worth in dollars depends on the day you cash out, which is worth remembering if you only think in dollars.

Withdrawals

SwC says withdrawals average four to six hours and occasionally take up to 24. There’s no SwC fee, just the network fee, and when you cash out Bitcoin you choose a 6, 25 or 50-block confirmation target to trade speed against cost. Most Bitcoin Cash withdrawals confirm in the next block.

No ID is needed to cash out, either, which is the whole appeal. There’s no 10% rake rule, no 72-hour hold and no document check, all of which ACR Poker applies before its first payout.

The flip side is that nobody reviews a stuck withdrawal but SwC itself. With no regulator and support by email and Telegram only, a delayed payout is between you and a team you can’t name.

Withdrawal Limits

• Minimum: 500 chips, which is 0.0005 BTC or about $50 at my conversion.
• Maximum: none published.
• Fee: the network fee only.
• Chip value: 1,000,000 chips equal 1 BTC. Chips were worth a thousandth of a Bitcoin before the 2018 relaunch, so older guides quote the wrong unit.

The 500-chip minimum is the one limit that bites, since a small freeroll win has to grow before you can take it out.

Website Design and UI

You can play in the HTML5 client in your browser, with nothing to install, or use the downloads for Windows at 54.5 MB and Mac at 43.4 MB. Linux users are sent to the browser version. The client ran version 6.10.1.1 on September 30, 2026, and the lobby filters by game, limit, stakes and seats.

The lobby looks dated, with a plain dark theme and small text. But it’s fast and it does the job, and the browser client is the same lobby as the download.

Mobile App

There’s no iPhone app. The download page lists none and the App Store has no SwC listing, so on an iPhone you play in the browser. Android gets a direct APK of 56.6 MB from SwC’s own site rather than Google Play, so you’ll need to allow installs from outside the store.

Be careful where you download it. Only take the APK from swcpoker.club, never from a lookalike site.

Customer Service

Support runs by email at [email protected] and through a Telegram channel with 710 members, with a backup address at Proton Mail. There’s no live chat and no phone, and SwC publishes no hours or response times.

An independent profile rates the support as weak, and the only Trustpilot review on the current domain says support no longer exists. If I needed a fast answer, I’d try Telegram first.

Responsible Gambling

This is SwC’s weakest area. You can self-exclude by email, and its problem gambling page links to the National Council on Problem Gambling, BeGambleAware, Britain’s National Health Service and Lifeline. But there are no deposit limits, no time-outs and no reality checks, so any limit is down to you.

In the US, call or text 1-800-MY-RESET, the National Problem Gambling Helpline, and our Responsible Gambling guide lists help in other countries.