SealsWithClubs.eu | Largest Bitcoin Poker Site | No Banking | Fast Cashouts

[Nite69]

-- More games [we have plans]

Backgammon?!

[Micon]

no numbers are random.  if you could get the same measurements... throw it threw the same algorithm... or realize background radiation trends at the site... if you could calculate the entire world's flow of particles couldn't you determine all of these "random" numbers?

Ok, this is getting philoshopical.. that's one way of thinking, you might be right. However, there are other opinions also. We can argue if quantum events are truely random or not.. it is even possible to claim that actually all possible every quantum based event happens in some universe (multiversum theory). Well, is it random any longer then?

Quite funny to think that according to multiversum theory, every tournament goes on with every possible tables and hand I could imagine. I just happen to see and experience that particular serie of cards. Actually, If you 'believe' in this theory, you might oppose pseudo-randomness..

But truly vs pseudorandomness is something we cannot prove, so let's just leave it ;-) Actually, my opinion is that we really do not know. There are randomness or not, but we really do not know how it is. Pseudo-random is anyway good for me. And actually, player delays makes pseudo random very truely random (I assume every shuffle is made with a new seed which is generated at the shuffle time, which is dependant on player delays on that table *and* the others).

btw, It's very clear that random.org etc are out of question for a poker site. Getting the numbers outside would be way too risky.

1)  IMO philosophy is dead.  The answer always lies in science
2)  To the uneducated, saying a poker site generates "pseudo-random" numbers likely sounds scary, but it's too long-winded to say the site generates "pseudo-random numbers that satisfy even the toughest statistical analysis, constantly generating numbers well within acceptable tolerances that deal a fair game of poker over and over again"

-- More games [we have plans]

Backgammon?!

Backgammon is solved I thought?

still, I remember when it was on Merge, and while it would be towards the back of the pack here, I remember firing pretty hard on it, always vs. really good players (obv) but still having a lot of fun with it.  Backgammon has it's "skill v luck" place in P2P gambling, so I would say it's on the table.   I don't mind making Chess for SwC eventually, although I can't see much action there either.  We will need to run through all the poker games to get there.

Actually, one thing that worries me, (after what happened to Slush and bitcoin-central), is that even very reliable site could get hacked. Of course, I trust your capabilities and I assume you have done very good job minimising the risk and possible losses. Actualy, I feel quite safe regarding seals. Slush and BC minimized ther losses and I believe you do as good job as they did.

However, I would feel safest, if I could send the BTC to the site before starting to play and then send my wallet back after I stop. I think it is almost impossibe to make it completely work like that, transactions should be immediate to make it happen.

I assume you make manual transactions as a final step to prevent cheaters from withdrawaling the chips and possibly preventing some unwanted accidents. That's good. But how about adding some kind of credit to the system? Let's say, a player has a roll of 2k. He has 2k on the site and makes a 'conditional withdrawal' for that. That request is manually accepted just like normal withdrawal. However, after that, a player has a 'credit' for 2k, so before session, he can send the 2k back to the site, then play and afterwards make *immediate* withdrawal for max 2k. That would make possible to keep roll on player's own wallet instead of the site.

Actually, initial 'credit' could be the deposit amount.

i can imagine one way of abusing it; if player loses all his roll and after that gets the same amount of chips by cheating. Then he could withdrawal the cheated chips without manual intervention.

When I was thinking about how slush and BC was hacked, another idea came to my mind; some kind of emergency transaction, which, when triggered, would send the hot wallet to an offline wallet. So when the site is rebooted unintentionally, or something otherwise weird happens (you know better what could be suspicious), the online wallet would be immediately emptied to an offline wallet, leaving the thief empty handed. Of course, the best would be to have no online wallet (I think it would be possible, if very carefully designed).

Btw, do you have a 'dead mans switch', which would send all player's money to their withdrawal addresses if FBI knocks on your door ;-) ?

1)  most coins are stored in a cloud-based cold storage system.  We will vigilantly defend against any hacks of any sort, but just in case we always have a fresh backup and all the coins.

2)  our exact security measures cannot be divulged for obvious reasons, but we have multiple systems in place securing funds.  We plan on being around for a while.
 

[superfire]

Facts:

1. Pseudo random numbers will produce hole cards, flops turns and rivers which over a reasonable sample size will show the expected distribution.  I would bet 10BTC against the idea that analysis of enough data from hands at seals would show abnormal distribution.  If someone is interested in this I will detail ,y terms.

2. SWC stands to make shittons of money even charging as reasonable a rake as they do.  It is in their best interest to provide the fairest environment possible to their regulars and recreational players.  Nothing is really more important than trust for them.  The client etc all come in second at best.

3.  There are surely many many thousands of dollars (possible understatement) being held in wallets by seals.  If they wanted an unethical payday they would disappear with that money.  They have not done this.

As a player at seals for well over a year, I can vouch for the quality of the people running it.  They have earned my trust.  And as I said... To my analysis the distribution of cards is absolutely normal.

point 3 makes no sense. why disappear with the money now when SWC can make more with rake (in the long-term) by rigging the board with more "action". you are ignorant.

I would bet you 50BTC (engaged through an escrow) that the analysis of ALL my hands played through to showdown on SWC shows abnormal distribution.
Quote this and reply only if you are TRULY interested.

[superfire]

seals with clubs is rigged and filled with colluders.

dont believe me?
watch the full ring tables and notice how it gets empty of a sudden.
this site is doomed to fail.

[Smoovious]

I would bet you 50BTC (engaged through an escrow) that the analysis of ALL my hands played through to showdown on SWC shows abnormal distribution.

Well, OF COURSE that selection of hands would show an abnormal distribution.

Any sampling that is a result of choice, is going to be abnormal.

All those hands that you chose not to run to the river and show would be missing from the sample, so any kind of analysis for finding a normal distribution is impossible.

The fact that you would even offer that as the term of the bet, just tells me you don't have a clue about how random sampling for statistical analysis even works, for determining a normal distribution of a random number generator, and the cards that are being dealt.

You need every card dealt, for every hand, for every table, for a crapload of rounds that were played. Not just the ones that you thought would have been good enough to win, regardless of the other players' choices to hold or fold.

-- Smoov

[FreeMoney]

I would bet you 50BTC (engaged through an escrow) that the analysis of ALL my hands played through to showdown on SWC shows abnormal distribution.

Well, OF COURSE that selection of hands would show an abnormal distribution.

Any sampling that is a result of choice, is going to be abnormal.

All those hands that you chose not to run to the river and show would be missing from the sample, so any kind of analysis for finding a normal distribution is impossible.

The fact that you would even offer that as the term of the bet, just tells me you don't have a clue about how random sampling for statistical analysis even works, for determining a normal distribution of a random number generator, and the cards that are being dealt.

You need every card dealt, for every hand, for every table, for a crapload of rounds that were played. Not just the ones that you thought would have been good enough to win, regardless of the other players' choices to hold or fold.

-- Smoov

Actually you would see skew no matter what if you look at board cards. It would be relatively small and I can't guess the direction without more thought.
 
In some games a flop is almost always seen. In some games a preflop raise often takes the pot, in those games there will tend to only be a flop when multiple players have higher than average ranks in their hands and you will see lower than average cards on the board. There will also be some flops that tend to make the hand end early and deal no rivers. Without looking at any data I would guess than flushes come in a little bit less often than simple analysis would predict because the turn and river are more likely to be dealt if two or more players are on a flush draw, partially blocking each other.

edit: If you just looked at a tally of every card that ever appeared that would be correctly distributed. It's just if you look at "river cards" or similar specifically that there will be skew.

[FreeMoney]

Version 0.2.13 is available. It has some bug-fixes and we believe it will be stable on Windows 8. Use it with caution, feedback is appreciated.

[cAPSLOCK]

I was about to correct your way of looking at it but your edit did that.

In some ways its a -ev conversation since teaching fish to understand statistics is teaching the fundamentals.  The fact is people have voodoo in their thought processes even without knowing it.  The way we look at the cards is the engine that runs this game we love so much.

[IBeforeWe]

Don't want to interrupt the rigged-a-thon but just wanted to post that while I joined the site a couple of months ago, have just gotten around to play quite a bit over the past week or so. Enjoying myself so far, and the fast deposits/cashouts via bitcoins are a definite plus over any other online option available to me right now. While the software isn't the prettiest, it's functional if occasionally laggy for a few moments.

Am somewhat disappointed that there are so few options for tournaments, but from what I have read in the chat, that has been improving as of late. I think there is definitely room for improvement in some of the structures as well. Played the Monday PLO last night, and would really like to see 3k starting stacks in the future. Contemplating playing the rebuy tonight, but the structure seems more like a super turbo: 1k starting stacks(and rebuys) and only 6 minute levels. I can't imagine the tourney would last much longer with 1500 starting stacks and 8 min levels, for example, assuming running time is your main concern when devising structures. That being said, these are just minor gripes.

Implementing hand-for-hand play on the money bubbles of tournaments would be a great improvement as well, although I imagine that is slightly more laborious to program on the back end. Haven't played that many tournies, but have already seen several instances of players stalling every single hand on the bubble.

Anyway, don't want to seem like am complaining so much, def enjoy the site overall. Look forward to playing more.

[darkmule]

11 post sockpuppet troll account detected. 

The ignore button is nice.

[FreeMoney]

Facts:

1. Pseudo random numbers will produce hole cards, flops turns and rivers which over a reasonable sample size will show the expected distribution.  I would bet 10BTC against the idea that analysis of enough data from hands at seals would show abnormal distribution.  If someone is interested in this I will detail ,y terms.

2. SWC stands to make shittons of money even charging as reasonable a rake as they do.  It is in their best interest to provide the fairest environment possible to their regulars and recreational players.  Nothing is really more important than trust for them.  The client etc all come in second at best.

3.  There are surely many many thousands of dollars (possible understatement) being held in wallets by seals.  If they wanted an unethical payday they would disappear with that money.  They have not done this.

As a player at seals for well over a year, I can vouch for the quality of the people running it.  They have earned my trust.  And as I said... To my analysis the distribution of cards is absolutely normal.

I fully agree.

Actually, one thing that worries me, (after what happened to Slush and bitcoin-central), is that even very reliable site could get hacked. Of course, I trust your capabilities and I assume you have done very good job minimising the risk and possible losses. Actualy, I feel quite safe regarding seals. Slush and BC minimized ther losses and I believe you do as good job as they did.

However, I would feel safest, if I could send the BTC to the site before starting to play and then send my wallet back after I stop. I think it is almost impossibe to make it completely work like that, transactions should be immediate to make it happen.

I assume you make manual transactions as a final step to prevent cheaters from withdrawaling the chips and possibly preventing some unwanted accidents. That's good. But how about adding some kind of credit to the system? Let's say, a player has a roll of 2k. He has 2k on the site and makes a 'conditional withdrawal' for that. That request is manually accepted just like normal withdrawal. However, after that, a player has a 'credit' for 2k, so before session, he can send the 2k back to the site, then play and afterwards make *immediate* withdrawal for max 2k. That would make possible to keep roll on player's own wallet instead of the site.

Actually, initial 'credit' could be the deposit amount.

i can imagine one way of abusing it; if player loses all his roll and after that gets the same amount of chips by cheating. Then he could withdrawal the cheated chips without manual intervention.

When I was thinking about how slush and BC was hacked, another idea came to my mind; some kind of emergency transaction, which, when triggered, would send the hot wallet to an offline wallet. So when the site is rebooted unintentionally, or something otherwise weird happens (you know better what could be suspicious), the online wallet would be immediately emptied to an offline wallet, leaving the thief empty handed. Of course, the best would be to have no online wallet (I think it would be possible, if very carefully designed).

Btw, do you have a 'dead mans switch', which would send all player's money to their withdrawal addresses if FBI knocks on your door ;-) ?

That credit system sounds complicated to me, I don't quite understand.

Not having instant withdrawals protects users and the site. If you give someone else your credentials you are playing with fire and we can't make any promises, but we do help when the situation is clear and we can. Delayed and manually checked withdrawals have saved several players a substantial amount. In almost two years of manual checking we've never found anything like magic chips being withdrawn, but I still think it is very much worth it not to have anything going out without a real brain approving it.

We are probably going to stick with all manual, it may get faster than our current 12 hours max time though. It was really nice when we could (in the sense that we took a risk and got away with it) accept zero confirm deposits. I'd like to bring that back in a limited capacity. Probably it would be set up where each individual account has a limit for what will be credited immediately. It would need to be clear that 0-conf transactions are not deposits, they just trigger a loan that will be paid back automatically when a confirmation comes in. Seals would have to specifically have funds for this purpose. We can't put chips in play that don't have corresponding bitcoins backing them up. And we can't use 0-confs to pay winners, so they don't count. (I'm aware that you can send 0-confs, it just isn't right to pay winners with them).

I have thought a lot about a panic switch distribution. I'm reluctant for a few reasons. Even those who understand that they should use an address that they will own 'forever' might stick something in there that they control now, lose control at some point and not think to update. It's also hard to foresee every complication and there is no practicing for this. Also, all funds ought not be one button click away from distributed so it doesn't really work in most panic situations. An orderly shutdown of play and deposits etc, would be required first in addition to moving the funds to a position where they can be sent.

In an emergency it might take longer without a system like this in place, but I'm confident that whenever we'd be able to execute a panic button successfully we'd also be able to do a slower shutdown successfully.

[Wingman4l7]

I would bet you 50BTC (engaged through an escrow) that the analysis of ALL my hands played through to showdown on SWC shows abnormal distribution.

Well, OF COURSE that selection of hands would show an abnormal distribution.

Any sampling that is a result of choice, is going to be abnormal.
[...]
The fact that you would even offer that as the term of the bet, just tells me you don't have a clue about how random sampling for statistical analysis even works, for determining a normal distribution of a random number generator, and the cards that are being dealt.

You need every card dealt, for every hand, for every table, for a crapload of rounds that were played. Not just the ones that you thought would have been good enough to win, regardless of the other players' choices to hold or fold.

-- Smoov

LOL not to mention you need a sample size of what, a few tens of thousands of hands at least to get an accurate number, IIRC.  You're the second rigtard that's offered that who I would bet isn't even keeping track of their own hand histories.

seals with clubs is rigged and filled with colluders.

dont believe me?
watch the full ring tables and notice how it gets empty of a sudden.
this site is doomed to fail.

 OR -- maybe people don't want to be paying out blinds 2-3x as often if there are only a few people seated at a table, so they just leave?  

[Micon]

Beta PC client version'd:  https://sealswithclubs.eu/beta-client/

Would love to hear some windows 8 reports, it is supported in this version.


tytytytyty to our players for feedback and for your continued support.  You make us.  We love you.

[Nite69]

That credit system sounds complicated to me, I don't quite understand.

Maybe I was also thinking it too complicated way... and word 'credit' don't fit very well on this. Also, remember that you already have better deposit/withdrawl system than any other site.. so sticking with it is definitely not a bad idea. But even then one should be at least thinking of improvements.

1) The requirement (wish) would be a possibility for a player to be able to play with ones own wallet.
2) How could this be done? Simpliest way would be that a player could withdrawal automatically (almost instantly) the same sum he just deposited. If the player wins in the long run, she/he needs a manual withdrawal to get out the winnings.

Of course, current system is simple and effective, so any change to make it more complicated also includes a risk. Do not fix something that works ;-).

Not having instant withdrawals protects users and the site. If you give someone else your credentials you are playing with fire and we can't make any promises, but we do help when the situation is clear and we can. Delayed and manually checked withdrawals have saved several players a substantial amount. In almost two years of manual checking we've never found anything like magic chips being withdrawn, but I still think it is very much worth it not to have anything going out without a real brain approving it.

Thats very true.

We are probably going to stick with all manual, it may get faster than our current 12 hours max time though. It was really nice when we could (in the sense that we took a risk and got away with it) accept zero confirm deposits. I'd like to bring that back in a limited capacity. Probably it would be set up where each individual account has a limit for what will be credited immediately. It would need to be clear that 0-conf transactions are not deposits, they just trigger a loan that will be paid back automatically when a confirmation comes in. Seals would have to specifically have funds for this purpose. We can't put chips in play that don't have corresponding bitcoins backing them up. And we can't use 0-confs to pay winners, so they don't count. (I'm aware that you can send 0-confs, it just isn't right to pay winners with them).

Personally, 0-conf is nice, but 1 confirmation really is not a big deal for me. However, I understand it is for some short-tempered players :-D. Actually, I prefer more 1 conf for the security.
I really like your principle to back up everythink with real bitcoins.

I have thought a lot about a panic switch distribution. I'm reluctant for a few reasons. Even those who understand that they should use an address that they will own 'forever' might stick something in there that they control now, lose control at some point and not think to update. It's also hard to foresee every complication and there is no practicing for this. Also, all funds ought not be one button click away from distributed so it doesn't really work in most panic situations. An orderly shutdown of play and deposits etc, would be required first in addition to moving the funds to a position where they can be sent.

In an emergency it might take longer without a system like this in place, but I'm confident that whenever we'd be able to execute a panic button successfully we'd also be able to do a slower shutdown successfully.

Yes, there are a lot of things to consider not to make a panic button cause more problems than benefit.

Maybe the most important thing would be to make such protections that a possible attacker finds it useless even to try to attack the site. Ie, if possible, no unencrypted wallets (with manual withdrawal, this should be possible?), and/or some switch that sends all the money to an offline wallet if someone even tries to hack the system. BTC sites are hacked, because hackers see they can steal BTC. If there are no BTC to steal, there will be a lot less hackers (well, with poker sites there could also be some other motives).

Of course, it is also important to have direct actions to protect the system, but my opinion is that this comes second. First one is to make it clear to possible hackers that even if they success, they are doing it for nothing.

[luv2drnkbr]

Actually you would see skew no matter what if you look at board cards. It would be relatively small and I can't guess the direction without more thought.
 
In some games a flop is almost always seen. In some games a preflop raise often takes the pot, in those games there will tend to only be a flop when multiple players have higher than average ranks in their hands and you will see lower than average cards on the board. There will also be some flops that tend to make the hand end early and deal no rivers. Without looking at any data I would guess than flushes come in a little bit less often than simple analysis would predict because the turn and river are more likely to be dealt if two or more players are on a flush draw, partially blocking each other.

edit: If you just looked at a tally of every card that ever appeared that would be correctly distributed. It's just if you look at "river cards" or similar specifically that there will be skew.

I have a theory that live games without shufflers have slightly more aces come on the board than would otherwise be dictated, because the winning hand has an ace more often than any other card, and usually the winning hand is scooped up last, putting it on the bottom of the deck before the shuffle.  And in standard "riffle, riffle, box, riffle, cut" shuffle, the bottom card ends up being somewhere between the 20th and 30th card a much higher percentage of the time than other locations, and in a 9 and 10 handed game, 4 or 5 of that 10-card range are the board cards.  Thus aces should come out more often.  The problem of course is that in situations where the ace is there, people are less likely to HAVE an ace, and thus the hand is less likely to see a flop to begin with.  But I still think that even with that side effect, aces still show up on the board some tiny tiny amount higher than would be dictated by true randomness.  It doesn't matter though, since any time I'm actually in a live game without machines, I am just watching the dealer shuffle anyway, and using my shuffle tracking skills to attempt to know if the card is going to a certain player or is likely to come up on the board.  Knowing that the 6c is probably going to be coming out on the board much more often than it should (not for certain, since there is obviously an error rate in my tracking ability) is really useful when you get dealt red sixes.

[Wingman4l7]

I have a theory that live games without shufflers have slightly more aces come on the board than would otherwise be dictated, because the winning hand has an ace more often than any other card, and usually the winning hand is scooped up last, putting it on the bottom of the deck before the shuffle.  And in standard "riffle, riffle, box, riffle, cut" shuffle, the bottom card ends up being somewhere between the 20th and 30th card a much higher percentage of the time than other locations, and in a 9 and 10 handed game, 4 or 5 of that 10-card range are the board cards.  Thus aces should come out more often.  [...]

Interesting!  What I take away from this is:  online play is actually more fair than live play, because of its use of a statistically proven random shuffling algorithm! 

[IBeforeWe]

X-posting this from 2+2, someone having issues logging onto both pc and broswer clients.

Says they are receiving the following when attempting to log on:

Error message "Could not connect to PokerMavens server. Aborting login."

They are apparently able to load the web site fine, just unable to access the lobby.

[Micon]

X-posting this from 2+2, someone having issues logging onto both pc and broswer clients.

Says they are receiving the following when attempting to log on:

Error message "Could not connect to PokerMavens server. Aborting login."

They are apparently able to load the web site fine, just unable to access the lobby.

odd...

worked for me on 2x different net connections...

Anyone with any info?  screenshots?

[Keven]

I play NL10/20 two days in SWC.
How to adjust the poker window size?
How to take notes on players?
sometims I seen two 10/20 tables of 6seat but sometims no one. WHY?
Every time I can seat on a new empty table for every level in PokerStars,but SWC.
Sorry for my Chinese English

[deadserious]

I play NL10/20 two days in SWC.
How to adjust the poker window size?
How to take notes on players?
sometims I seen two 10/20 tables of 6seat but sometims no one. WHY?
Every time I can seat on a new empty table for every level in PokerStars,but SWC.
Sorry for my Chinese English

The window size is currently not resizeable in the windows client, only in the web client.  The android app will resize to fit your screen.

The notes feature isn't working yet.

You can start any table you want with the table launcher on the web site.  I think there is a menu item to do it in the windows client too.

Sorry for my American English.