As avid poker players, we're always looking to seek out those operators that can provide a service that goes one step further than many others. With the continuing growth of the use of cryptocurrencies in poker games, it's good to know which poker rooms work with crypto and can offer a high-quality product.
That's how we landed on CoinPoker - a site that you'll want to know about if playing poker using digital currencies is attracting your interest. Because CoinPoker transacts around the globe in pretty much every country, it appeals strongly to crypto users in Australia, the United States, and other jurisdictions, which must choose from a smaller list of online poker sites that welcome their action. This Coin Poker review will evaluate what CoinPoker offers to players in this sphere.
We've examined the software, action at the tables, promotions, cashouts, and more at CoinPoker to assess what you can expect when you register and begin playing in this room. Keep reading through our thorough review of Coinpoker for the full facts.
If you're thinking about whether to sign up with CoinPoker, the first piece of info you're likely to need will be a quick hit list of the good and bad points. So let's start by taking a look at the main strengths and weaknesses of the operation before we get to the main body of this review, where we'll explore all of the performance indicators in more depth:
While most players find the gameplay experience at CoinPoker satisfying, many have other concerns about the company. The variable value of the CHP token, minor technical glitches, and low traffic levels dismay many customers. Here's a selection of actual comments left by CoinPoker players across the internet:
CoinPoker is proud of its ability to service clients from around the world. It does not bar residents from any country. CoinPoker's T&C's state that it's the user's responsibility to ensure that playing online poker is not against the law in their specific jurisdiction.
There's a lot of grey area involved in determining whether real money internet gaming is legal or illegal according to the sometimes vague and arbitrary statutes in place in various parts of the globe. However, our meticulous research into the laws of two major online poker markets, Australia and the United States, has determined that playing online poker in these two countries is not illegal.
The often-nonsensical anti-gambling legislation targets the operators and owners of the gaming sites in these two countries. Ordinary players are safe from a legal perspective. You can read more on this subject in this legal guide to USA poker and a page explaining the intricacies of Australian law and offshore poker.
So we've seen some comments on experiences from real players at Coin Poker, including a summary of what we saw from our evaluations. These views will have given you a basic feel for the pros and cons you'll experience if registering an account and playing. But there's more you'll need to know to understand what's on offer, so let's look at a more revealing list of the key performance indicators that will strongly impact your own experiences once you have a player account.
KPI | Our View | Performance Summary |
---|---|---|
Site traffic | Good | Although total player counts at CoinPoker place it nowhere near the market leaders; its relative ranking improves when we compare it to other crypto-only poker rooms. The fact is that it's larger than SwCPoker, Nitrogen Poker, and all others focused on digital assets. |
Game softness | Average | There are sites both softer and more challenging than Coin Poker. It lacks crossover sportsbook and casino traffic, which can tend to make games juicy. However, plenty of players here are more familiar with crypto-currency than with poker, and the effects are seen throughout the games available. |
Country availability | Excellent | Players from all countries are accepted, and the site is available in multiple languages other than English. Australia and the United States of America are two of the most prominent countries whose residents are excluded from many competing organizations but are welcome at CoinPoker. |
Game variety | Decent | No Limit Hold'em and Pot Limit Omaha, the two most popular variants, are present at Coin Poker, but PLO/8 and Limit Hold'em are not offered. On the other hand, five-card PLO is available here while it is not at many other sites. |
Speed of website & user experience | Average | The CoinPoker website and poker client perform about as well as you would expect. There are no significant slowdowns or delays, and the action moves smoothly from player to player. |
Licensing | Poor | Coinpoker has no license to conduct gaming anywhere, so it is genuinely an unlicensed site. It relies on its history of fairness and roster of prominent names among its staff to set new customers at ease. |
Trustworthiness | Good | It's challenging to find much accurate info on the owners of Coinpoker, although, as we mentioned in licensing above, it has always acted in an aboveboard manner concerning player funds, and the CoinPoker team contains many noteworthy individuals who would be unlikely to associate themselves with an underhanded operation. |
Payout speed | Excellent | The speed of the transactions is always fast at CoinPoker, whether for deposits or withdrawals. You can expect payouts at Coinpoker to be completed within a few hours and sometimes in a few minutes. |
Banking/cashier | Good | There are many different forms of digital currencies accepted, which you would expect, including both BTC and ETH. Because it deals only in cryptos, CoinPoker does not provide withdrawals by check, bank wire, or other legacy payment channels. |
Bonuses/promos | Good | You can benefit from three separate welcome bonuses that can be redeemed in any order. You can get a 100% bonus of up to ₮100, a 100% bonus of up to ₮300, and another 100% bonus of up to ₮700. This bonus is available for all new players. All players who hold CHP, CoinPoker's proprietary coin, will receive 33% rakeback on an ongoing basis. |
All players new and existing can take advantage of three separate bonuses at CoinPoker including a 100% bonus of up to ₮100, a 100% bonus of up to ₮300, and another 100% bonus of up to ₮700!
For every ₮2 paid in rake or tournament fees, you'll release ₮1 of your bonus. The bonus will be released in 10% increments. This amounts to 50% effective rakeback, which is pretty good. Because you can also receive 33% rakeback on an ongoing basis, players can earn up to 80% effective rakeback in total.
Many people like to obtain rakeback as a form of rebate on the money they pay while grinding at the tables. You may be pleased that Coinpoker offers a 33% rakeback standard to its players, but you must possess a balance in its proprietary CHP token to benefit from it.
Ordinarily, the rake (called Community Contributions at Coin) you pay in ring game tables is paid in USDT. However, if you have a CHP balance, then when you leave the table, all the USDT rake you paid during that session is returned to you, and the equivalent amount in CHP is deducted from your balance.
Then, every Monday, 33% of the CHP you paid in rake over the past week is returned to you. However, if you lack a CHP balance, you are ineligible to receive this 33% rakeback.
This in-house RB program is the only form of CoinPoker rakeback deal. We did find a few affiliates offering private CoinPoker rakeback arrangements. These ad hoc RB percentages are basically up to the affiliate's discretion. Many sites promoting such rakeback deals for CoinPoker are best described as “unsavory.”
If you do decide to investigate the possibility of extra CoinPoker RB from an outside source, we advise you to exercise caution.
Creating an account on CoinPoker is a straightforward process once you head to this poker room's website.
CoinPoker is a USA- and AUS-friendly, crypto-currency online poker site that opened its virtual doors in late 2017 for play money before debuting real money games in early 2018. Unlike most of its peers in the crypto gaming space, this organization has developed its own digital currency, called CHP, used for certain player-advantageous functions. At the same time, tables are denominated in ₮ (Tether or USDT). Because the value of Tether is tied to the U.S. dollar, the stakes shown are, for all intents and purposes, the equivalent of their values in dollars.
As opposed to many new poker rooms, this one has some pretty famous names attached to it, like Antanas “Tony G” Guoga, who is listed as an Advisor, and Isabelle Mercier, who is described as Chief Community Manager. It's heartening to see that this isn't just a fly-by-night operation backed by many anonymous nobodies.
CoinPoker has developed one relatively scarce feature in peer-to-peer internet poker. The random number generator is provably fair, meaning that users can verify that the deal in any given hand is legitimate with an outside, third-party server. Provably fair RNGs have increased throughout the online casino world but have yet to make much of an impact where poker is concerned.
The CoinPoker website features white text on a black background in keeping with its astronomical theme. Specific highlights and user interface icons are in pink, matching the Coin Poker logo.
The center of the page is dominated by a slider presenting images of features of Coin Poker and promotions that the room wishes to highlight. Across the top are menus letting you access various pages on the site.
Below the fold, you'll see links to CoinPoker's social media accounts and a field permitting you to enter your email address and subscribe to the CoinPoker newsletter. Next is a short explanation of what Coin Poker is and some of its features, followed by a FAQ.
At the bottom of the page, you'll find more social media buttons, another prompt to subscribe to the newsletter, and links to the Terms and Conditions and Betting Rules.
Overall, the site is easy on the eyes and full of information. It is a bit easy to browse away to irrelevant or tangential information because some of the menu items are vague and not clear as to where they link to.
During our time at the Coinpoker poker tables, there was a noticeable absence of jitter or delay in any site interactions. From a website speed perspective, that trouble-free gaming experience suggests the site is well-designed to meet the needs of players. To confirm that impression, we ran some additional technical tests.
Our first speed test was conducted through WebPageTest.org. This advanced test was run via servers situated in Virginia, USA. The only real issue noted was a high LCP measurement of just over 8 seconds. This LCP refers to the most prominent image that needs to be rendered and is probably caused by the initial homepage slider. That scale of LCP measurement is unlikely to lead to any noticeable effects on loading speed for a human user.
Our second test was completed using Google PageSpeed Insights. The Google test resulted in a reasonable score of 56 for mobile users and a surprisingly lower 41 for desktop users. Although you may think these are not excellent scores, given the maximum would be 100, it's wise to avoid reading too much into them. Scores of this type mean the page has a lot of work to do to load, and the negative effect would probably only be noticed on an inferior broadband connection or perhaps an older mobile device.
The internet has proven to be not only a mechanism for legitimate education, commerce, and recreation but also a dangerous playground for hackers and other wrongdoers. This is why it's important to keep yourself safe by avoiding hazardous or shady websites. With these threats in mind, we've decided to evaluate the website security of CoinPoker.
Google Safe Browsing site status tool reports “No unsafe content found” when we plugged the coinpoker.com URL into its testing module. Trend Micro's site safety report similarly categorizes the CoinPoker website as “Safe.” We ourselves have encountered nothing that would make us suspicious of this poker room or its web pages.
Coinpoker has no license, a weak point, albeit a minor one. When dealing with offshore gaming enterprises, the history of the site and the team behind it count far more than the presence or lack of any license.
Given that there have not been any serious complaints about the integrity of the gaming or the faithfulness of payouts, we trust that CoinPoker is a legitimate site. Obtaining licensure would be a good step for management because many players look for an official stamp of approval before trusting any corporation with their money.
CoinPoker, having only been in business for a few years, does not have an extensive history to rely upon when attracting new users. What history is does have has mainly been smooth and trouble-free, which is a good sign.
Many well-known individuals in poker, like Antanas “Tony G” Guoga and Isabelle Mercier, have attached themselves to the CoinPoker project. This gives it an aura of respectability and dependability in some quarters.
CoinPoker has the standard breakdown of ring games and multi-table tournaments. In addition, there are Cosmic Spins, which is a type of lottery poker. There are no standard sit-n-goes. All games and buyins are denominated in Tether (USDT or ₮), which is a “stablecoin” – that is, a cryptocurrency whose value is pegged to an external asset: in this case, the U.S. dollar.
There are cash games for No Limit Texas Hold'em, Pot Limit Omaha, and Pot Limit Five-Card Omaha. These first two formats are standard at almost every online poker site, whereas the last one is a bit harder to find. Given the presence of this niche variant, it's surprising that there's no form of split-pot Omaha present, whether in pot limit or fixed limit form.
Standard NLHE, PLO, and 5PLO tables seat seven players, but certain heads-up high-stakes tables are available for these three games. Aside from the smallest blind levels, these tables require the payment of an ante in addition to the blinds.
The listed blind levels go up to ₮5,000/₮10,000, but the games that actually tend to run generally go no higher than about ₮2.50/₮5.00. Curiously, the highest blind levels are reserved for four-card poker, while Hold'em tops out at ₮1,000/₮2,000.
During peak times (European evenings), there are usually about two dozen or so tables active, with micro-stakes predominating. NLHE is the most popular format, with the PLO games close behind.
Cosmic Spins is CoinPoker's version of lottery-style SNGs. Once three players enter, the game begins, and a multiplier is chosen randomly from specific preselected values ranging from 2x to 1,000x. Whatever number is selected, the participants will be competing for a prize pool of that many buyins.
Multipliers from 2x to 20x reward only the winner of the game—higher multipliers payout 80% to first place and 10% apiece to second and third.
Players start with 500 chips, and the initial blind level is 10/20. The action picks up rapidly because each level is only 2 minutes long, so Cosmic Spins take no more than a few minutes to conclude.
The MTTs at CoinPoker are generally named after astronomical phenomena, like the Milky Way, Neptune, and Red Moon. There are a few dozen each day with buyins ranging from ₮1 to ₮150.
Larger tournaments are held on the weekends, like the Sunday Special, which guarantees 12,000 USDT for a buyin of 200. Saturday brings the Saturday Freezeout Special, where you can pay ₮500 for the opportunity to compete for a guaranteed prize pool of ₮10,000.
Most of the tourneys are NLHE contests, but there are a few PLO and PLO5 games. The tournament schedule is packed with rebuy events though there are some freezeouts. Bounty MTTs are relatively common too.
From time to time, CoinPoker runs a small series, like the Crypto Series of Poker. The latest installment of the CSOP ran April 8 - 17, 2022, with 20 tournaments and $90,000 guaranteed. While this cannot compete with some of the series at the largest offshore poker sites, like Ignition's Black Diamond Poker Open and ACR's Online Super Series, it does give faithful CoinPoker regulars something special to look forward to now and again.
CoinPoker attracts sufficient players to its tables to record an average ring game population of 120 players, with peaks above 150 players. This represents a couple of dozen tables running most times throughout the day. Because of the distributed nature of its worldwide clientele, CoinPoker doesn't have as big a difference peak-to-trough during the day as many other online poker rooms.
This cash game traffic is heavily concentrated in micro-and small-stakes No Limit Hold'em. Still, at least a couple of PLO and PLO5 games are generally active.
Cosmic Spins tend to fire off rapidly too. At least at the lowest $1 buyin level, games tend to start within a minute of the first player registering.
Tournament fields are on the smaller side, with generally a few dozen entrants competing in most of the MTT schedule.
The games at Coin Poker are a bit tougher compared to most other crypto-focused poker rooms. They're certainly not as fishy as those at sites that are attached to a sportsbook and/or casino. Nevertheless, the player pool is softer than at some of the larger poker venues online, like PokerStars and Americas Cardroom.
Tournaments are generally a bit easier than the ring games. This might be a consequence of the frequent satellites, especially freeroll qualifiers, that introduce newcomers to higher-buyin tourneys that they otherwise would not play.
There are a few additional promos that are available at CoinPoker. They serve as a way for the site to deliver extra incentives back to the players over time.
Every week, 100 players claim a share of 10,000 USDT by placing high on the Weekly Cash Game leaderboards. There are two separate leaderboards – one for NLHE and another for PLO – and the top 50 individuals on each leaderboard get paid. This promo runs from Monday to Sunday GMT each week.
The best NLHE players get to split up 5,795 USDT while the PLO leaderboard is worth 4,205 USDT. The top prize for Hold'em is ₮1,000 whereas the highest PLO competitor receives ₮750. On the low end, prizes for Texas Hold'em start at 10 Tether, and the corresponding amount for Omaha poker is 5 Tether.
The point calculations are based on the number of big blinds contributed in the rake although there is a multiplier system to reward those who sit in higher stakes. The PLO leaderboard includes the regular four-card game as well as five-card tables. Push or Fold games do not award leaderboard points.
Any Community Contributions paid in CHP tokens reward the player with 50% more leaderboard points.
There's ₮15,000 in prizes to be won every month for CoinPoker's tournament players. Points toward the leaderboard are determined by the field size, a player's finishing position, and the buyin amount. Anyone who registers for a tournament before it begins will get a 10% bonus on points.
Freebuys and satellites do not count toward the MTT leaderboard. Push or Fold tourneys are excluded from granting leaderboard points too.
The prizes, of which there are 150, consist of combinations of cash, Crypto Series of Online Poker Main Event tickets, and generic tournament tickets. The top placer each month gets ₮1,000, three ₮200 tourney tickets, and a CSOP Main Event Ticket. The 150th place finisher gets solely a ₮5 MTT token without receiving any cash or CSOP ticket.
You will see a Flyby Freebuy Satellite tourney listed in the lobby several times per day. This type of freeroll costs nothing to enter, but you can rebuy and add-on in these hyperturbo games for just ₮0.25.
The top participants receive tickets to small-stakes MTTs. The specific target event varies a bit, but the buyin is usually between 5 and 10 USDT, and the guarantee is from ₮250 to ₮500.
You won't get rich entering these Flyby Freebuys, but they are a decent way to build a bankroll from scratch. Flybys are generally NLHE contests, but there are a few in PLO and PLO5.
CoinPoker has debuted a Bad Beat Jackpot that is active at every ring game table as long as a minimum of three players are dealt into the hand. It's funded by 5% of the rake taken from every table. To qualify, at least three players must be dealt into the hand, the losing and winning hands must both go to showdown, and both hole cards must be used in each hand to form the final five-card hand. In the case of four of a kind, the hole cards must be a pocket pair.
The strength of the hand needed to activate the BBJ depends upon the game type and the current size of the jackpot. In NLHE, you need AAAKK or better to lose at showdown. In PLO, the required minimum hand is a straight flush. In 5PLO, you also need a straight flush, but it must be 7-high or better.
To keep things fair, the percentage of the jackpot that is awarded varies depending on the stakes you are playing and the game type. The lowest stake of 5PLO, for example, only pays out 1% of the total when the jackpot is hit. All NL Hold'em games with stakes of 0.50/1 and higher award 45% of the Bad Beat Jackpot prize pool when activated.
When the BBJ is hit, 50% of the funds paid out go to the loser of the hand while the winner picks up 20%. Another 20% is divided among the other participants at the table, and the final 10% is used to reseed the prize pool.
The software for the poker client at CoinPoker is supplied by TGLab, not one of the leading development houses in the online gaming realm. One of the few other poker operators that employ TGLab products is TonyBet Poker. Antanas “Tony G” Guoga is connected to both TonyBet and CoinPoker, so perhaps he was in some way involved in choosing this gaming client.
CoinPoker is compatible with both Windows and Mac hardware. In addition, there are mobile apps for iOS and Android.
The poker lobby is about as expected, with tabs on the top letting you select the type of game and a list of tables/tournaments filling the bulk of the window. Just below these tabs are a few filters that you can use to include or exclude various games from the list.
Toward the top of the lobby, there's an icon of a gear that controls the settings for the software. They are divided into three parts: Profile, Visual Settings, and Advanced Options. A fourth tab, Tickets, displays any tournament tickets you possess.
Profile basically just shows you information about your account, like your registered email address and screen name. You can upload an avatar in this section.
Visual Settings is basically about card style, table backgrounds, and custom graphics, referred to as “community skins.”
Advanced Options lets you adjust auto-rebuy, avatar display, sounds, auto-muck, chat, and similar settings.
The poker tables at CoinPoker adhere to the usual formula. Player nameplates are arranged around the table with chip stack values displayed and avatars off to one side. You need to right-click on the table to switch between seeing stack sizes in Tether or big blinds. You can multi-table up to six games at the same time.
When it's your turn to act, you can fold, call/check, or bet/raise. Adjusting your bet size is accomplished by either typing a number directly into the box provided for this purpose, moving the sliding bar, pressing the plus and minus controls to either side of the bar, or using one of the preset sizing buttons. Unfortunately, the values associated with these buttons are standardized and cannot be altered.
In regular ring games, you have 15 seconds to act. In addition, there's a timebank of 60 seconds that fully replenishes every 50 hands.
Taking notes is achieved by clicking on a player's nameplate. A nice touch is that the note-taking interface automatically places a bullet to the left of each note you take. You can delete this bullet character if you wish. Besides these notes, you can also tag a player with one of seven colors.
At the top-right corner of the table are icons representing useful functions to manage your session. You can tile or cascade tables, adjust the size of the window, rebuy, and more. The hand history feature can be launched from here too.
There's no preferred seating per se, but you can move your position one seat to the right by clicking on the icon near the top that looks like a rectangle with a right-pointing arrow. Sadly, there's no seat that corresponds to the bottom center of the table. The best you can do is bottom-left or bottom-right.
The Chat is in the bottom-left of the table along with Options, Info, and RNG. This entire area of the table can be minimized, showing just these four titles.
Chat is self-explanatory, and there are no fancy emojis or smileys here. Options contain things like wait for big blind and auto rebuy. Straddling and Run It Twice are possible, and you can turn them on within this tab too. Info shows you basic information about the table, like the rake schedule and the details of disconnect protection. RNG lets you enter a phrase for use with the provably fair dealing mechanism.
The hand history display, accessed from a table by clicking on a symbol near the top of the window that looks like a clock, lets you step through each decision point in a hand while viewing a graphical representation of the table. You can also allow a hand to play out in its entirety without interruption.
It's possible to view some of the undealt cards and see what the flop, turn, and river would have been even if the hand ended preflop.
The left and right arrows at the bottom of the screen serve to advance to the next hand or step back to the previous one. There's a text-based HH view that you can access by clicking on the hand number below the left and right controls.
CoinPoker has taken the step of prohibiting HUDs, trackers, solvers, and other instances of what it describes as “External Player Assistance Programs.” It is against the site's terms of service to employ such programs while playing.
Tracking packages and HUD developers have honored this rule, and almost all such software on the market today is not compatible with CoinPoker. However, third parties have created hand grabbers that convert the original CoinPoker hand histories into a format that can be imported into major tracking + HUD suites.
You are at a disadvantage if you follow the rules but must sit at tables with those using such illicit software. On the other hand, if you take an if-you-can't-beat-them-join-them approach and opt to utilize a hand grabber, you could be barred from CoinPoker and your account balance forfeit. This is an unfortunate dilemma that confronts every serious CoinPoker user.
There are several aspects to CoinPoker that make it distinct from the standard internet poker site. These features were designed on purpose to give Coin Poker an edge over its less imaginative competitors.
CHP is an in-house currency used by CoinPoker. It’s an ERC-20 token that records all transactions on the Ethereum blockchain. Without going into too many technical details, the CoinPoker team has created CHP in compliance with all the rules for tokenization on the Ethereum blockchain. It then distributes them to players and exchanges.
All balances used to be held in CHP, regardless of the method used to deposit, and they thus fluctuated with the price of this asset. All gaming at the site used to be denominated in CHP also.
Unfortunately, the price history of CHP does not exactly inspire confidence in its ability to retain value. Check out this graph from Coinmarketcap.com:
From its all-time high of close to $0.15 per token in May 2018, CHP declined to lower than two-tenths of a penny in value in February 2019. Or, put another way, the value of CHIP decreased more than 98% from its peak to its trough. It has, since that time, recovered considerably to its current market value (as of April 24, 2022) of around $0.058 per token.
When you hold a CHP balance at CoinPoker, you are subject to all the price fluctuations inherent in dealing with crypto but without the assurance of holding a tried-and-proven digital coin, like Bitcoin or Litecoin. Instead, you're committed to an obscure coin whose fortunes are tied intimately to the success of the CoinPoker platform.
If you elect to play here, it may be wise only to hold enough CHP to cover your weekly rake payments to benefit from CoinPoker rakeback (described above). Unless you're a savvy investor who's consciously and deliberately taking a long position in CHP, any excess beyond what you need will result in unpredictable price fluctuations.
Another problem with CHP is that you cannot buy it with fiat currency. It is traded on a few lesser-known crypto exchanges, like QuickSwap, but none of them, to our knowledge, lists USD/CHP pairings. Instead, you must first possess another crypto, like USDT, paired in a market with CHIP to effect your trade. Fortunately, you can deposit in crypto other than CHP at CoinPoker and then transform it to CHP at the cashier.
At one point, all gaming at CoinPoker was conducted with CHP and balances were held in this token, too, meaning that it was impossible to play without committing yourself to this proprietary coin. However, in October 2020, Coin switched to using USDT for these functions, introducing much-desired stability to its ecosystem. Now CHP serves as a complementary crypto, allowing you to get weekly rakeback, discounts on withdrawal fees, and bonus points on leaderboards while the games and the majority of user balances are denominated in Tether.
One of the aspects of its poker room that CoinPoker is most proud of is its decentralized card shuffling techniques, which incorporate user input and are verifiable by all participants after each hand is completed. To contribute to the shuffling algorithm, a player must access the RNG tab on the table and enter a seed phrase. This text is then combined with the input of other users and a random string generated by CoinPoker to start the shuffling process.
The details of this procedure are too complex to go into here. Still, it involves using the inputs of all contributors (including the site itself) to generate hashes, which are then applied to a deck of cards to place it in a random order. Even though the final arrangement of the cards is random and unpredictable, anyone can later go back and confirm that the order of the cards dealt corresponds to the deck legitimately generated with the specified input phrases.
To check that the deal was correct and fair, open the hand history viewer and browse to the hand you're interested in. Click the “Hand Hindsight” link near the bottom of the window. You will then see the seed and hash info, and you can click on the “Validate Hand” link near the top of the window to open a validation tool in your web browser.
Enter the appropriate strings from the “Hand Hindsight” display into the validation page, and then press the “Validate” button to confirm that the deal was legit.
It’s evident that CoinPoker has devoted many resources to its transparent RNG, which is featured prominently on the room's website. Yet, it's not clear that this counts as a significant accomplishment.
First of all, some of the random elements come from CoinPoker itself, so you still have to trust that the site is acting honestly. Secondly, the phrases entered by other players cannot readily be verified by you unless you happen to know all of them personally and can communicate with them on outside channels (unlikely).
The most important argument against this provably fair system, though, is that random number generation is more or less an already solved problem. Other than a few mishaps near the beginning of online poker more than 20 years ago, just about every RNG in use at major sites has been solid and effectively uncrackable. Whenever dishonesty and cheating have been uncovered, it has involved super-using, multi-accounting, collusion, botting, and just about every other sort of wrongdoing under the sun except faulty RNGs.
Thus, CoinPoker has spent a lot of time and effort tackling an essentially irrelevant issue. Management would have done better to instead focus on strengthening other security measures, such as tactics for identifying bots and collusion.
Some players claim to care a lot about fair card distribution and find fault with existing random number generators. These are unsophisticated individuals who always blame their bad luck and poor play on a rigged deal. Suffice it to say, they are almost always incorrect in their conjectures, and they will not be impressed by CoinPoker's decentralized RNG system anyway. These losers will just come up with some other outlandish theory about how the deck is stacked against them.
To deposit at CoinPoker, press the wallet icon located near the top of the lobby just below your balance. The deposit form will then appear on your screen.
You can fund your account with ETH, USDT, BTC, MATIC, BNB, BUSD, or CHP. USDT and CHP deposits remain in the same crypto coin, while any other crypto-currency you send to your account will be converted into USDT. The minimum transaction amount is $1, and there is no maximum
Bitcoin is the most familiar and widely used crypto-currency for online poker, so we opted to make a Bitcoin deposit. You need to enter the amount of BTC you wish to add to your account, and the system will automatically tell you how many USDT you will receive.
Choose “Deposit,” and you will see the address where you must send your coins in both text and QR forms. Now open up your Bitcoin wallet, and initiate the transaction for the stated amount to the address shown:
Surprisingly, CoinPoker reuses Bitcoin deposit addresses! This is against industry standard practice, making it easier for anyone so inclined to trace your transactions.
When there's one blockchain confirmation of your deposit, the appropriate number of USDT will be added to your account. There's no visual indication of a successful deposit; the additional USDT will simply appear in your balance.
Before depositing with USDT, ETH, or CHP, you must enter your personal wallet address. CoinPoker will remember the address you have used and allow you to deposit that crypto coin only from the same address in the future.
DO NOT send your crypto coins directly to or from an exchange. Crypto-currency exchanges that operate in the United States, like Coinbase and Binance, must adhere to all applicable banking rules and laws, including the UIGEA. There are similar laws that apply in Australia and other jurisdictions.
To keep yourself and your coins safe, we strongly recommend that you first transfer your coins from your exchange to a third-party wallet before depositing them at CoinPoker. Similarly, when it's time to withdraw your winnings, move them first from CoinPoker to your personal wallet and only then transfer them to your exchange.
CHP is the bespoke crypto token employed at Coin Poker for certain specialized uses, like earning rakeback and paying withdrawal fees. Therefore, it's handy to have a small amount of this currency available at all times. Unfortunately, CHP is thinly traded and only available at a few cryptocurrency exchanges, like Uniswap.
Besides acquiring CHP elsewhere and then depositing it on Coin, there's another way to add this token to your account balance. You can transfer some of your USDT holdings into CHP right at the cashier.
To do so, open the cashier by clicking on a wallet icon located near the top-right of the poker lobby. Then select the “Exchange CHP” tab on the top-right.
You can enter an amount of Tether to trade for CHP or CHP to trade for USDT. There is a 5% fee taken for performing the exchange. There is a weekly limit of 1 million CHP placed on your total withdrawals, P2P transactions, and in-house exchanges. This works out to tens of thousands of dollars worth of CHP per week, which is almost certainly more than you'll ever need.
Payouts at CoinPoker follow a similar process as deposits. Once again, you can employ Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDT, MATIC, BNB, BUSD, or CHP to retrieve your funds. To withdraw via bitcoin, you must have made a previous BTC deposit. To withdraw via any of ETH, USDT, or CHP, you need merely to have previously deposited with any one of the three. A deposit via any of the other methods available will enable payouts through any of these other coins.
According to our contacts at CoinPoker, there's no limit to the maximum amount you can withdraw at one time. However, you may need to contact support to have your payout expedited if it's very high because the software seems to have a limit of $25,000 or $50,000 at a time, at least for certain coins.
Users can expect to receive their withdrawals within a few hours if using Bitcoin. CHP, ETH, and USDT payouts are processed even more quickly, sometimes within a few minutes.
However, those who request cashouts in CHP form will need to convert from CHP to either ETH or BTC before being able to spend their money on anything other than redepositing to Coin Poker. This is because few, if any, exchanges allow users to convert directly between CHP and fiat currency. This adds an additional step and more fees to the process of converting your winnings into spendable cash.
There are certain fees associated with making a withdrawal. These fees depend upon the method you choose for your payout.
If requesting a payout from your USDT balance, the fees are as follows depending on what crypto you elect to receive your funds in:
When you withdraw from your USDT balance, you may have the option to pay the fees in CHP, often at a discount.
The corresponding fees for withdrawing from your CHP balance are:
Overall, withdrawing from your USDT balance to USDT (Polygon) appears to be your best bet if you're keen on minimizing fees, maximizing convenience, and avoiding most of the price fluctuations inherent in crypto transactions.
Another type of “withdrawal” supported by Coin Poker is Peer-to-peer transfers. To access this feature, open the cashier and click on the “P2P Transfers” tab. You can move USDT and CHP around in this way.
Choose the coin you want to deal with, enter the nickname you want to transfer to, and type in the amount. Then you just need to hit “Send,” and the appropriate coins will be debited from your account and added to the recipient's.
It's possible to enjoy the CoinPoker games on both Android and iOS smartphones and tablets. Unlike many of its competitors, CoinPoker has created apps for each operating system that you must download and install rather than hosting its mobile client through the web. In July 2020, lottery-style Cosmic Spins were propagated to the mobile client, joining tournaments and cash games.
There are a few layout differences compared to the standard client with both the lobby and the tables. Curiously, the mobile tables use a portrait orientation, just like PokerBros and other agent-based apps, instead of traditional landscape mobile poker table setups. One byproduct of this altered table arrangement is that there is a middle-center seat for you to occupy in the seven-max big-bet game tables, unlike with the desktop software.
You can multi-table from your mobile system, but there is a limit of three games open at once. You will see each table represented by a number, from 1 to 3, toward the bottom-left of your screen. When it's your action on any table, the amount of time you have remaining will count down on the appropriate table icon. Simply click on an icon to be brought to that table.
CoinPoker maintains a strong focus on poker. While there formerly was a sportsbook among the CoinPoker services, this division was closed in March 2022. Now the platform is primarily a cardroom. Therefore, partisans of sports or horse betting will need to look elsewhere.
If you're looking for a USA-friendly online bookmaker, check out our rundown of the best USA sportsbooks online.
Although CoinPoker has decided against offering a sportsbook, the site has now started offering a small collection of casino games like slots, table games, and other virtual games of chance.
The games offered at CoinPoker are quite unique even if the size of the game library is a bit on the small side. The games are designed and developed by Darwin Gaming, a somewhat unknown online gaming technology developer.
The games here have a very modern focus and include a number of games that feature a twist like Rocket Adventure and Crash Evolution. The casino is divided into sections including new titles, all titles, slots, virtual games, bingo, and table games. You can also see which games you recently played and highlight games as "favorites".
There are only a handful of slot titles, but the library of table and bingo games is pretty solid and somewhat varied considering the small size of the casino. There are a total of 40-50 games available in the casino at CoinPoker. The casino can be accessed by clicking the tab on the right-hand side of the downloadable poker client, which is available on any desktop, laptop, or smartphone.
If the casino games offered at CoinPoker aren't quite what you're looking for, then we've prepared a review of the top online casinos for Americans.
If you require some help with any aspect of CoinPoker, you can click on the envelope near the top of the poker client. This will open up a support form that you can fill in to get a response from a customer support agent.
It's also possible to send an email to support[at]coinpoker.com, or you can communicate with the team through CoinPoker's official Telegram channel.
Coinpoker takes a proactive stance on responsible gambling - it's clearly stated upfront in the terms and conditions that any player already diagnosed with a gambling disorder or undergoing treatment will not be allowed to use the CoinPoker services. Quite how they police that, we're not so sure. But at least the principle is clearly laid out.
Of course, responsible gambling is not just about prevention. Any player with any concerns that they may be losing control of their gambling activities after registering an account and making some wagers has several steps they can take on the platform to negate or reduce the risks.
So, at Coinpoker, the options are:
Coinpoker is steadily building a reputation with poker players but still has a way to go to fully compete with some of the bigger poker rooms. Two of the leading rooms that Coinpoker will need to outperform are Ignition and Betonline, with both providing stiff opposition. In this section, we'll see how players' experiences at Coinpoker might differ compared to the more-entrenched operators. If you would like more detailed info on either of these two other cardrooms, you can click on the buttons below to read our comprehensive reviews.
CoinPoker started life in November 2017, initially providing tables only for practice chip play and then adding in freeroll tournaments distributing CHeP. It was a much-hyped company being promoted by Antanas “Tony G” Guoga, among other famous individuals in the poker industry.
A pre-ICO went live on Nov. 16, 2017, selling CoinPoker's CHP token to early investors, followed by the “real” ICO in January 2018. Real money cash games were added around this same time, and all of them were denominated in CHP.
Coin Poker soon gained a small but dedicated following and was able to consistently gather between 20 and 30 players to its ring games. In January 2020, the site made a move that seemed like it might appeal to a more extensive user base when it opened a sportsbook. Traffic duly shot up within a few months.
However, this proved to be just a temporary bump in player liquidity. Pretty soon, average cash game traffic declined to about 35 players at a time, and it stayed at this level for a while.
In October 2020, the gameplay was moved over from the CHP token to the larger USDT crypto. This didn't appear to affect player population figures, but the word was slowly spreading about Coin and its games.
By the first quarter of 2022, average traffic had reached the 100-player mark: more significant than any other online poker site that denominated its tables in crypto-currency. The decision in March 2022 to end the sportsbook marked a renewed commitment to poker on the part of CoinPoker management.
With fast transaction processing, a rapidly growing user base, and above-average rewards for consistent players, CoinPoker looks likely to claim and retain the crown as the best crypto-only internet poker parlor. Who knows? It may even give the traditional online poker market leaders a run for their money in years to come.
Now that we're approaching the end of our Coin Poker review, now's a good time to go over the strengths of this site and the reasons why you might wish to consider signing up:
No review would be fully honest without a factual rundown of the negative aspects of a particular platform. Therefore, we have described below some of the weaknesses of CoinPoker
CoinPoker is one of the many crypto-only poker sites that have been popping up regularly over the past few years. In terms of software and player population figures, it's definitely better than average for such crypto rooms.
However, the size of the site is overall quite a bit behind the market leaders, which accept both crypto-currencies and traditional fiat money. The price uncertainty around the specialized CHP token is also a cause for concern although players need not rely upon CHP except for certain bonuses and rakeback advantages.
Even the feature that CoinPoker is seemingly most proud of, its decentralized shuffling algorithm, is of little use because it is a solution to a predicament that doesn't really exist. Standard random number generators at other internet poker sites perform their jobs well and without any unnecessary hullabaloo.
We think CoinPoker represents a solid value proposition for almost every player as a secondary site to load up when things are slow elsewhere. Yet, there are certain categories of individuals for whom Coin advances to the front ranks of available internet poker solutions.
Those who relish 5 Card Omaha, for instance, will only seldom find action in these variants at other sites. Fans of crypto-currency who want to enjoy poker without touching fiat currency at any point will find CoinPoker the largest site that caters to their desires. Finally, those in Australia have a restricted menu of poker sites that are still operating in the country, and CoinPoker is one of the foremost among them.
In concluding this Coin Poker Review, we find that the positives outweigh the negatives. We therefore recommend Coin Poker to our visitors. Even those who don't wish to put in the majority of their play here will find it a solid addition to their rotation of online poker venues.
If CoinPoker doesn't appeal to you for some reason, you can find several upstanding sites to consider in this USA online poker guide. Or if you reside in the Land Down Under, check out this page devoted to Australian online poker.
There are a few unusual aspects to CoinPoker, so it's perfectly understandable if you have unanswered questions about it. Look below where we have collated some of the most common questions about the site along with the answers.
Yes, CoinPoker is an honest operation. The management team appears to be willing to incorporate player feedback in their plans and tries hard to solve any problems that its customers have.
Yet, although CoinPoker hasn't shown many signs of being shady, the bespoke CHP crypto-currency sometimes changes price very rapidly. Therefore, you would do well to keep only enough CHP in your balance to benefit from rakeback and other rewards.
There is no phone support of any kind at CoinPoker. You can, however, send a message to support through a form within the gaming client, write an email to support[at]coinpoker.com, or reach out to the company on Telegram.
No, the random number generator at CoinPoker delivers about the same results as any other well-tested RNG in use at any other online poker provider. It's not any worse than regular randomized dealing mechanisms, but it's not really much superior either.
Even though it incorporates user input into the shuffling process, the CoinPoker RNG also includes data from the poker site itself. Therefore, you still must have a certain degree of faith in the integrity of the organization. There's no reason to conclude that there's anything to worry about in this department, but there's also no reason to suppose that the innovations pioneered by CoinPoker in this area are anything to write home about.
Yes, CoinPoker has apps for both iOS and Android. You can play up to three tables at the same time.
Because there are dedicated apps for these two mobile OSes, the software is not compatible with every mobile system. Windows Phone and BlackBerry users have to look elsewhere.
Yes, CoinPoker provides 33% weekly rakeback to users as long as they hold enough CHP tokens to pay for the rake they generate. Otherwise, the rake is paid in USDT for which no RB is provided.
You might encounter extra CoinPoker rakeback being promoted on certain websites. Most of these are illicit, under-the-table deals that aren't exactly approved of by the poker site itself. Your mileage may vary if you sign up for one of these rakeback offers, and you might not receive what was promised.
No, you can deposit with Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Tether and play in Tether. CHP is only needed to unlock rakeback and a few other promos. You can easily trade some of your USDT for CHP by going to the “Exchange CHP” tab within the cashier.
The CoinPoker review above was designed to be a complete as possible and to answer questions you never even knew you had about the poker site. Nevertheless, there are some among our audience who cannot get enough information about everything related to online poker, and we definitely empathize with their plight. If you seek additional info about Coin Poker, then check out the resources below:
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