First "Real Money" Poker Site is Accepting Bitcoins

Switchpoker.com is now accepting Bitcoin as a deposit method, in addition to the usual deposit methods.

Switchpoker does not accept American players and asks for your full contact information before you can deposit, which might catch the average Bitcoin poker player a little off-guard. With Bitcoin, however, your deposit will validate regardless of the validity of your contact info. Since I'm not American, I can't readily verify if they're blocking Americans by IP address or simply using the honor system, though I suspect it would be the former.

At the time of this post, there were 14 real-money players online. We'll have to see how many players are online in the evenings and on the weekends.

All games are denominated in Euros.

As a test, I deposited 20 Euros to the site, using a VISA card via Moneybookers. I was then given the option of converting my Euro balance into a Bitcoin balance. The rate offered at the time was 11.09 BTC for 20 Euro (1.80 Euro/BTC). The Mt.Gox market rate is currently 1.77 Euro/BTC, which means Switchpoker is actually a very decent way of buying Bitcoins by credit card. I'll be curious to see if my credit card, however, has charged me a cash advance fee for depositing to Moneybookers.

Edit: I had mentioned that Bitcoin deposits and withdrawals had to go through Bitcoin247. Apparently that is not the case and you can deposit and withdraw directly from/to your own wallet.

Switchpoker appears to be getting around potential chargebacks by using Moneybookers' "skrill," which has a merchant-friendly chargeback policy.

Although Switchpoker is a tiny site, this event is very important for Bitcoin, as it's the first time a gambling site is accepting normal payment methods and Bitcoin side-by-side.

Posted in: exchange,gambling,poker