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Black Chip Poker Review
Black Chip Poker runs on the Winning Poker Network alongside ACR, offering similar features but with its own player base and promo calendar. Known for high rakeback, crypto support, and big Sunday guarantees, it’s a strong choice for mid- to high-stakes players seeking serious action. In this review, I’ll cover the software, bonuses, and player traffic.
"Black Chip Poker has established a significant presence in the US over numerous years. They boast an excellent community for recreational players." - Cliff Spiller
Black Chip Poker
Officially launched in 2008, Black Chip Poker was a popular site on the Merge Poker Network. Four years, later, however, it moved to the Winning Poker Network (WPN), a large US-facing network that highlighted Americas Cardroom as its flagship poker site. WPN absorbed all player balances for Black Chip Poker players and gave the site a place to shine.
Despite its established reputation and player base, Black Chip Poker continues to uphold its standards. We discovered this firsthand through personal account creation and gameplay testing. Evaluating various game types and essential features like welcome bonuses, tournament guarantees, and customer support, we conducted a thorough review to provide readers with a comprehensive Black Chip Poker Review. If you're considering playing poker online, delve into this detailed review for some insights.
Pros and Cons
Despite the many attractive features that draw players to Black Chip, it’s crucial to acknowledge that no poker platform is perfect. We’ve put together a comprehensive list outlining the pros and cons encountered while playing on Black Chip.
Pros
- Significant daily and weekly tournament schedules with large guarantees
- Regularly-scheduled multi-million dollar tournament series
- Fast and dependable withdrawal process
- Friendly to recreational players
- Dozens of cryptocurrency banking options
Cons
- High withdrawal fees
- Many reentry tournaments catering to bigger bankrolls
- Long late registration times
Rating Breakdown
How Tough is the Competition at Black Chip Poker?
After players began flocking to Black Chip Poker, especially following its move to WPN, the action got tougher. More pro poker players discovered the value of playing on the network, and tournaments began filling up with a better caliber of players.
Luckily for those recreational players, Black Chip Poker continued to protect that iGaming environment that made poker fun.
- The network began to block the use of some third-party software that gave professional players the upper hand via the opportunity to prey upon less-skilled players.
- WPN implemented an overall plan called “Player Protection” at all cash game tables. It prevents players from seeing the name of any opponent until sitting down and paying a big blind. Pro players trying to take advantage of so-called weaker players can no longer prey upon them in cash games.
- WPN recently installed a component to prevent its poker sites from running on virtual machines, which prevents bots from cheating.
The overall competition at Black Chip Poker can be tough, but there are players at all levels at the cash game, SNG, and tournament tables. And there are more freerolls and satellites than ever before, making it an ideal time to use those tools to build bankrolls and enjoy the game.
Black Chip Poker Traffic and Network
As a part of the Winning Poker Network, Black Chip Poker has the ability to offer players more cash game and tournament options than most other poker sites that accept players from the United States. Black Chip Poker is a sister site to the largest US-facing site, ACR Poker (formerly Americas Cardroom), as well as True Poker, YA Poker, and Poker King. Not all of them cater to players in the same territories and countries, but Black Chip and ACR do and share the same platform to do so.
Sharing an online poker platform means that the sites maintain their own player accounts and balances, site layouts and designs, and overall branding, but they share the actual poker tables. That partnership allows WPN to offer a much greater variety of cash game stakes and game variations, tournament buy-ins and guarantees, and benefits and promotions.
At any given time, Black Chip Poker shows tens of thousands of players at the virtual tables. There is always a current number provided at the bottom of the home page, showing 20,000 to 25,000 players on any given weeknight or double or triple that number on the weekends.
It is difficult to obtain an accurate network number, much less calculate poker network player statistics, as WPN and the major cash game traffic tracker do not work together to share these numbers.
Breaking Down the Black Chip Poker Software
Black Chip Poker does share software with its sister sites, meaning that the overall WPN software is the baseline for all of the WPN sites.
As for style and layout, Black Chip Poker is one of the clearest poker rooms available online, complete with crisp graphics and easy-to-navigate pages. The tabs at the top of the main page and each individual lobby provide a clear path to finding everything a player will want from a poker site, including the latest news and social media posts right on the home page.
There are many unique components of Black Chip that make it, along with other WPN sites, quite unique in the virtual poker space:
Railbird
Players can send a link to friends with access to watch their table action. Any player can email, text, or send a social media post to a friend with a direct link to their cash game or tournament table. Friends make the best railbirds.
Avatars
It is always nice to allow one’s personality to shine through their choice of avatar. There were always been a plethora of avatars from which to choose. WPN adds more all the time, now including everything from zombies to aliens, and criminals to sports figures to robots.
Double or Nothing
Many poker players pride themselves on the skill component driving their play, but risk can be fun, too. The Double or Nothing feature allows players to flip a virtual coin for their cash game or tournament winnings.
Maximizer
The Maximizer is a fast-play feature on WPN sites. It allows players to opt in to this feature at No Limit Hold’em or Pot Limit Omaha games, and the site will reseat players immediately after ending a hand. There is no need to wait for blinds to come around or watch the same players over and over.
Auto Top-Up
Players can use this feature at any cash game table to indicate that Black Chip Poker can automatically top-up his or her stack when it reaches a certain low point. This saves time when players can focus on the action instead of finding the cashier to manually top-up their stack.
Straddles
A popular feature in live cash games is now available on Black Chip Poker. Online poker players can now straddle in cash games. The player to the left of the big blind may double the big blind before the deal, and play then starts to his or her left.
Progressive Payouts
When a player makes it into the money in a tournament, play can slow down as the payouts increase. Instead of waiting until the tournament is over, players can now receive payouts as soon as they survive the money bubble. At every new pay jump, the tournament pays that increase as an additional payout.
Raise Methodology
When playing cash games, players can choose standard raises or favorite amounts to raise. By using a slider that tracks a player’s methodology, it eliminates the need to type in a particular amount by making it easy to find with the slider.
CAP Tables
The lobby offers capped tables (signified by $CAP with the amount replacing CAP) in limit poker games. A cap enables players to experiment with higher buy-ins but without some of the risk of losing bigger. The CAP feature automatically sets a cap for a hand based on a pre-selected amount.
On-Table Statistics
Players can now see their tournament statistics on the table as they play. This shows the player’s position in the tournament, average chip stack of all remaining players, the smallest stack still in, and prize pool details. The in-the-money symbol is also available to let the player know that he or she is in the money and how much a current payout is worth.
Black Chip Poker Game Selection
Cash games and tournaments are the primary points of interest on Black Chip Poker. The stakes and game variations are always expanding, providing many options from which to choose through the tournament lobby. But there is more, with everything from sit-n-go games to fast-fold poker, and from jackpot-style games to staking other players.
Cash Games
There is something for players at all levels. There are many tables available with $0.01/$0.02 No Limit Hold’em, Pot Limit Omaha, Omaha/Hi-Lo, and 5-Card Omaha Hi/Lo. That buy-in level is the starting point at the low end of stakes. From there, it moves up to $0.02/$0.05, $0.05/$0.10, $0.10/$0.25, $0.25/$0.50, and so on.
Options appear open for stakes up to $5K/$10K, but the most frequent cash games at high stakes are $50/$100 or $100/$200.
Hold’em and Omaha remain the most popular cash games on Black Chip, but there are varying formats to keep the action exciting. Quite a lot of players enjoy bomb pots. A few choose all-in-or-fold games for speed, but most opt for the standard or high/low format.
Blitz Games
This form of cash game poker is commonly called fast-fold. WPN’s proprietary brand of this poker style is Blitz Poker. It increases the speed at which cash games play by moving players as soon as they fold a hand. Instead of waiting for blinds to come around, the six-handed tables put players on a new table immediately after folding.
This isn’t a tremendously popular style of poker on Black Chip, but there are often Hold’em and Omaha games open at the $0.10/$0.25, $0.25/$0.50, or $.50/$1 levels. Stakes are available from $1/$2 to $5/$10 if enough players join.
Tournaments
The tournament section of the Black Chip Poker website is where much of the action runs around the clock. Players can sort and search by date, buy-in, prize pool, number of players, name of tournament, or by category, such as satellites, daily tournaments, on-demand events, and private games.
The filter option provides even more sorting capabilities, such as game format, speed, guarantee, and status.
Buy-ins start at zero for freerolls, and they increase all the way to high rollers. There are satellites for nearly every major tournament on the site currently and in the near future. Players can find something to play no matter their bankroll restrictions or poker goals.
Staking
The staking tab in the games lobby opens a new screen to provide an opportunity to participate in staking. Players can seek backing or back other players. The process of seeking a stake or finding another player to stake deserves more attention, but there is plenty of information on the Black Chip website and in the poker client.
Jackpots
Jackpot Poker games are ones that play in the form of a Sit & Go (SNG). Three players must be present to start a table, and the site then chooses the prize pool at random. Most often, there are Jackpot SNGs available for $5, $15, or $50, and players can choose how many SNGs they want to play to avoid delays between games.
The prize pool can be double the buy-in or as high as $1M, depending on the stake.
Sit & Go
Poker players love SNGs because they are fast and offer quite a bit of variety. There are on-demand sit-n-gos and satellites, and (as with tournaments) players can search by those categories or by the number of players, game type, structure, buy-in, and status.
The most common games in the SNG section are Hold’em and Omaha, but there are also some Hi/Lo tables and occasionally a 27-person game., though most are 9-max or 6-max. Turbos and regular structures are equally as popular, and buy-ins for the gamut start at just $0.11 and top off at a few hundred dollars. The vast majority, however, are in the $5.50 to $33 range.
Casino
As most igaming sites offer, Black Chip does have a tab for casino games. Players can choose from classic casino games like roulette and blackjack, a wide variety of slots, and live dealer table games.
Sports
Clicking on the sports tab brings up a new web browser page catering to sports bettors. The racebook section offers betting on horse races around the world – United States to Dubai and Australia – but the most action takes place in the sports section. Wagers are available for everything from baseball to basketball, football to soccer, tennis to table tennis, hockey to cricket, and even snooker and cycling. At times, there are politics and futures options as well.
Black Chip Poker Tournaments
There is a wide variety of tournament action on Black Chip Poker, most of which is shared with the other US-facing poker sites on the Winning Poker Network. As mentioned, players can search by any number of filters to find the tournaments that best fit their skill level, bankroll, and time constraints.
At all times, the tens of thousands of players on Black Chip can find hundreds of tournaments. There are some standout tournament series and regularly-offered events, too, though.
- Venom: The Venom is WPN’s signature tournament. It typically requires a $2,500 buy-in, but months of promotions for each edition of the Venom provides opportunities for satellites and freerolls. The Venom runs several times each year, with the standard version offering No Limit Hold’em with a regular structure and $10M to $12.5M guaranteed. Alternating with that one is the Venom PKO, which offers half of that guarantee but focuses on its progressive knockout format and paying bounties.
- Online Super Series: The Online Super Series is the flagship series of WPN, each edition offering a leaderboard contest and other promotions and satellite lineups. The standard OSS offers hundreds of tournaments with a range of buy-ins. OSS Cub3d is a three-part series that includes the MOSS (Mini Online Super Series), OSS, and BOSS (Bigger Online Super Series). The OSS XL version offers an even larger-than-usual schedule.
- High Five: This is a player-favorite series, as the High Five – in its title and other components – refers to marijuana. The “high” reference, as well as breaks scheduled for 4:20, tournament start times set for 4:20, and other weed terms thrown in for good measure, make poker players happy. The High Five runs several times each year with millions of dollars in guarantees and a leaderboard competition.
- Turbo Boost Mini-Series: The latest arrival on the WPN tournament scene is the Turbo Boost, a series of tournaments with low buy-ins and fast structures. This, too, offers a leaderboard contest, and the mini version of the series focuses on low buy-ins to include a range of players.
- Supersized Sundays: Since the biggest day of each week for online poker is Sunday, WPN network sites like Black Chip Poker offer Supersized Sundays. The big draw is a $500K GTD tournament with a $215 buy-in, but there are also $100K guarantees for $16.50, both of which enhance the Sunday experience.
- Big Poker Thursdays: When a tournament series or Venom isn’t on tap, Big Poker Thursdays give players the chance to play for more than $1M in guarantees every Thursday. Recently, WPN increased the Thursday lineup by $315K in guarantees, putting that number over the $1M mark. Buy-ins start at $0.11 and top off at $1,050, and satellites run for many of the events.
Daily and Weekly Tournaments
The new and upgraded tournament schedule for 2024 includes something for every day of the week. There are more than 1,600 tournaments on the schedule each week, complete with more than $10M in prize pools.
Sundays remain the days of the week with the biggest value, with events like the Sunday Squeeze $50K GTD for a $16.50 buy-in and the Dime $10K GTD for a $2.50 buy-in. Those tournaments feature starting flights throughout the week and finish on the weekends.
Every day of the week has special events, some regular offerings like the Big10 and the PKO Big10. Sponsored WPN pros host regular events like the Loncar Mega Stack and the Boski Special. Buy-ins throughout the week start at just pennies, and there are high rollers for hundreds of dollars. Most tournaments hover in the $10-$100 range, though, with something for everyone.
Deposits and Withdrawals at Black Chip Poker
Black Chip Poker and its parent network pride themselves on their numerous cryptocurrency options for deposits and withdrawals. There are several alternatives, though, with varying minimums and caps. Note that not all banking options are available for both deposits and withdrawals.
Deposit Methods
| Deposit Method | Min Deposit | Max Deposit |
|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin / Crypto Transfer | $10 | $25,000 |
| Person 2 Person Transfers | $50 | $500 |
| E-wallet | $10 | $25,000 |
| Credit / Debit Cards | Varies by card type and country | Varies by card type and country |
Withdrawal Methods
| Method | Min Withdrawal | Max Withdrawal |
|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin / Crypto Transfer | $50 | $10,000 |
| E-wallet / Online Money Transfer | $50 | $25,000 |
| Checks | $100 | $3,000 |
How Valuable are the Promotions and Bonuses at Bovada Poker?
How valuable are the promotions and bonuses at Black Chip Poker? There are many promotions and bonuses available for Black Chip players. There is always a deposit or reload bonus available, and promotions run all the time, many of them offered concurrently.
Welcome Bonus
Players can deposit up to $2,000 into a new account and receive a 100% match bonus. The minimum deposit is $25, and there is no special code required, as all players receive this welcome bonus. The requirement is that players must clear the bonus on cash game tables, and the money will be released in increments of $1 for every 27.5 award points generated in cash games.
Reload Bonus
The reload bonus can be used for any deposits after the first one. It is meant to reload a player’s account, and the offers will vary from month to month. A typical reload bonus is a 50% match for second deposits of $25 to $2,000 made using crypto. This will require a bonus code per the promo used.
Freerolls
Black Chip Poker runs numerous freerolls (currently 8 per day) the site, usually with $50 in the prize pool. The times may change, but they are usually capped at 2,000 players and only allow 30 minutes of late registration.
Sit & Crush
As an ongoing promotion, players can register for any SNG, Jackpot, or On Demand tournament and earn points. Points go toward leaderboards, and prizes are paid out each Saturday, with payouts offered in cash or tournament tickets.
The Beast
The Beast is another weekly leaderboard, this one accumulating points for every cash game played (one point for every $0.02 in rake). The weekly races run from Saturday at midnight to Friday at 11:59pm. Payouts take place every Monday in the form of cash or tournament entries.
Black Chip Poker Rewards System
The rewards program at Black Chip Poker is called the Elite Benefits Program. All real-money cash games and tournaments earn points toward the loyalty program. There are six tiers/levels to achieve, depending on the amount of money and time played. The levels are:
- Player: points earned in contributed rake, medals of achievement earned
- Rounder: 1.5x points multiplier, medals earned, $50 cash available for purchase
- Grinder: 2x points multiplier, medals earned, $300 cash available for purchase
- Veteran: 2.5x points multiplier, medals earned, $600 cash available for purchase
- Legend: 3.5x points multiplier, $1,500-$4,000 cash available for purchase, distinction medals earned and usable for cash credits
- Icon: 5x points multiplier, all rewards possible
What is Missing from Black Chip?
Black Chip Poker delivers a solid poker experience as part of the Winning Poker Network, but a few limitations are worth noting. The software, while functional, lacks the polish and customization options of some major international operators, which may affect the user experience for serious multi-tabling players.
Additionally, while the site accepts a wide range of cryptocurrencies and offers generous promotions, it does not provide a dedicated loyalty program beyond the general rakeback system, something that could better reward long-term player engagement.
Black Chip Poker Network & License Information
Black Chip Poker operates under parent company WPN and on the Winning Poker Network platform. The flagship site on WPN is ACR Poker, formerly Americas Cardroom.
The Winning Poker Network does not show evidence of a current gambling or igaming license certification in Costa Rica or other gaming jurisdiction. The Black Chip Poker terms and conditions states that the company operates “in accordance with the laws of Costa Rica” and under “the license issued under Curacao law International Processor Services, S.A.” However, there is no record of a current license in Curacao.
WPN does have a certification from iTech Labs for maintaining a viable and tested random number generator (RNG). The RNG generates random numbers for online games and virtual shuffling for card games. “iTech Labs has found that the card sequences are unpredictable, non-repeatable, and uniformly distributed.” This certificate pertains to SJH Studio software, operated by WPN, and is dated April 24, 2023.
Are 3rd Party Programs Supported?
Black Chip Poker’s parent company, WPN, has banned some third-party software. In 2023, the company updated its rules to ban the use of virtual machines and real-time screen sharing tools, also known as RTA (real-time assistance) software. TeamViewer is one program that is specifically banned, as it allows players to remotely access another computer or operating system.
The current external assistance tools rule permits many study and performance improving materials, including hand trackers and heads-up display (HUD) tools, though it must collect statistics based “solely on your own hand history collected through the games you have personally participated in.”
Prohibited tools are listed as automated players, bots, RTA materials, and programs that analyze complex ICM, Nash Equilibrium, EV, and GTO actions in real time. There are no specific programs outlined by name in WPN security terms and rules.
Customer Support
Black Chip Poker offers a virtual assistant in the form of a live chat box. It is an automated assistant that uses articles and indexed pages from the Winning Poker Network to provide answers. Alternately, players can use the contact form on the “support” page of Black Chip’s website. Customer support is typically responsive and timely.
My Black Chip Poker Verdict
As a part of the longstanding Winning Poker Network, Black Chip Poker is a trusted poker site in the world of online poker. Players trust its decade and a half of experience in the gambling industry. Black Chip Poker pays its players, operates alongside the largest US-facing poker site (ACR Poker), and pays attention to what its customers want.
Some players would like to see more transparency with regard to third-party software and banned programs and cheaters. However, the technical team at WPN proves that it is constantly monitoring situations and potential unethical behavior to stop it and prevent it from happening again in the future.
Overall, there are more than enough poker options—cash games, tournaments, SNGs, and satellites—for every player to find what suits them. Players trust Black Chip Poker's deposits and withdrawals, tournament guarantees, and other promises.
This poker site remains a favorite of players across America and Canada. It is a dependable poker home in an uncertain and slowly changing gaming world.
Best Bonus 100% up to $1,000
- Large tournament schedule with big guarantees
- Fast crypto withdrawals
- Wide range of SNGs & MTTs
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FAQs
Black Chip Poker does not accept players from Delaware, Louisiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Nevada, New Jersey, and Washington State.
Black Chip Poker’s phone number is 877-314-4195. It is the same support phone number used by Americas Cardroom and True Poker. Live chat is also available. Both are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Black Chip Poker Key Details
| Available Country |
USA
|
| Phone | N/A |
| Number of payment methods | 10 |
| Number of available games | 5 |
| Tournaments | Yes |
| Licensing | Costa Rica |
| Compatibility | Android, iOS, macOS, Windows |