Frequently asked questions.

Click Play now at the top of the page, enter an email address and a password, and verify the email by clicking the link we send you. The whole thing takes under two minutes. You can play with $1,000 in play-money chips immediately — no KYC required at this stage.

KYC is only triggered when you want to deposit or withdraw real money.

You must be at least 18 years old (or the age of legal gambling in your country, whichever is higher) and a resident of a country not on our restricted list.

We do not accept players from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Curaçao, or Australia. The full list is in our Terms of Service and is enforced at signup, login, and every cashier action.

The site is a fully responsive Progressive Web App — there is no separate app to install. Open the site on your phone, tap your browser’s “Add to home screen” option, and you get a dedicated icon with full-screen launch.

We’ve deliberately stayed off the iOS / Android stores because real-money gambling apps face restrictive and inconsistent store policies. The PWA gives you the same native-feel experience without the gauntlet.

See the mobile page for details.

Three real-money formats and a play-money mode:

• Cash games — No-Limit Hold’em and Pot-Limit Omaha from NL2 to NL1000.
• Tournaments — MTTs, Sit & Gos, Bounty Builder progressive-KO, and Spin & Gos.
• Play money — $1,000 in starter chips, daily top-up, no risk.

We do not offer casino games, sports betting, or any non-poker products. We’re a poker site, full stop.

No. Everything runs in your browser — desktop and mobile. We’ve benchmarked the client at 60 fps on a five-year-old mid-range laptop and on phones from 2021 onward.

If you’d like a dedicated desktop window, the PWA installs as a standalone application from Chromium browsers (Chrome, Edge, Brave, Arc, etc.) via the “Install app” menu item.

We are licensed by the Curaçao eGaming Authority. The licence number is displayed in the footer of every page and can be cross-checked against the Curaçao eGaming validator.

Curaçao is a long-established gaming jurisdiction with a clear regulatory framework and proportionate operating requirements — the same framework as many of the biggest poker rooms have used for two decades.

We use TLS 1.3 everywhere, with HSTS and certificate transparency. Passwords are hashed with Argon2id. We support TOTP, hardware-key (WebAuthn), and passkey login.

Withdrawals require a fresh 2FA challenge every time, regardless of session age or trusted-device status. There is no way to disable this.

You can see every active session under Account → Security → Sessions and force sign-out remotely. We recommend enabling 2FA the day you open the account.

Click “Forgot password” on the sign-in page. We’ll email you a reset link valid for one hour.

If your email itself has been compromised, contact support immediately and we will freeze your account pending identity verification — even if a password reset has already been requested. Email us at support@theultimatepokergame.com from any address; we’ll match you against your KYC documents.

No. One human, one account. Multi-accounting is treated as cheating and is grounds for permanent ban plus forfeiture of all funds.

If you share a household (and therefore IP and possibly device) with another player, register your account from your own device with your own legal name and get in touch with support so we can whitelist the household. Family on the same network is fine — just no playing each other at the same table.

Go to Account → Security → Two-factor, then either:

• Authenticator app (TOTP): scan the QR code with Google Authenticator, Authy, Aegis, 1Password, or any RFC 6238 compatible app.
• Hardware key (WebAuthn): YubiKey, Titan, Solo Keys — anything supporting FIDO2.
• Passkey: if your device supports passkeys (iCloud Keychain, Google Password Manager, 1Password 8+), you can use that.

We strongly recommend setting up at least two methods so a lost device doesn’t lock you out.

Once per 180 days, free of charge. Contact support with your requested new name. We’ll check availability and that it doesn’t violate the naming rules (no impersonation of staff, no offensive content, no advertising), then make the change immediately.

Your hand-history and statistics remain attached to your account regardless of name changes.

Three ways:

• Live chat inside the app, top-right of the lobby. Open 24/7, median first response under 90 seconds.
• Email support@theultimatepokergame.com — median resolution under 24 hours.
• In-app ticket under Account → Support, which keeps the full transcript on your record for future reference.

For account-security issues (compromised email, suspected unauthorised access), email us from any address — we’ll match you to your KYC and take it from there.

Your screen name is what other players see. It can be — and most players make it — a pseudonym. We never display your real name to other players.

Real name is held internally for KYC, AML, and payments. It’s not visible in chat, not visible in hand histories you export, and not visible to anyone outside our compliance team.

We don’t formally facilitate staking — there is no “transfer to backer” function in the cashier. Staking arrangements are between you and your backer; we are not a party to them.

What we do strictly forbid is multi-accounting under a backing arrangement — i.e., one human controlling multiple accounts on our site to make the maths work. That’s still cheating, regardless of the staking pretext.

If you have a clear backing arrangement and want to disclose it to us, contact support — we’d rather know than not.

Open the cashier (top-right of the app) and choose a method:

• Crypto (USDT, USDC, BTC): we generate a unique deposit address for your account. Send any amount above the minimum and the balance credits in USD within minutes.
• Bank wire: request a wire, our compliance team reviews, then we email you beneficiary instructions with a unique reference code. Send the wire from your bank and we credit on arrival (1–5 business days).

Full detail on the banking page.

Your account balance is USD only. When you deposit in crypto we convert at the moment of confirmation and lock the USD value in. When you deposit by bank wire we accept USD-denominated wires.

We do not currently support EUR, GBP, or any other fiat balance. This is a deliberate simplification — it means there is no FX exposure while your money is on the platform.

• Crypto: $10 equivalent.
• Bank wire: $500.

The crypto floor exists to make sure the network fee on small deposits doesn’t eat the whole amount. The bank wire floor exists because banks themselves usually charge a flat wire fee on the sender side and we want that to be proportionate.

Not from our side, no. Crypto deposits are free — we absorb the network fee. Incoming bank wires are free from us; your own bank may charge a wire fee, which is between you and them.

We do not charge currency conversion fees because we hold balances in USD only.

Method	Typical credit time
USDT (TRC-20)	5–15 minutes
USDT / USDC (ERC-20)	15–45 minutes
BTC	10–60 minutes (1–6 confirmations)
Bank wire	1–5 business days

The crypto times include the wait for the required confirmations on the relevant network. Once confirmed, the balance is instantly available to play with.

No. Standard AML practice: deposits must come from a payment instrument or crypto wallet that you control and can be matched to your KYC. If we detect a third-party deposit we will request additional verification or, in the worst case, return the funds at the depositor’s expense.

This protects both us and you — chargebacks and disputes from third-party deposits are how a lot of players end up losing money or getting banned at other rooms.

Open the cashier, choose Withdraw, pick your method, enter the amount and destination, and confirm with 2FA. Compliance reviews the request (usually under an hour for crypto, one business day for bank wires) and then sends the funds.

You’ll receive an email confirmation when funds leave our side, with the transaction hash (crypto) or wire reference (bank).

• Crypto: under 4 business hours from request, often faster. We process withdrawals manually as a compliance safeguard — but compliance staff are on during business hours every day.
• Bank wire: 1–5 business days from approval. Approval itself typically takes one business day for the first wire on an account, faster thereafter.

If your withdrawal is sitting for longer than these windows, contact support — we will explain exactly what’s holding it up.

• Crypto withdrawals over $100: free from our side (you pay only the on-chain network fee).
• Crypto withdrawals under $100: $2 flat processing fee.
• Bank wire withdrawals: $25 flat fee, regardless of amount.

There are no percentage-based withdrawal fees, no minimum-balance fees, and no “premium method” surcharges.

The most common reasons:

• First-time withdrawal: we ask for an additional ID document if your KYC was done a long time ago or if the value is unusually large.
• Source-of-funds review: withdrawals over $10,000 trigger an automatic SoF review.
• Mixed-method rule: if you deposited by crypto you must first withdraw an equivalent amount to that same crypto wallet before mixing methods.
• Active bonus: if your welcome bonus hasn’t released, the locked portion cannot be withdrawn (the cleared portion can).

If we delay a withdrawal we always email you the reason within 24 hours. If you haven’t heard, contact support.

Yes — until it has been approved by compliance. While the withdrawal is “pending review” you can cancel it in the cashier and the funds return to your playable balance.

Once approved (and especially once broadcast on-chain or wired), it cannot be recalled.

Some operators use a long “reverse withdrawal” window as a way of getting players to gamble back their winnings. We don’t. Cancel-withdrawal exists only as a convenience for genuine mistakes (wrong amount, wrong wallet) — not as a trap.

KYC (“Know Your Customer”) is the identity-verification process required of every real-money gambling operator. We verify:

• Identity — a government-issued photo ID (passport, driver’s license, national ID).
• Address — a utility bill, bank statement, or government letter from the last three months.
• Source of funds — only for high-volume players or large deposits, typically a bank statement or payslip.

KYC is triggered the first time you request a withdrawal, or earlier if your deposit is above $2,000. Play money does not require KYC.

The vast majority of submissions are auto-approved within 15 minutes by our automated identity-verification provider.

Manual review (only triggered if the automated check is inconclusive) takes one business day. If we need any clarification we email you directly — we never sit on a stalled file.

Once verified, you don’t need to re-submit unless your documents expire or there is a significant change to your circumstances.

Identity (any one):

• Passport (photo page)
• National ID card (front + back)
• Driver’s license (front + back)

Address (any one, dated within last 3 months):

• Utility bill (electricity, water, gas, internet)
• Bank or credit-card statement
• Government letter (tax notice, voter registration)
• Tenancy contract or rates bill

We do not accept handwritten documents, screenshots of online banking, or mobile-phone bills (too easy to forge). The document must show your full legal name and address, and be in colour, in focus, and unredacted.

The most common reasons:

• Document is expired — even if you renewed, the photo you sent shows the old expiry date.
• Blurry or partially cropped — make sure all four corners and all the text are visible and readable.
• Address mismatch — the address on your proof-of-address must exactly match what you entered in your profile.
• Black-and-white scan — we need colour copies.
• Edited image — we can detect digital manipulation.

When a submission is rejected we always send a specific reason by email so you can fix and resubmit.

100% match on your first deposit up to $1,000. The bonus credits as a separate “locked” balance and releases as withdrawable cash in $10 chunks — one chunk for every $6 of rake or tournament fee you generate.

Cash always plays before bonus, so you don’t have to “burn through” the bonus to get to your real money. The locked portion expires 60 days after deposit if not cleared; the released cash never expires.

Full detail on the welcome-bonus page.

Yes. The welcome bonus is opt-in — you can simply not click “Claim” at deposit time. If you’ve already claimed it but haven’t generated any wagering, contact support and we’ll cancel it; the locked portion disappears and your deposit remains in your cash balance.

Once you’ve started clearing the bonus (any portion released as cash), it can’t be cancelled retroactively, but you can simply choose not to clear the rest. Locked bonus that doesn’t clear in 60 days expires automatically.

100 VIP points per $1 in rake or tournament fee. Cash and tournament play count equally — there is no inflated multiplier for any specific game type.

Your tier is evaluated monthly, based on points earned in the prior calendar month. Tier benefits (rake reduction, weekly rakeback %, bonus multiplier) apply immediately when you cross a threshold and don’t drop until two consecutive months of insufficient volume.

See the VIP tiers page for the full tier table.

Every Monday at 00:00 UTC. The payout covers the week from the previous Monday 00:00 UTC to the current Monday 00:00 UTC.

Rakeback is paid as withdrawable cash — not bonus dollars, not tournament tickets. The amount depends on your VIP tier (5% at Bronze, up to 60% at Black).

You can see your accruing rakeback in real time under Account → VIP & Rewards.

Yes. Every VIP tier — including Bronze — gets at least one monthly freeroll with a real-money prize pool. Tier-gated freerolls run weekly; the Black-tier monthly freeroll has a $10,000 prize pool with only a few dozen eligible players.

We also run occasional public freerolls for new account holders during the first week — they show up in the lobby with a “freeroll” badge.

Mostly yes:

• Welcome bonus + rakeback: stack. Rake you generate while clearing the welcome bonus also counts toward weekly rakeback.
• VIP rake reduction + rakeback: stack. The rake reduction reduces what you pay; the rakeback is calculated on what you actually paid.
• VIP bonus multiplier + ad-hoc promos: the multiplier applies to any bonus amount awarded by tournament promotions, reload bonuses, and challenges.

Welcome bonus and ad-hoc reload bonuses cannot be active simultaneously — you must clear or expire one before claiming the other.

Cash games rake at 5% with a per-pot cap that scales with stake and player count. We use the standard “no flop, no drop” rule — pots that don’t see a flop are not raked.

Per-pot caps drop at lower player counts: heads-up pots cap at roughly 60% of the 6-max cap. PLO uses the same schedule as NL Hold’em.

Tournaments use a separate buy-in plus fee model — fees range from 10% at micros down to 4% on Spin & Gos and 5% on super-high-roller MTTs.

Full schedule on the pricing page.

Up to 16 tables on desktop, 4 tables on mobile. The cap exists to make sure nobody else is left waiting on a player who can’t keep up.

In practice we recommend most players cap themselves at 6–8 tables — your win rate per table degrades fast above that, and the time-bank gives you less margin to think on close decisions.

Each decision has a base 30 seconds. When that runs out the time bank kicks in — you start with 60 seconds banked, refilling at 5 seconds per hand played up to a 90-second maximum.

Sit-out and disconnect protection: if you disconnect mid-hand, your time bank plus an additional 60 seconds counts down before you are auto-folded.

Yes. Every hand you’ve ever played is downloadable under Account → Hand history. The format is standard PokerStars text, compatible with Hold’em Manager 3, PokerTracker 4, DriveHUD 2, and any custom parser that handles PS format.

You can export by date range, game type, table, or stake. There is no premium tier for hand history — it’s all free and unlimited.

HUDs are disabled at the table level — we do not feed live hand history to trackers while you play. After your session ends, you can download the full hand history and import it into your tool of choice for off-table review.

This levels the field between players who can afford a tracker and those who can’t, while still letting serious players analyse their own play.

GTO solvers, equity calculators, and any real-time-assistance software are not allowed during a session.

• Cash games: chips have direct dollar value (e.g. one $1 chip at NL100 = $1). Sit down with whatever stack size you want (within the table cap), leave any time, keep your chips as cash.
• Tournaments: a one-time buy-in gets you a fixed starting stack of tournament chips with no direct cash value. You play until you bust; the prize pool is distributed to the players who finish in paying positions.

Cash is a steadier grind; tournaments have higher variance but bigger top-end payouts.

Cash prizes for paying positions credit to your USD balance immediately when the tournament ends. There is no delay, no claim step, no opt-in.

Bounty payments from progressive-KO tournaments hit your balance hand-by-hand as you knock players out — so even before you reach the money you have cash from your bounties.

Tournament tickets (won via satellites) appear in your Account → Tickets view and are auto-registered to the qualifying event when registration opens.

40 big blinds is the standard table minimum. Most tables cap at 100bb or 200bb.

A “deep-stack” table variant runs at most stakes with a 200bb minimum and a 500bb cap — for players who prefer maximum post-flop play.

Once you sit down with a particular stack, you can always top up between hands (or use auto-rebuy) to stay at any level above the minimum.

Yes, lightly:

• A profanity filter masks the most-common slurs by default. You can toggle it off in your settings.
• Repeated harassment, threats, or coordinated abuse is grounds for chat suspension or permanent ban depending on severity.
• We never edit or remove a chat for being a strategy discussion — only for being abusive, off-topic spam, or advertising.

You can mute any player at the table at any time. Muted-chat history is preserved in case you need to report it to us.

Yes — we run a fast-fold variant called Quick Tables. When you fold, you are instantly moved to a new table with a new hand, new opponents, and a new dealer position. Your in-position frequency stays high without you waiting through hands where you’ve folded the SB.

Quick Tables run at all major stake levels NL2 through NL400. The rake schedule matches the equivalent regular table at the same stake.

Two layers:

• Automated detection — every hand is run through a real-time pattern engine looking for chip-dumping, soft-play, coordinated betting, and bot-like timing consistency. Flagged accounts are queued for human review.
• Human surveillance team — reviews flagged accounts within 24 hours. Has the authority to freeze, refund, and ban without warning.

We also run independent third-party audits of our bot-detection annually.

If you suspect you’ve been a victim of cheating, email abuse@theultimatepokergame.com with the hand IDs. We investigate every report.

Our random number generator is ISO 17025 lab-certified and audited annually by an independent gaming-test laboratory. The certificate is published in the fairness section of the site.

Every shuffle uses multiple independent entropy sources (hardware RNG, OS entropy pool, and a Fisher-Yates shuffle seeded by their hash). The seed is committed hash-first before the deck is dealt — if a player ever disputes a hand, we can reveal the seed and let them verify the shuffle.

It isn’t, but the feeling is universal. Online poker shows you 5–10× more hands per hour than live poker, which means every kind of variance — including the brutal ones — happens way more often. Beats that would feel exceptional live look like a pattern online simply because there’s more sample size.

If you ever genuinely suspect a specific hand, request the seed disclosure for that hand ID via support and we will verify the shuffle with you.

Yes, and we recommend every player set one. Under Account → Responsible Gambling you can set:

• Daily deposit limit
• Weekly deposit limit
• Monthly deposit limit

Decreases apply instantly. Increases take effect after a 24-hour cooling-off period — by design, so you can’t impulsively raise the limit at 3am.

Limits cannot be removed entirely on your own — you can replace them with another limit, but you cannot ever go “limit-free”.

Under Account → Responsible Gambling → Self-exclusion you can choose:

• 30 days — cooling-off, account fully suspended.
• 6 months — extended block, all tables and tournaments closed.
• Permanent — irreversible. We will refuse to ever reopen this account.

Self-exclusion cannot be undone before the period ends. Not by chat, not by emergency. Choose the duration you actually want.

Any cash balance at the time of exclusion is paid out via your usual withdrawal method before the account is sealed.

A pop-up that periodically interrupts your session to show you how long you’ve been playing, how much you’ve deposited that session, and your net P&L. The aim is to break the trance — sessions that feel like 20 minutes are often three hours.

You can configure it under Account → Responsible Gambling → Reality checks to fire every 15, 30, 60, or 120 minutes. We default it to 60 minutes on every new account.

If gambling is causing distress, please reach out to a specialist service. We are not a substitute.

• GamCare (UK): gamcare.org.uk · +44 808 802 0133
• Gamblers Anonymous (international): gamblersanonymous.org
• BeGambleAware (UK): begambleaware.org
• Spielsucht-Therapie (DE): spielsucht-therapie.de
• Jogadores Anônimos (BR): jogadoresanonimos.com.br

Our responsible gambling page lists tools and an extended helpline directory.

Any browser updated within the last two years:

• Chrome / Edge / Brave / Arc (latest two stable versions)
• Firefox (latest two stable versions)
• Safari 16+
• Mobile Safari (iOS 16+)
• Chrome Android (last two stable versions)

We don’t support Internet Explorer, legacy Edge (pre-Chromium), or Opera Mini.

We hold your seat for 60 seconds beyond your remaining time bank and attempt auto-reconnect. If you reconnect within the window, your seat and action queue are restored.

If you don’t come back in time we auto-fold the hand. You remain seated as “sitting out” for the next 5 minutes; if you still haven’t reconnected after that we cash you out of the table and credit your chips to your account.

We also keep an “all-in protection” rule: if you’re disconnected and the only remaining action is all-in, we treat any all-in call against you as effectively “insured” — the pot is split appropriately based on equity at the time you disconnected.

We allow VPN use for privacy reasons while you are in a country where we are licensed to operate. We do not allow VPN use to circumvent country restrictions — if your account-of-record location is a restricted country, no VPN will get you onto the tables.

We use IP, device fingerprint, and behavioural signals together for geolocation — VPNs alone do not bypass the check. Attempting to circumvent restrictions is grounds for permanent ban and forfeiture of funds.

Email support@theultimatepokergame.com with:

• A description of what you expected vs what you saw.
• The hand ID(s) involved (if at the table).
• Your browser + OS version.
• A screenshot or screen recording if visual.

We triage in priority order — anything affecting fairness, money, or session integrity is reviewed within hours. UI bugs are triaged within a few days. We send you the resolution by reply email.

It depends entirely on where you live. Some jurisdictions tax gambling winnings as income; others treat it as gambling and exempt it; others have a withholding regime.

We do not provide tax advice. We are a Curaçao-licensed operator and we report to the Curaçao authorities as required of us; we do not file anything with your home country’s tax office.

Talk to a local accountant. If you need transaction history for filing, we can export your complete deposit / withdrawal / P&L log from Account → Tax records.

Yes. Under Account → Tax records you can generate a CSV or PDF for any calendar year showing every deposit, withdrawal, hand result, and tournament result. It includes timestamps in UTC and the equivalent USD value at the time of each transaction.

Most accountants will work with the CSV; if yours needs a specific format we can provide raw JSON on request to support.

No. We don’t accept US players, and as a Curaçao operator we have no obligation to issue tax forms to any other country’s tax authority.

For your local filing, the Account → Tax records export contains all the data your accountant will need.