Two Plus Two Older Archives - The Gaming Club Review

If you don't want to read my entire review, here is the precis: TGC are the single worst poker site out of about 20 or so I have played. They are attrocious.

On to the review.

I originally signed up for TGC about 15 months ago when I was very new to poker. No affiliate, rakeback etc. I think they had some promotion I was interested in, but I only played about 20 hands and then didn't play on TGC for about a year.

They then announced a promotion that very much interested me. Play as many hands of 2/4 limit+ in a month, and only play rake on the first 10,000 (September). I thought I would give this a whirl as it could amount to a very nice % and would encourage me to play lots of hands. Signed up, deposited and started playing. Now, the first problem is that there isnt much game selection. I wanted to play 5/10 and 10/20 and typically there would only be 1 game going in each. At peak hours there would be 2 or 3 in each, enough to put in a good session albeit without any game selection.

I was getting in a decent amount of hands when the first problem occurred. I would sometimes receive my cards face down. Meaning that my opponent would raise from the SB and I would have no idea what my cards were! I emailed TGC with this problem and did not receive a reply for some days. I then PMed GamingClubGuy on 2p2 and asked him what was happening and he said they hadnt received my email which I find hard to believe as it was in my sent items folder. Anyway about 1 week later I finally received an email telling me it was MY fault and I should check with my provider/antivirus etc. to see what was causing it. This was very insulting, and you should also note that I had 2 other prima accounts which this problem wasnt occuring on. I told GCG about my disgust and he apologised. I had started a few days into the month and was going on holiday, so I asked him if they could 'extend' my month of september as far as the promotion was concerned. He graciously agreed and gave me 5 extra days. This still meant I played for less than 30 days of the promotion, but I thought it was a fair settlement. The agreement was that I wouldnt play from Sep 20-30th (ish), but could play from Oct 1 - 5.

I went away and had a nice holiday returning on the 28th. I did not start playing again until Oct 1 EST and did not stop playing until the end of OCT 5th EST. The webpage of the promotion did not mention anywhere what timezone they were using so I assumed EST like most other sites. The final few hours of the promotion I 6/7 tabled furiously in order to get as many 'rakefree' hands in as possible. I received an email a couple of days later telling me the total number of raked hands I had played and noted it diverged from my records. I was then and ONLY then informed that the promotion was running on GMT! In the 5 hours difference between GMT and EST I had contributed about $400 in rake. Seeing as they didn't inform of me of their operating hours and seeing as I didnt start playing until OCT 1 EST they should have refunded me this extra amount. No such luck. Eventually after spending much time corresponding with them (and they would often take quite a few days to get back to me) they gave me $100. I explained that this was unacceptable to me. I was getting robbed of $300. It was a matter of principle. They accepted this situation had arisen out of a misunderstanding but still refused to budge on the $100. I told them I didnt think I was going to use their cardroom much in the future.

As I said they did give me $100, which I went to log in to withdraw. Amazingly I was now told my account had been locked! I phoned them up and had them unlock it but it kept getting locked again. I was still trying to resolve my $400 issue with them but was clearly hitting a brick wall. I emailed them asking them to close my account, return my $100 to my neteller account and we would call it a day. They emailed saying that was fine. A few days later they emailed again saying that they couldnt do that and that I should log in and withdraw the moeny myself. I also received an email saying I had qualified for a satellite to some big buy in NL tournament. I logged in to check the details of the tournament. No problem. EV was going to be about $150 per person, not bad. I went to log in 5 minutes before the tournament started and was told my account had been locked out again! Now my first stroke of luck. I noticed thatI had got the day of the tournament wrong and actually had 24 hours and 5 minutes left! So I emailed support asking them to unlock my account but incredibly they didnt reply until after the tournament had started.

Now, I was finally told that my gcp account that I had opened a year earlier conflicted with my other prima accounts. I understand this is a serious issue and I have no problem with my account being locked out, but I do find it odd that my account only got locked out at felicitious moments from their perspective. I also think it is attrocious for them to take until November 16th to finally tell me what the problem was. I am not sure exactly when I first got locked out but from my email records it was Oct 22nd or earlier.

They told me I would have to open a new account in order to get my $100. Why they couldnt just have returned it to my neteller accoutn and closed my initial account as I had asked them to I dont know, but cae sera sera. They gave me my new account details and I went to log in. Guess what?

'Your account has been locked out of the system, please contact support' !!!!!!!

I am not kidding. I contacted support asking them why my brand new account had been locked out. They replied

'Dear Dean

Thank you for your e-mail.

As per our previous e-mail to you, please be advised of the following:

Kindly note your account has not been locked out, you just entered either your account number or password incorrectly 3 times. .............................'

This is 100% untrue, I was locked out the first time I tried to log in. I cant prove this to you, but trust me, it is true.

They continued in the email

' We have reset your logins, please login to the poker software using your account number "tgcxxxxxxr" and your password'

As you might imagine I didnt want to think about TGC for a long time. This email was on Nov 24th. I had phd applications to get on with, as well as planning my imminent move to Thailand. I did nothing. Until now. I downloaded TGC on my brand new laptop. Entered the account details and password they emailed to me. Making very very sure not to make a typing mistake. Logged in to finally get my $100.

'Your account has been locked out of the system, please contact support'

Again, not kidding!

What a shambolic way to treat any customer. Truely defying belief. How can any business treat someone who contributed $6000 to them in ONE month so appallingly?