ClubGG is one of the newest and fastest growing social poker apps on the market. It launched in early 2021 and has really been gaining traction in the past year.
GGPoker is centralized full-service online poker platform launched in 2017. Meaning players deposit, play and withdraw directly through the site and all issues are handled by GGPoker's in-house customer service team. Unfortunately GGPoker does not allow players to play from the United States, so you are out of luck if you live there.
GGPoker developed the ClubGG app and launched it in early 2021. Although ClubGG is owned by GGPoker and the names are similar, accounts, balances and overall play are completely separated on the two platforms. So why does it matter?
Many players who play on the ClubGG app appreciate that the app was developed and is maintained by a real-money entity with years of experience running poker software. Unlike every other social poker app, ClubGG is run by a brand name that many poker players trust.
There are several advantages to playing on the ClubGG app over other social poker apps. The biggest is that ClubGG is considered to have the smoothest-running software, with the fewest disconnects and glitches. This is very important! There's nothing worse (or possibly more expensive) than disconnecting in the middle of a big all-in!
Another player advantage to the ClubGG app is that it is one of the few to have a native desktop version (currently only available for Windows). Many people find it more comfortable to play online poker from their PC over their phone, or at least would like to have that option. While it is true that one can generally play on any poker app from a PC using an Android emulator, these emulators are often slow. Playing from ClubGG's desktop software is lightning fast and virtually free of glitches!
The final advantage to playing on ClubGG is that they very rarely have any downtime for server maintenance, whereas most other apps are offline for several hours every week while they update their servers.
The final advantage to playing on ClubGG is that they very rarely have any downtime for server maintenance, whereas most other apps are offline for several hours every week while they update their servers.
If you run a club or are interested in starting a club, ClubGG offers one enormous advantage over most of the other poker apps - it's virtually FREE to run a club or union there! Most apps charge club owners high fees (in the form of diamonds) to get chips, maintain their club levels and run tables.
On ClubGG, it is free to add chips and operate tables. There are still fees to maintain a club level and download game data, but the cost is lower than most other apps. Overall you can expect your costs to decrease by 50-80% on ClubGG compared to most other apps.
The most noticeable shortcoming for the ClubGG app is that there are fewer game types compared to some other apps. Currently ClubGG does not offer Spin-N-Goes, Open-Faced Chinese (OFC), fixed-limit games, mixed games or mystery bounty tournaments. However, the developers are working to add these options as quickly as possible. And the app does offer the most popular Hold 'Em and Pot Limit Omaha variants including 5 and 6 card, double board and bomb pots.
ClubGG's random number generator (RNG), which determines the order of the cards dealt and the community cards, has been independently tested and verified to be 100% random by BMM Labs. BMM Labs has been testing the fairness and randomness of casino games for over 30 years.
ClubGG simply runs software which allows individuals to play poker against each other. Thus, ClubGG would not benefit in any way by running games that are not fair and random. On the contrary, if it became known that the games on ClubGG were not fair, their brand reputation would be hurt. This would affect their core business of GGPoker, which is where all their revenue is generated. So ClubGG has a strong incentive to ensure that all games are fair and random.