Terms and conditions

These terms are a contract between you and Play Full House (“we”, “us”, “our”), the publisher of Alcove Poker (the “service”). They apply to the web app and to any Alcove Poker mobile app we release.

By creating a profile, sitting at a table, or otherwise using the service, you agree to these terms. If you do not agree to them, do not use the service.

Play-money game. Nothing of value can be won. 18+

You must be at least 18 years old to use Alcove Poker, everywhere, with no exceptions. We ask for your date of birth the first time you use the service. If the date you enter makes you under 18, you are stopped from using the service on that device — there is no retry with a different date.

You must give us accurate information. We may ask you to confirm your age or identity at any time and suspend your access while we check it.

Alcove Poker is not marketed to, or aimed at, anyone under 18.

This is the core promise of the service, and it does not change:

• Chips have no cash value. They cannot be exchanged for cash, goods, services, airtime, mobile data, gift cards, cryptocurrency, or anything else of real-world value, under any circumstance.
• There is no “cash out”, “withdraw”, or “redeem” feature anywhere in the service, and we will not add one.
• Where chip purchases are offered, you are buying entertainment credit for use inside the service — not making an investment, and not placing a wager for real-world stakes.
• You may not sell, trade, gift, or transfer chips to another player, and you may not buy, sell, or trade chips or accounts outside the service. We actively look for this and act against it — see “Fair play” below.
• Winning a hand changes your chip balance inside the service. It does not create any entitlement to a prize, cash, or anything redeemable.

Chips are not money, not a currency, and not your property. When you receive chips — bought, won at a table, or given to you free — we grant you a limited, personal, revocable, non-transferable, non-sublicensable licence to use them inside Alcove Poker, and nothing more. You get no ownership right, title, or interest in them, and no credit balance or account with us. Chips have no monetary value, cannot be valued in money, and cannot be exchanged for anything of real-world value. We may change chip amounts, chip prices, and the way chips work in the game, and we may suspend or revoke chips obtained in breach of these terms. If your account closes — whether you close it or we do — any remaining chip balance ends with it, has no residual value, and cannot be refunded, transferred, or passed to anyone else.

One account per person. Keep your sign-in details confidential — you are responsible for activity on your account, including anything done by someone you shared it with.

You choose your own display name and avatar. They must not impersonate someone else, be obscene or abusive, or mislead other players — including presenting yourself as a house bot, or a bot presenting as a person. Every seat filled by a house bot carries a visible bot label, always; players cannot turn that label off or create a bot seat themselves.

You can ask us to delete your account and the data attached to it at any time — see our Privacy policy for how.

Chip purchases are available in the web shop:

• You buy chips through an approved payment method for the platform you are on — Apple In-App Purchase, Google Play Billing, or an approved web payment provider — never through an external payment link designed to bypass those.
• Prices are shown clearly before you buy, in your chip amount and in real currency, with no obscured bundles or hidden steps. The chip total on each pack is the total credited to your account, bonuses included.
• Chips are delivered to your account immediately. Before you buy, you confirm that you want them delivered straight away and accept that doing so ends your 14-day right to cancel. Apart from that, chip purchases are final once delivered, except where the law or the relevant app store requires a refund. We do not buy back unused chips.
• A chip purchase buys chips — never a chance to win real money or a prize.

Free play is a permanent part of how Alcove Poker works, not a limited-time promotion. Free tables and regular free chips are being built for launch, so that when your chip balance reaches zero you can always keep playing. This beta grants every new player a starting balance; if you run out before free tables ship, contact hello@playfullhouse.com and we will top you up.

Every deck is shuffled and sealed with a published cryptographic commitment before a card is dealt, and the full deck and seed are published once the hand ends, so any hand can be independently checked by anyone — see how the shuffle works and check a hand.

Some seats may be filled by house-operated practice opponents. They are always labelled as bots, in every mode, and are never presented as people.

The following are prohibited. Breaking any of them may result in a warning, suspension, or account closure, and we may adjust a chip balance that resulted from the conduct:

• Using unauthorised third-party software, scripts, or bots to play on your behalf.
• Colluding with another player, including sharing hole cards or coordinating action across accounts.
• Deliberately losing chips to move them to another account (“chip dumping”).
• Operating more than one account to gain an advantage.
• Exploiting a bug rather than reporting it to us.
• Harassing or abusing other players.
• Buying, selling, or trading chips or accounts outside the service.

Alcove Poker, its software, design, and content belong to Play Full House or our licensors. We grant you a limited, personal, non-transferable licence to use the service for your own recreational play. You may not copy, reverse-engineer, scrape, or use any part of the service for a commercial purpose without our written permission.

If another player’s display name or conduct is abusive, or you want to complain about anything on Alcove Poker, email hello@playfullhouse.com with the table and, if you can, the hand ID. We aim to acknowledge every report within one working day and to tell you the outcome.

We remove display names that are abusive, obscene, impersonate someone else, or present a person as a house bot, and we suspend or close accounts that break the fair-play rules above. If you are not satisfied with how we have handled a complaint, reply to our response and it will be reviewed by someone who was not involved the first time.

Reality checks, spending limits, and self-exclusion are free, self-service tools available any time from Responsible play settings, alongside links to independent support organisations. We encourage you to use whichever of them are useful to you.

Alcove Poker is not available everywhere. Washington State and Belgium are excluded from our launch markets: we block access by location, using the location your connection reports, and this beta is not offered to players there. That check is at the web layer today and is being extended to the game server before general release.

We restrict or block access from other locations based on local law. Our list of restricted locations can change as our policy is updated, and we do not always give advance notice before a change takes effect.

You are responsible for checking that using the service is lawful for you, wherever you are.

We may suspend or close your account for breaking these terms, suspected fraud, a legal or regulatory reason, or extended inactivity. We will tell you why where we reasonably can.

You can close your account at any time — contact us to do so.

Some parts of these terms continue to apply after your account closes, including dispute resolution and the limits on our liability below.

The service is provided “as is” and “as available”. We do not guarantee it will be uninterrupted, error-free, or available at all times. To the extent the law allows, we exclude implied warranties and conditions that would otherwise apply.

To the extent the law allows, Play Full House is not liable for indirect, incidental, or consequential loss arising from your use of the service, and our total liability for direct loss is limited to the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim, or £10 if you have not paid us anything. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited, including for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or for fraud.

Please read this section carefully. It affects your legal rights and explains how disputes between you and us are resolved if you live in the United States.

Agreement to arbitrate. If you live in the United States, you and Play Full House agree that any dispute, claim, or controversy arising out of or relating to these terms or your use of Alcove Poker (a “Claim”) will be resolved by binding individual arbitration rather than in court, except as set out below. This section is governed by the U.S. Federal Arbitration Act.

How arbitration works. Arbitration is decided by a neutral arbitrator instead of a judge or jury, administered by the American Arbitration Association (“AAA”) under its Consumer Arbitration Rules then in effect (published at adr.org). It takes place in the county where you live, or another location we both agree to, and may be conducted by phone, in writing, or in person, as the AAA rules provide. The arbitrator’s decision is final and binding, subject to the limited court review the Federal Arbitration Act allows.

Class action and jury trial waiver. You and we each agree to bring a Claim only in an individual capacity, not as a plaintiff or class member in any class, collective, or representative proceeding. The arbitrator has no authority to combine more than one person’s Claim into a single proceeding. You and we both waive any right to a jury trial.

Exceptions. Either of us may bring a qualifying Claim in small claims court instead of arbitration. Either of us may also go straight to court to seek an injunction to stop unauthorised use or misuse of the service or of our intellectual property.

Opting out. You can opt out of this arbitration agreement. Send an email to hello@playfullhouse.com within 30 days of first agreeing to these terms, with the subject line “Arbitration opt-out” and your account name. If you opt out, this section does not apply to you — every other part of these terms still does.

If a part of this section cannot be enforced. If the class action waiver above is found unenforceable for a particular Claim, only that Claim proceeds in court instead of arbitration; the rest of this section stays in effect for every other Claim.

Other than the arbitration agreement above, which is governed by the U.S. Federal Arbitration Act, these terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute — unless you live somewhere that gives you the right to bring a claim in your local courts under local consumer-protection law, in which case this clause does not take that right away.

We may update these terms from time to time. We will post the change here with a new “last updated” date, and tell you more directly — in the app or by email — for a material change. Using the service after a change takes effect means you accept it.

Questions about these terms: hello@playfullhouse.com. Alcove Poker is published by Play Full House.