A British poker player has gone through the ordeal of having all of his winnings confiscated after coming out on top of the WPT500 at partypoker. David Afework won a whopping $160,210 from the event, besting 2,088 players along the way. However, his celebrations were short-lived as the World Poker Tour informed him of his disqualification at the end of the $1 million guaranteed tourney.
Afework went to the TwoPlusTwo forums to lament over his disqualification in a thread named “WPT 500 Event #24 Winner Disqualified – Help Me.” The poker player, going by the name “Devplaza,” told readers about having won over $160,000, which stands as his biggest-ever win, but then he “received an email from partypoker telling me that I have been disqualified because they believe I gave my account to a third party.”
The player claimed to have played the tournament on a Dell laptop, with his non-poker-playing girlfriend the only person to see him playing. It appears, however, that the issue stems from the fact that he has a poker player as a roommate. It’s likely that the tournament organizers recognized the IP address and determined there was third-party involvement.
“I imagine this third party nonsense comes from the fact that I have been living with another poker player for the best part of 7 months so maybe they see we share the same IP address or whatever but I’m completely transparent about that and don’t want to hide that, no one has ever had access to my account other than myself, that’s a 100% guarantee,” he wrote.
Whoever was in charge of the account at the time, be it Afework or his roommate, was on fire throughout.
“Everything was just going for me,” he added. “So much so that after the tournament I whacked £2,000 of my winnings on roulette and got it up to £18,000. But they have taken it all away.”
The player has also revealed being in contact with the UK Gambling Commission and is looking to take legal action against partypoker. Poker news outlet pokernews.com has since reached out to partypoker for comment.
“We have a dedicated Game Integrity team who use a variety of detection methods to proactively identify accounts that are in breach of our terms and conditions. ‘Real Name’ tables help provide a community feel while reducing anonymity,” a representative explained on the back of the request. “A real account holder should never give a third party access to their account, as stated in our General Terms and Conditions (Section 12).
“If we establish reasonable evidence of this happening, we reserve the right to take action on the account in question in order to maintain a safe and fair playing environment. In situations where we seize money from an account which has infringed our rules or policies, we endeavor to re-distribute these funds in a timely manner to all players who were impacted by the actions of the offending account.”
These rules should always be taken into account before entering tournaments online but, should Afework be telling the truth, there’s not much he can do about living in the same place as another player. It’s always in one’s best interest to do the research before taking part and, who knows? He might have been inclined to either go somewhere else to play. To that end, a Poker stars casino review would not go amiss.
Meanwhile, the World Poker Tour has declined comment.
As to what happened to the confiscated prize money, the source understands that payouts will be adjusted as if Afework was never in the tournament, which means everyone will be pushed up a spot. By that measure, Henning Andre has been named the WPT500 Champion for 2021, with Jaime Staples claiming the runner-up winning sum of $108,795.
“Even though this pushes me up the pay scale, it’s not a happy thing to see broken rules in poker,” Staples said. “I trust the Game Integrity teams have made the correct decision. Working with various companies in poker now over the last six years, I know what they do is well reasoned, and not a decision made lightly.”
“The truth is I played the tournament and I won, it’s as simple as that and to see how Party poker have taken things is just the biggest disappointment ever and I’m just at a loss for words,” Afework says. “Making it to the final table with some really good players to then come out on top was just wow. I played better than I ever have and also had the luck I needed on the way. Even the final hand like, to crack aces with the flush on the river like come on, or when I took out Jamie staples who had King queen suited and flopped a two pair and I flopped the flush with ten six of hearts. Everything was just going for me. So much so that after the tournament I whacked £2000 of my winnings onto roulette and got it up to £18 000. But they have taken it all away.”
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