Partypoker have disqualified last week’s WPT500 Champion David Afework for breaching their terms and conditions, the English player apparently allowing another person to access his account and seeing his $160,210 prizemoney seized as a result.
The tournament had already hit the headlines as popular poker streamer Jaime Staples landed his biggest-ever cash, a 3rd place worth $74,227.
That has just been boosted by Afework’s DQ and the subsequent funds redistribution…
Yeah found out on stream yesterday by an email I received. Bitter sweet in that you never like to see broken TOS in poker. I don’t have any more info beyond the email I received that someone was DQd but grateful for the 2nd 👍
— Jaime Staples (@jaimestaples) June 8, 2021
With Afework having broken the rules it means that original runner-up, Sweden’s Henning Andre, now takes the $160,211 top prize and the WPT500 title.
The first sign that something was wrong came when Afework posted on the 2plus2 poker forum, stating:
“Today I received an email from party poker telling me that I have been disqualified because they believe I gave my account to a third party.”
David Afework shares a flat with another poker pro
Although Afework claims that to be “just complete rubbish” he goes on to explain that he lives with another poker player, though he doesn’t name them.
“No one has ever had access to my account other than myself, that’s a 100% guarantee,” stated Afework, but forumites were quick to raise questions and objections.
“Conclusive evidence basically means he’s both guilty and ****ed”
User +rep_lol posted:
“Kind of laughing at the idea that he was making a run in a gigantic online event and his poker playing roommate was just MIA conclusive evidence basically means he’s both guilty and ****ed. poker sites don’t just steal peoples’ donkament binks, that simply doesn’t happen. Party is still a publicly traded company too, no? Like they’re gonna be out here going to this length without having the case sewn up…y’all don’t know how game security works on big poker sites.”
partypoker releases a statement and clears things up
That came just before a statement from partypoker, which stated:
“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 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.”
David Afework stated in his forum post that he has contacted the UK Gambling Commission, a move that will see further details released if it goes beyond an initial investigation, which seems unlikely given what we now know.
“If Party are already adjusting the prizes then they are certain they will not lose on appeal”
As one 2+2 user explained:
“Evidence will be provided in depth to the regulator if a complaint is made. If the regulator does not accept the evidence matches the resolution then they can instruct the site as such. Hence if Party are already adjusting the prizes then they are certain they will not lose on appeal. There is no reason for them to gamble on this and risk losing 160k and make themselves look utterly inept.”
In the meantime, Afework is even more out of pocket after his transgression, revealing that everything had gone so well for him that “after the tournament I whacked £2,000 of my winnings on roulette and got it up to £18,000.
He complained, however, “But they have taken it all away.”
David Afework isn’t the first high-profile online winner to have been caught out trying to game the system.
Last year we reported on the case of 2018 WCOOP Main Event winner “wann2play” being DQd and being denied the $1.35million top prize.
That time it was PokerStars who banned the Dutch-registered account for a breach of their ToS, redistributing the funds to affected players.
A previous case back in 2007 also saw online cheats caught out when Natalie “TheV0id” Teltscher- sister of English pro Mark Teltscher – won the WCOOP Main Event for $1,228,330.50
PokerStars claimed that ‘internal investigations demonstrated beyond doubt that she had not played on the account.’
Although a lawsuit was started against PokerStars, Teltscher later admitted that someone else, unnamed, had played on her account. She also agreed to pay towards PokerStars’ legal costs in defending her suit.
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