Per suggestion of a High Stakes Limit forum mod, cross-posting here

I'm a professional limit holdem player and have been since 2000. I started playing on the Ongame network on Betfair in January of 2012. They switched over to the ipoker network, so I deposited $5,000 on Betsafe from my Moneybookers account to play on the Ongame network again after I heard they still had action there. I started playing on Friday, the 6th of September.

I first sat at a 100-200 limit holdem heads-up table with a player. I won the 1st hand and he buttoned me. I then sat at 100-200, 50-100 and 25-50 open tables. The player x_buddha42 sat with me at 100-200 limit holdem. I had played this player many times before on my old Betfair account, WoahBigWave. I was losing during this match and ended up making 2 more $5,000 deposits for a total of $15,000 during the match and ended up losing $9,497 in 122 hands when x_buddha42 quit.

I was out Saturday then tried to log in today (Sunday) and got the message that my account is currently inactive and to contact customer support for further assistance. I emailed support and was told my account was closed by their poker provider (Ongame?) for breaking their terms and conditions. After a few emails back and forth, they finally stated that my account was closed for chip dumping. The final email also stated they will be confiscating the remaining $5,900 in my account.

My play in the match was totally standard and there was definitely no chip dumping. I don’t know the player x_buddha42 at all except as an opponent I played alot on Betfair. Chip dumping doesn't even make sense since I deposited from Moneybookers and could have presumably just sent x_buddha42 the money on Moneybookers if I wanted to give him money. Either the site doesn’t understand poker and it’s swings at all and anytime someone wins or loses alot there (which is what happens at high stakes), it's "investigated" by someone completely incompetent or the site is just flat out stealing money.

You can also see on PTR that I have played x_buddha42 alot on my Betfair account, WoahBigWave. The amount is incorrect as it had me losing $30k to him in a 100-200 and 250-500 session where I was down 30 something to him and came back to get it all back plus the 2k he originally sat with less rake. 120 of the 122 hands from my Betsafe session also are on PTR under my name there (BigGamble888). My actual results agains't x_buddha420 including the $9,497 loss above is +$8,353 in 2,381 hands.

I will cross-post this to the High Stakes Limit forum and have no problem posting all the hands from the session so real poker players can judge if any chip dumping occurred. Also, I can post my Pokertracker graph vs x_buddha and/or the emails from Betsafe if helpful.


Cliffs:

1. I started playing on Betsafe to play on the Ongame network after Betfair left for ipoker
2. I lost $9,500 in a 122 hand 100-200 limit holdem session
3. Site closes my account and confiscates the $5,900 remaining in my account accusing me of chip dumping

This is quite the opposite of the way these threads usually read. We get many threads where someone wins a lot of money from a single player, and then gets their account locked for chip dumping, presumably because the money that was won was deposited fraudulently.

In this case, you're the one who deposited, so as long as your funding institution isn't refusing the charges for some reason, you know the money wasn't deposited fraudulently.

If it all happened exactly as stated in the OP and no facts are missing, this certainly sounds like it's been misplayed by Betsafe. Any chance Moneybookers (were the other 2 deposits also Moneybookers?) is throwing up any red flags to Betsafe?

I think I know where your $5900 went. I think Betsafe use your stolen money to pay Mikkel Parlo to advertise on his short in Bellator 98 fight this Saturday night. Smart company, they know how to cut their advertising budget.

Emphasis mine. This is not quite true from a poker site's perspective fwiw. They could be thinking that you dont want to get "linked" to your opponent on MB, so instead of xfering on MB you are using their site to effectively P2P to him by chip dumping to him. There is both non fraudulent and fraudulent chip dumping - this would most likely be a case of non-fraudulent chip dumping as the Betsafe cannot received a chargeback from MB., but it could still fall under money-laundering.


FWIW, its more than likely this:
Its not this:
Could also be that they think your Betsafe & MB account have been compromised and the "hacker" is just spewing funds at high stakes. Unlikely though as I figure they would do a ton of verification checks before they closed down your account for this reason.


Ask for you case to be escalated or look for a rep on here to help you get past level 1 CS nonsense

sick. hope u get ur money back OP
been playing on this site for years, and the fact that they confiscated ur money really amazes me

GL obv

i dont even know who to contact in such a case.

hope u get your money back though

Bobo - I can't imagine Moneybookers would throw up red flags to Betsafe. I've been a VIP there since early 2012 and use it for all my poker deposits/withdrawals.

pmarr - Neither Betsafe or Moneybookers has sent me any messages indicating they are concerned my account was hacked. My Moneybookers account is still functioning normally. Is there a rep here for either Betsafe or Ongame? Also, while I leaned more towards it being incompetence myself, I'm not as sure now that it's not just outright theft as in researching it, Amaya Gaming bought Ongame last year and hired Paul Leggett, the former head of UltimateBet to run their poker division. http://calvinayre.com/2013/04/30/bus...ises-eyebrows/

Siste and toxic - thanks

Mega - I've got that Bellator recorded and haven't watched it yet. Now I'll have to root agains't that guy when I see it

Looks like my NVG thread that was getting the majority of the responses before I went to bed got deleted

My account has been re-opened. See Betsafe Rep's post in my thread on High Stakes Limit. Thanks all.