Hi community,

my name is Julian, I am 27 years old and I currently live in Austria. I am writing to inform you that pokerstars.eu closed my account this year and decided to confiscate my five diggit bankroll (~14600$)-without showing evidence, that I have breached the terms of pokerstars.eu.

I am a former spin&go grinder and husng player. I played under the nick alwayswin222 on pokerstars.eu.

At 20th January 2017 pokerstars emailed me and wrote that my pokerstars account has been frozen.

"Hello Julian,

We are writing to advise that your Stars Account has been frozen.

Please explain in specific detail what you have done over the last year in terms of studying, coaching and
anything to improve your poker game and advantage over your opponents. Particular details that must be
included are:

- User IDs of all players you have worked with in any capacity;

- Changes in game formats played and studied and the reason/s why;

- Deliberate changes in strategy or playing style implemented in our games;

- Software, tools and methods used to study;

- Software and tools used as you play on Stars;

- What is your current technical setup when accessing Stars and how that has changed;

- Approximate dates of all of the above events.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Regards,

Rolandas
PokerStars Game Integrity"

They wanted me to film a playing session from me after that on pokerstars.

I followed their instructions and after that happened? NOTHING.

They let me wait nearly four months, not providing updates or anything.

At the end of May 2017, I decided to email them and ask them whats the case now. The day after my email they informed me suddenly, that my account has been frozen and funds will not be payed out.

"Hello Julian,

We are writing to advise of the results of our investigation into your account.

Our investigation has taken into account all the information available to us, including information that you
provided, technical data from our records, and other information.

We have found that you are in breach of our Terms of Service. You can read the complete Terms of Service here:

https://www.pokerstars.eu/poker/room/tos/

When deciding how to respond to this situation this extract from of our Terms of Service outlines the possible
resolutions available for Rational Group:

Without prejudice to any other rights, if a User breaches in whole or in part any provision contained herein,
Rational Group or any other company within the Group which provides services to the User reserves the right to
take such action as it sees fit, including terminating this Agreement or any other agreement in place with the
User, immediately blocking the User’s access to the Service or to any other service offered by the Group,
terminating such User's account on the Sites or on any other Sites operated by the Group, seizing all monies
held in the User’s account on the Sites or on any other Sites operated by the Group and/or taking legal
action against such User.

It is our view that your breach of our Terms of Service caused harm to other players. Consequently, we will be
exercising our rights under our Terms of Service. As a result, we advise that:

1) Indefinitely cease your account activity on our site.

2) Close associates of either yourself or the owners of the other involved accounts are now barred from
playing on our site in the future.

3) Rational Group will be seizing the funds (and frequent player points) from the accounts that were used to
perpetrate this rules breach to compensate victims of your rule breach.

We trust that this email explains our position on the matter. We believe that this represents a fair outcome
that adequately enforces our rules and protects the interests of all players.

You are no longer welcome to play on our site.

Please do not attempt to create any other accounts as doing so is a violation of our terms of service. If we
discover a new account it will be closed without notice, you will be liable for any loss that could occur.
Should you circumvent our controls by opening or accessing another account with any of our brands and/or group
companies, we reserve the right to confiscate any and all assets contained in the account(s) irrespective of
the amount of time it has taken us to identify and confirm the links between the account(s) and/or the account
holder(s).

Regards,
Donald
PokerStars Game Integrity"



Multiple times I asked them for proofs of the accusation that I used "third-party tools"- without success. They are not willing to provide any information.

"Hello,

Your email was escalated to me as a member of the Game Integrity Team.

Your case was carefully reviewed by multiple members of our Game Integrity Team, and every one of us reached
the same conclusion; you were using a third party tool that is in breach of our Terms of Service.

I regret that we are unable to provide specific details regarding our conclusion. We do not detail exactly
what evidence was found, as that would serve only to educate third party tool developers on how to avoid
detection in the future. We do detail our evidence to the Malta Gaming Authority upon their request. However
they also will not share exact details with you for the same reason.

Suffice to say, it was a combination of many different factors that led us to discover your third party tool
use that is in breach of our Terms of Service, and we collected enough evidence to close your account and
confiscate your funds. Please note that we do not take such action lightly, and only do so when we are quite
certain of our findings.

Your account will remain closed and you will remain prohibited from playing on our platforms under all various
licenses. Do not attempt to play on any of our platforms. Any account we find you to be using, whether it
belongs to yourself or a friend, will be closed and all funds within will be confiscated. Should you
circumvent our controls by opening or accessing another account with any of our brands and/or group companies,
we reserve the right to confiscate any and all assets contained in the account(s) irrespective of the amount
of time it has taken us to identify and confirm the links between the account(s) and/or the account holder(s).

Regards,
Scott
PokerStars Game Integrity"



My first concern to make this thread is to inform everybody of the business practices of pokerstars.eu. IN MY OPINION having money on pokerstars.eu is a risky business, especially if you are a longterm winning player. They might just close your account and keep your funds-without showing evidence.

This is a fact everybody should be aware of and informed about.

By the way: During the four months they did not communicate with me between January and May, they did not hesitate to bomb me with email for their great tournaments.

e.g.: https://content.screencast.com/users...07-22_1932.png


Pretty unreasonable for me either

I waited so long to make that thread because I was in discussion with my lawyer if it is sencefull to go to public with such a case, but we finally came to the conclusion that we have to- and if its just to protect and inform other poker players.

Best wishes, Julian

Pokerstars isn't particularly in the business of getting rid of high volume players, especially with lowered rake back.

What third party software were you using?
Anything non-mainstream?

They aren't going to tell you what proof they have of you using TOS breaking tools because it could potentially help cheaters.

You haven't denied using any tools in this thread. Can you clarify here what exactly you were using?

strange

I wonder how many other people (including staking groups) are using the same unmentionable "third party assistance software".

This case has some similarities to the one Skier5* was involved with. Stars Security team might seem to be getting overly aggressive (e.g. the demand for information and the video-making thing), the punishments might be considered draconian (not just a ban, but a moneygrab as well), and the lack of transparency might be worrying, but fun players and honest regs won't have any sympathy for cheats that have their bankrolls confiscated.

* To his credit, Skier was very forthcoming in explaining how his tool worked, and how it arguably didn't break the (old) rules. I suspect that at least some of the current crop of SpinGo/HUSNG crushers have a dirty little secret, and OP is just one of the ones that has been caught and punished.

Are you a member of any staking group? As far as I know, there are groups that use illegal software/strategies (like information/HH sharing), and if I am not wrong I'm pretty sure you were interested in joining one in the past.