Hi,

I was hoping to bring peoples attention to a situation I have monitoring for quite some time. I have had a poker account tagged by the rake back and affiliate site, 'pokervip.com'. As part of my account being tagged by this site, I am entered into a monthly rakerace. However, following some close attention it has become evident that a lot of the accounts which are above me in the rake race are in fact made up. They will remain a certain number of points ahead of me, no matter how much I play. If i play 12 hours in a day, they do the same. If I play 2 hours in a day, they do the same. This gives the deception that if I am to play more then I can overtake them in the race, therefore increasing my bonus, when in fact this is not the case. The accounts mentioned have no activity on the website whatsoever. That means that they have not once viewed how they were doing in the rake race, as this would then be shown on their profile under 'recent activity'.

If anyone here is also in the rake race, it would be interesting to hear your thoughts. Likewise, if anyone working in rake back or for affiliates can shed some light on this and what actions I (we) might be able to take that would greatly appreciated.


Basically I think pokerVIP are unable to support the '$50k race race' that they offer financially and are conning the players.

Here is a link to the race concerned: https://www.pokervip.com/en/promotio...0-october-2015

Some of the accounts which I am certain are fake are : babyface32, StrongMove, and SeaPartner.

I think you are right. Especially this StrongMove account seems very suspicious. He is listed 2 times in the ranking. Once with his Betfred account and once with Betway Poker. But when you click on his profile he just has 1 confirmed room - Betfred.

I'm certainly no fan of this company's business practices but I'm far from sold that they would do something as bad as this. Can you confirm that the top couple of players are legit? So far, the people you mention only account for like 5% of the pool (assuming you mean prettyface32).

If you don't trust them, find another affiliate that offers rake races. There is a site called rakerace.com that has advertised here for three years. Surely they have rake races.

Rake the Rake dates back more than 10 years. Their website advertises "$290,200 in exclusive races."

If I were in your situation and feeling cheated, I would move my action to one of those affiliates by Nov 1 to get in the next month's race on time.

I agree with what you are saying poker addict, and it would be easy to get an account tagged with another affiliate. However, this just means that someone like me in the future will also be getting scammed. There seems to be an attitude in poker where people think, 'ah well, we got scammed, it happens', when in actual fact it's completely inexcusable in any industry.

I agree, there perhaps is not that many made up names, but they exist in the top 20, where the payouts are the biggest, essentially making it impossible for people to move up.


You said it yourself, this is very serious if it is the case. In fact, this is classed as fraud. I am in the process of trying to contact former employees to try and gain some more information. If I can try and gather enough evidence then I will contact PokerVIP directly and try and get some compensation.

Like I said in my earlier post, if anyone has any thoughts on how to move forward all input is much appreciated.

You are absolutely correct that if this is going on it is a big deal and they should be exposed. Keep digging and if you find more evidence feel free to post it here. I'm interested to see what you uncover.

It's important to understand that the rake race leaderboard uses aliases.
My alias on PokerVIP races is "XYZ". However, my player username on the site is "ABC".
I also had similar issue with a race from another affiliate. I did everything to find out what stakes/game my opponent was playing, but I came to the conclusion that his rake race leaderboard username is probably just an alias

Well, im not one who will confirm what OP is saying. But from all the history i know about that particular affiliate and the owner of it, i would not be surprised a single second if this is really happening.

I wouldn't be surprised based on this company's past but I think it is an underdog. OP hasn't visited 2+2 since the day he posted this. I'm guessing he didn't uncover anything else.

Just a quick update on the rake race for this month. Basically all the accounts I suggested were fake are way way down in the rake race. So it seems they all have coincidentally decided to stop grinding at the same time. However, it is possible they are doing this to encourage people to grind. (so they make it look like grinders are going to get a good payment for the rake race at the start, and then the fake accounts will overtake them regardless towards the end of the month).

Will continue to update as the month goes on.

If you can see past results, wouldn't it be easy to check the long term results for legit accounts and then see how often non-legit accounts are in top positions and how often there are "one month wonders"?

A little off topic but something that a player should consider when signing up: These guys are advertising a regulated NJ site alongside unlicensed offshore ones after the DGE deadline. That is a risky play, one that I don't see any other affiliate making.

Several people have come to me complaining about this company in recent weeks. It starts to make me lean towards OP being on to something, especially with its history. I suppose OP would have returned if he figured anything out though.

I also notice that they are still promoting New Jersey sites with offshore ones. I know of no other site doing so after the deadline demanded by the DGE. I'm surprised Party Poker is willing to be associated with that.

I had a discussion shortly after this with one of the people unhappy and they said their issue was resolved weeks ago. I hope that is the case for anybody that had an issue with them.

wow this seems shady as, ive always been wary of this happening

Few buddies past year did the math for a 'fat' Skin race of a big name Euro room supposedly awarding dozens of thousands of dollars.

-First placeD 'player' that took like.. 5k $? just couldn't put in that volume on that network, in a month. Even if it was a bot playing 18 hours a day. Impossible, there are just no games running and 'he' 'raked' like ~30k $. Not to mention those are all aggravated serious cash grinders, and none of them had one hand with that Username in a month, on any higher cash or fast fold stakes.

-Why you think pokerVIP boys turned most of their 'returns' into Races sprints lockdowns and such competitions last few years ?

-Why you think they all together completely ran from 2+2 in... 2012. ?

-If you trust or put into anything into online poker Races in, 2016. ...

99% confident this affiliate played a huge role back in 2010 and 2011 with bots. I think they knowingly signed up bots to networks like iPoker, Microgaming and Entraction. They played a big role in the bot problems we have today.

Them rigging their promotions would not surprise me at all.

It was a little over a year ago. This thread discusses that meltdown at length:

Matthew Parvis of pokernews wants the industry to rally together against pokertube for stealing

This post from Mason specifically addresses why they are no longer advertisers here: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...&postcount=124

It is a good read if you have 30 minutes to kill but Mason's post should be a good summary.