I was thinking about writing this post for quite a long time. Much proof came up in the last couple of weeks and all of them confirm that the whole challenge was nothing else but a fraud.

The „Legend” of Alvaro Romero started with a famous bet for playing 20K games in 2 months (you may find it here: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/1...eback-1591843/. The „achievement” of Spin4play turned out to be a legendary hoax instead. First information about the deception came from people close to Spin4play. Shortly thereafter, the news has begun to circulate at poker forums and in private conversations.

As a result, PokerStars began an internal investigation. On the 8th of May 2018, it was confirmed that Alvaro Romero has been cheating during the challenge. PokerStars penalized Romero’s behavior by applying the strictest punishment – a permanent ban of his account with forfeiture of all funds.



It turned out that Spin4play was using prohibited software that allowed him to select weaker opponents. The software was able to connect to PokerStars databases and use it to inform a player of the people waiting in the registration queue. This resulted in a significant advantage of Spin4play over his opponents, as he was able to choose the games where only recreational players were registered. Below a link to the interface of the program (thanks to the courtesy of third parties):



Spin4play defrauded people who bet against him for more than $100,000.00!!! As if it was not enough, he was buying additional shares during the bet, knowing that he can boost his scores at any time thanks to the illegal program he was using. Below you may find his post published few days after the bet had started:



After the bet, Alvaro entered into a cooperation with one of the biggest Poker schools – Poker Strategy, which is still actively promoting Alvaro’s stable „Spin Legends” and his challenge. I assume Poker Strategy does not know yet about the practices of one of their main partners. Therefore, I am informing Poker Strategy and asking them to cease the cooperation and actively help to retrieve the defrauded funds.






I have lost $30.000,00 and considering all facts I am demanding full recompensation along with the amount I should have got for winning a bet. This is the only fair scenario I can imagine right now.

If you have also been cheated by Spin4play, please write in this topic.

So the rumors about the ban for cheating are true, what a crapstorm

how is it possible to just make a program that can access pokerstars database?

is that just awful security or something? i know nothing about how hacking works.

oh hes from spain too, the land of cheaters/thieves and fraudsters, shocking.

No need to bring Spain into it, plenty of great people in any country, and also plenty of poor ones too.

I was thinking about it since that screenshot appeared. My guess "accesses the database" is probably not accurate. My naive thoughts without any digging at all, is that a "blind" spin and go lobby is identical behind the scenes to a normal HUSNG lobby for example, just the UI elements of the lobby are not programmed (or even perhaps they are, and just not displayed). This would make sense from a programming standpoint. So with enough tinkering, picking through the process memory of the Stars client, it may be possible for a hacker to find the memory locations the lobby exists in and "see" in to the invisible lobbies. A not-banned program such as StarsHelper uses methods similar to this to read stack sizes and convert them to BBs, for example.

Total speculation of course, just my first guess.

same problem in france dude with a spin elite software who give you the choice of the game you will play! look around this key word you will find some informations.

Good job on summarizing all the known information so far!
Did the thread in pokerstrategy already get deleted? I can't find it anymore.
It's obvious that they will only say that this cheating thingy is not related to the current operations of the stable, and they discourage any cheating among its current players.
But besides hiding like a mouse, and not answering all the accusations, what is spin4play's current status? Does he still do coaching for the stable, have any ownership etc? That would be weird, i can't imagine being in coaching with him and wanna talk about anything but that scam.

Every single post of his in this section is how X part of the world is ****. I haven't seen SA and NA so far, my money would be that the only really great country is Murica though. Can't be anything else.

In the 2p2 thread for spinlegends, their rep said that "his personal situation" has nothing to do with the stable. When in the very first post they advertise with his legendary sca... uhhmm I mean challenge.

Dear all,

thanks for discussing this matter with us.

Firstly, we would like to assure you that we are actively looking into this situation. Already last week we have made a statement within SpinLegends stable clarifying matters from company perspective:

Secondly, it is important to repeat that if the allegations against spin4play were true, it would have been an error on a personal level, not a company. SpinLegends have been always actively discouraging users from using any prohibited in-play support. If any SpinLegends user or coach used illegal software or cheated in any other way, it would be a major wrongdoing on their part and they would have to bear personal consequences.

Thirdly, we have removed spin4play challenge from marketing materials of SpinLegends. We are not going to promote a player who is banned on PokerStars. There are numerous other successes of SpinLegends users, elite coaches and proven strategies of SpinLegends that we will continue promoting and advertising. SpinLegends never needed any unfair help to achieve successes of its members.

At the moment there is no conclusive evidence that spin4play was cheating during the challenge. The OP in this thread posted a general PokerStars email explaining that spin4play is banned, but the PokerStars email does not provide any link to the challenge, neither does the PokerStars email provide any link to the 3rd party software. So can OP post real evidence that spin4play was using this software to back the allegations with data?

SpinLegends is committed to fair play and game integrity and will continue carefully monitoring this situation.

Kind regards
SpinLegends Team

Please see below the public spinlyzer statement showing 13.1k games of spin4play challenge:



You can see that the 0reg KPI is between 26% - 29% which looks genuine.

Hello,
According to my knowledge (and additonal information is coming to light every hour since the thread has been started), Spin4Play's Pokerstars ban has been directly linked to his actions during the "challenge"


Eight days after the above email exchange with pokerstars integrity team, Spin4Play has been banned with forfeiture of the funds and it's upcoming redistribution to his victims:



Being able to use prohibited software that enables selecting and/or dodging certain tables and players has HUGE effect on someone's winrate - I've recieved information from one of the top 100s regulars from that period that he has compared his amount of games played vs Spin4Play and couple other good regs and it has been lower despite Alvaro's volume being few times higher and timezone being the same.

As to the Spinlyzer, as a service - it has been sketchy from the start and information provided there had been easily manipulated if someone was in contact with it's owner - which to my knowledge had been the case in Spin4Play's case.
Secondly, during that time I do not recall spinlyzer losing track of the games above 15$, therefore, the 13k amount tracked that have been posted vs 20k played is quite improbable.
Since the stats can be manipulated if you know the right people plus Reg ratio isn't fair. Reg=/=reg, if you are able to pick and choose weakest players that according to the website's algorithms were regs (afaik it was based mostly on volume and cev/game greater than 0 -> ZERO = losing at -5%ev ROI "regs")


Have anyone been provided with Hand History from Spin4Play's challenge from Pokerstars download, 3rd party link? The person which volunteered prior the challenge has started, had been declined by Alvaro. How was the verification process performed? Another unknown.

------
Thank you SvenBE for your statement on Pokerstrategy's thread
( https://www.pokerstrategy.com/forum/...hreadid=444848 _


Does this mean that Spinlegends = Pokerstrategy? You, as a HEAD admin of Pokerstrategy have posted the same thing within few minutes on couple different boards, one on PS as Headadmin and one as Spinlegends rep on 2+2? If Spinlegends = Pokerstrategy, may I ask if Alvaro is still one of the main shareholders in the project?

Best Regards,
surebet

Hello there!

I have some Skype conversation which could prove that all this is true without no doubt. (I will only show if is completely necessary)
Also apart from the program he bought accounts to jump chips because he also did not complete the challenge but i can´t demostrate that although I know it's true.


Pokerstrategy how do you intend to compensate all the players deceived and attracted by your deceptive advertising?

Dear SpinLegends members,

You might have heard the allegations about SpinLegends founder Alvaro ‘spin4play’ Romero using a certain seating script (illegal software) during the 20k challenge in March/April 2016, which allegedly resulted in his PokerStars account being banned.

Whilst this is a personal matter of Alvaro, we want to share with you the view of SpinLegends as a company:

1. First and foremost, SpinLegends has always perceived any prohibited in-play support as totally unacceptable and we have been actively discouraging our players from using any seating scripts, any tools showing player queues, any botting or any other prohibited in-play support. We will continue to do so. Our mission is to encourage fair play and genuine player achievements.

2. Secondly, we currently can´t know for sure whether the allegations against Alvaro are based on some true merits or not, because these are personal account matters. We believe everybody is “innocent until proven guilty” and we will be monitoring the situation for now.

3. We checked the situation with Alvaro and Alvaro assured us that the allegations are not true. We never had a reason to doubt spin4play. We know he is a great player and a great coach. We are concerned with the allegations made on 2p2 and we will keep you posted, if there are any important developments.

4. For avoidance of doubt we started SpinLegends company together with Alvaro in December 2016. We were thrilled to work with Alvaro, whom we considered a genius strategic mind and one of the most talented Spin&Go players with a true dedication for helping others improve. Already back then in December 2016 we checked public data about Alvaro and noted that 20k challenge was done in a very transparent way where Alvaro was streaming all the time, shared complete hand histories and the 3rd party escrow respected 2p2 member evaluated Alvaro´s results as genuine. No concerns were noted by the 2p2 member verifying the results.

5. No matter the outcome of this situation, you can be sure that SpinLegends will continue providing you with great coaching materials, personal support and staking. We are constantly working on new promotions, coaching materials and improved staking team experience.

We have already made a statement about the whole situation on 2+2.

Team SpinLegends

hahahahahahahahaha!

I can not believe it, can you talk to him so that he personally comes to the post to show his face and refuses the affirmations?

Oh nm, we are all good then, case closed.

If he really possesses the key of an obscure passage, nothing more than to be penalized

Sure looks to be the case

Being banned on stars is certainly a red flag that cheating may have occurred in the challenge. If Alvaro didn't cheat he can prove it by posting his email correspondence with Stars Game Integrity.

100% lifetime baned

im sick of all of you greedy cheaters. i got banned from pokerstars being completley innocent because 3 years ago i shared house with people that supposedly cheat aswell once i wasnt living there. something unreal,surreal...whatever you want to call it. i lost contact with this people 3 years ago and never ever use anything ilegal. im really sick of people that earning lot of money in the weakest field ever as spin and go become supergreedy and need to use that **** to make more money. really i wish pokerstars could do more about all the cheating cases and not only confiscate founds and ban. they should go to a court or pay a big fine. same as if you are walking in the street and someone steal your wallet full of notes every single day of your life they should have a big punishment. bigger than just get banned. cheaters will always come, they have nothing to loose at this point.

I wouldn't consider table selection or using table selection software cheating. Cheating is a very serious allegation in poker and to me it's use is not justified to call table selection cheating.



Whether using such table selection software is against the spirit of the challenge needs to be discussed with whoever wrote the legal contract for the parties involved in the challenge.

Whether using such table selection software is against T&C of PokerStars and allows them to confiscate funds as a result needs to be discussed between PokerStars and their client.

Whether Spin Legends or PokerStrategy is using misleading advertising or is working together with a dishonest partner needs to be discussed within their own companies.



Make sure to separate these points of discussion clearly.

Table selection in spins, a game purposefully designed with blind lobbies and non-linear seating, is clearly cheating. Table selection in almost all other forms of poker (with the exception of breaking "anonymous" reg games) is most definitely not cheating. The game is designed around not having table selection. Breaking this design and site ToS is cheating regardless of your personal definition being "serious." It's an unfair advantage over the field that breaks site rules and works around the design of the game in an illegitimate way. Seems very fair to call this cheating.

As for the 3 other points of discussion you bring up -- I think 1) and 2) are pretty closely connected, as if someone is breaking PS T&C (which they were) it seems it would clearly invalidate the challenge. Without reviewing the final betting terms firsthand, I still just can't imagine the challenge was drawn up and nobody mentioned the against bettors winning if the player was found to be breaking ToS and thus banned from the site. Granted it's *technically possible* that this is the case, but that probability seems so miniscule as to be barely worth considering.

I do agree especially that the 3rd question, re Spin Legends + Poker Strategy, should be kept distinct from the other two. Even if the group benefited from the advertising, exactly what the ramifications of that are/should be seems to be a separate issue entirely.

completely agree.

Hi there. Would like to contribute to this thread and help revealing the whole truth. I don’t have proof of many of what I’m going to say, but as you know there is no smoke without fire. Hopefully other people who know stuff will contribute as well. It’s also very relevant that in all this time of rumours, Alvaro in person hasn’t come to the forum to refute them. If I was him and was innocent it’s for sure first thing I would have done first day this came up.

Alvaro was a more or less unknown poker player who played low-mid stakes HU sng in the spanish field. In july 2015 they decided to create a spin school with “Aligatorri”, a quite more known mid-high stakes spanish cash player. Just a few later a more well known HU sng player in 2+2 joined them as well, “emotionx”. This first school was called “spinwin”.
I’ve met many of their players personally or online since I played spins with them a lot in .es and .com. Also played against Alvaro and emotionx. I can say they are good players, but wouldn’t say they are outstanding ones, so for the first moment was hard to believe for me that Alvaro did this challenge.

It seems at that time Alvaro was “busted” and owing around 15k, so emotionx suggested him to do this propbet. What i’ve been told from different sources (players from their school) is that he was using a program that could reveal who was registered at the spin. He had also agreement with other spanish players to let him win chips so he could increase his ev during those spins that would play against each other.

Not only this, but as many people can guess, many of the players of the school of the highest stakes in spins (100s at that moment) were also using this program. As far as I know there were not all the players, but only the ones that had more confidence with him.


Just after the challenge, the coachs of spinwin decided to split. A decision that nobody said why it was taken, but what i’ve been told is the following: Alvaro was using this program without the knowledge of Aligatorri, and also letting it use to some of his closer players, but not all of them, so those who were not involved were of course in disadvantage. When Aligatorri discovered this, he decided not to continue with the project with him. After the split most of the players would go with emotionx/ aligatorri new school called “spinEV”, since they were supposed to be the better coaches. Anyway they closed spinEV a bit afterwards. However, it would be nice if any of them can come to this thread and give their version.

Alvaro himself did a very good job of marketing with his challenge and had a lot of success with his new school SpinLegends. By the way, this guy is living in Malta and his company should be registered there too, if it is legal (for long time at least i know it was not registered legally, so it was not paying taxes). Just saying in case someone wants to take legal actions (probably since is European Union you don’t even need to go to Malta to do it).

If his players used this program in pokerstars.es is even worse, since the field in 100s is so small and rake is 7% (plus taxes). That means playing there even with 1 fish per table is not profit. You need 2 fishes per table to beat the rake and the variance. At some hours of the day, 1 or 2 regulars can fulfill the field and will make the game not profitable anymore. Unless you have a program like this, of course. And I guess aswell if they have any player in Winamax it should be very harmful too, since variance is huge there, and it’s a field with high rake and full of regs. Also if spinelite or other schools have this kind of programs it’s just going to make it unprofitable for rest of regulars.


Also we don’t know up to today if some of these players are using this program or anything similar, even that I know they were doing it, and if you were Alvaro and have this chance I guess you are going to make the most of it and give it to all the players you can so they can make money for you. I’m going to mention some of the players I know that have or had relation with either spin4play or SpinLegends, even that I guess many of them have nothing to do with this, but if pokerstars security personal read this they can investigate all of them and take their conclusions:

pokerstars.com: V1daltrap, emotionx, DOCTORROMERO, JC-TheGuide, acroentela, B4NKROLL3R, snapRoB, alejolb18, 1stclassfree, spin4play, sinkhole

pokerstars.fres: alvaro951951, Sir Baal, skon94, adriia18, rutxo, nutskiker, kaidien10, hugocordero, 44givemehope, paphelito, KIDpillest, BustoUno, ignaciomol, L@mentabl@, zyclonator, Fold1221, Juanki9605, r0bbins, estupendotio, DanixORZ, palomeke222, David Mirazo, meacolonia92, sinkhole46, Blak Mirror, il-bambino69, Mashed1, ZylerZ, emotionxxx

Anyways, for pokerstars it should be very easy to proof this. They just have to calculate if the proportion of fish he faced is higher than usual, also according to volume.

Also good to check by stars if the same guys that are in .es that have account in .com and if they cheated there too, since many of them play there as well. Worth noting that many of them play with strong complicated VPNs too against pokerstars terms and conditions.


Finally, I have to lean towards allowing table selection. If pokerstars reads this, it’s worth to know how much damage is causing their policy of not being able to choose a table. It’s like prohibiting scripts, if it’s forbidden but since most of people are going to use them, you are just going to be in a very clear disadvantage if you don’t do it yourself. If spinwiz was allowed this would never had happened.

GL to you all recovering your money stolen

Hi,
As one of the top 100s players during the period bet was proposed, I've also thought that it is very unlikely for Spin4Play to be able to achieve his challenge and decided to give him some action.

Therefore I am coming forward as another bettor, who had been cheated for the amount of 15000$.

As such, I would like to get my hands on email conversation between Pokerstars and Spin4Play - if the reason for the ban isnt linked to prohibited table selection software - please come clean Alvaro. Secondly, I would like to receive all HandHistory from the bet to be able to review the frequency of Alvaro's facing various types of opponents at the tables plus as someone above suggested, chip dumping from friends/bought accounts to boost the EV.

I understand that Pokerstrategy hasnt been directly linked to this fraud at the time it has happened, however, due to its connection (ownership?) of Spin Legends, which as a brand has benefited greatly from advertising and promotion based on a scam, I am counting on your help to retrieve amount I've been scammed for.

When will other bettors come forward? Let's gather all the information we can and proceed as a united front in solving this "issue"

Thanks,
TeemTeem

As a former $100s Spin regular, I'm incredibly disappointed that these stories continue to come out. Part of the reason I quit them was because I had grave concerns about the frequency of cheating within the games and this is yet another tale that confirms my suspicions. It's even worse if others in his group/friends of his were using the software and while I highly doubt most of the people associated with him were doing so, it's fair to assume that he wasn't the only one using a this sort of program designed to skirt the rules of table selection. On that note...

Agreed 100%.