This is my experience and story playing on 888Poker as a professional poker player, hopefully it will help other future players make an informed decision and also if anyone else has a similar story maybe they can share it, the more we are the bigger our chances are to be heard.

A little background info about me:

I’ll apologize in advance for future text mistakes as English is not my main language. I’m from Romania. I started playing poker like 5 years ago and probably like many of you being a competitive person and loving games I started to put more and more time into it and getting better and 2 years ago I finally decided to go pro as I was making more money playing poker than at my daily job.

I have tried multiple sites that are available to me, but I decided to stick to 888 and make it my main site because I found the games to be good (i’m a cash player) and I liked the convenience of playing Snap. 99% of my volume played is at Snap Tables, I think this info might be relevant in my case.

First account suspension (2021):

This may sound familiar to those that are reading this and had the same experience as me.
At this point I was playing on 888 for 8 months.
It was a normal playing day for me and as I try to login I’m met with this message: “Your account has been temporarily disabled. For immediate assistance please click here, otherwise please check your email inbox.” My inbox had no message from 888 so I decided to write to support to see. They responded back and as with a lot of people before me that had this issue 888 is accusing me of using “Artificial Intelligence” which can’t be farther from the truth as game integrity is as important for me as it is for everyone that loves this game and plays it professionaly.

I would post the emails that I received from 888 but they are in my local language but it’s that generic message that has been posted before on the forum.

See these threads:
https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...olved-1702035/
https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...proof-1765343/

The only tools that I have used besides 888Poker are PT4 and 888Caption that are allowed according to them:
https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...ostcount=29087

This went back and forth for like 3 months with me trying to “prove my innocence” if this is something and 888 ignoring my emails and a complete lack of transparency when it comes to the reasons for my suspension. After like 3 months I decided to write to them on social media as I wasn’t getting anywhere with the Romanian customer care and they decided to unblock my account.

Second account suspension (2022):

Now you may ask how I got my account suspended a 2nd time after all of that.

Well I still enjoyed playing there for all the reasons mentioned above and I said that they made a mistake and overreacted to some triggers when it comes to game integrity and for sure this won’t happen again. They even gave me the VIP status shortly after lifting the suspension which gave me confidence and made me trust that this won’t happen again and in case it happens things will solve much faster as I have the possibility to talk to someone directly, my account manager (spoiler it didn’t, they haven’t even responded to a single mail after my account got suspended the 2nd time; you can judge for yourself their quality of the VIP customer care).

Back to more details:
One year after the first suspension, I try to log in when I’m met again with the message that my account is suspended and to contact the support for more information. Ironically 3 days before I got called by 888 to ask me for some feedback.
After I’ve contacted them (the normal customer support, the VIP didn’t bother to respond) they reply again that my account got banned on the suspicion of AI usage and they asked me again for KYC documents and a selfie with my ID which I sent them as soon as possible in the hopes that this won’t take again 3 months and it is just an automatic ban that gets triggered on my account god knows why.
They took like a week to respond to me after taking all the steps they required me to do to let me know that the decision is final and my account will remain suspended and all the funds confiscated which amounts to around 4000$.

I have tried everything to have an open conversation with them but all I got was mostly a monologue where I asked for reasons and a way to solve this but I was met only with a generic message that this is permanent and you won’t even get your money back.

So here we are 6 months later where 888 falsely accused me of something I haven’t done and decided to keep ~4000$ of my cash. It feels awful to be accused of something when you’re innocent and you’re treated as guilty until proven otherwise.

Thank you for reading until here, any advice is more than welcome and if you have any questions feel free to ask them, I’ll try to update this post.

I’ll post below a pic with some stats on all the hands played on 888poker.

Hopender on 888 in case we played in the past, have a great day and I hope my story will help others make better decisions in their poker career.

Update 1:

Yesterday I received an email from 888 in which they stated that the decision to keep my account banned and my funds not being paid stands. So the next step for me to contest this decision is by adressing this issue with the local gambling regulator. Which I will do, I'll update this post once I get a response from them, this might take a few weeks. Until then good luck at the tables.

I'll post below a part of the email received. (translated from romanian)

We are contacting you on behalf of Poker Operations at 888.ro regarding your account with the username "Hopender."
As we have previously informed you, regarding your account, it has been carefully examined and the decision to terminate your membership remains in effect.
This decision is final and was made only after careful analysis of all factors involved.
Your account will remain blocked, and all funds in your bankroll will not be refunded, and withdrawals will not be paid.

In accordance with the terms and conditions:

"Assistive Software: You are not permitted to use any software program or robot which, in our opinion, is endowed with artificial intelligence [“Assistive Software”] in connection with your use of the Services. We constantly monitor the use of the Services to detect the use of any Assistive Software programs. If we have reasonable suspicion that any Assistive Software programs have been used, we reserve the right to act as we see fit, including by immediately blocking access to the Services of the player who has breached this clause, closing their gaming account, and retaining all funds in their gaming account."