First post in here, some of you might know me from playing in Pokerstars as Squa1l.

Been an active poker player in the .co.uk poker rooms since 2016-2017 when I decided to go to live to Milton Keynes from Barcelona, Spain. In the span from 2016 to 2023 I've played mostly Pokerstars but I had some brief stints in 888poker and PartyPoker until 2019 where I completely stopped playing in the latest two. I cashed out pretty quick from 888 all my balance but I left all of it in PartyPoker (34-35k Euros) in hope I might return to play there because of better traffic and because it was convenient to have some savings in EUR.

Now it's 2023 and I decided to cash out 5k from Partypoker to pay some bills and have some liquid for the upcoming couple or three months. After doing so I got required shortly after for a security check asking me for a picture of my ID and a photo of a bank statement. (Understandably that account has been inactive for years at this point). I sent everything required while at the same time I send a couple of emails asking for whats the best way to withdraw money without being charged for money conversion fees of EUR to GBP. They offer me a good solution of it but at the send time on parallel they ask me to send a new photo of me holding some document nest to my face. I proceed and send a photo of myself holding my passport next to my face.

Next thing I know is I receive en email saying this:



"We are writing to you about your account with us.

We have conducted a standard security check on your account and as a result we have decided to seize the balance and close it permanently.

In accordance with our terms and conditions we reserve the right to take this decision which is final and will not be reconsidered.

Please note that you are no longer permitted to create or use an account on our network. If you are found to have done so, the account will be closed and any balance within will be confiscated.

If you have any questions, please contact us using the following link:

Contact Page

Regards,

Risk Operations Team."


This happened just right now. I'm in shock and not sure how to proceed. I SWEAR TO GOD there's nothing more to this process than what I have just told. I've never done anything wrong or ever received some mail warning me about ANYTHING. Account has been closed and balance seized with more than 34k EUR on it which is a decent percentage of my savings without any explanation of what conditions or terms I violated.

I beg for help on how to proceed from here to recover the money I earned legitimately on the tables please. The feeling of impotence and despair right now has taken over me.

Matter was fixed in the end. Reason Account was closed and confiscated was because in the picture I uploaded of myself showing my face next to my passport the hand wasn't completely shown. So their next step instead of asking me to upload a new one where they could see my hand was to straight away close it with balance seized and saying it was a final decision and couldn't be reconsidered. (Which wasn't true in the end?)

I contacted them again via email after their last message to ask what was going wrong, and once I sent a proper picture they gave my account back with funds on it. Guys please be aware of how this poker room operates and I strongly suggest you to avoid it like the plague for your own mental health sake.

What the hell, must've been an automated algorithm malfunction. Something that checks if the identity verification fails and instantly sends a "your account has been seized" notification. No human would ever think that a low quality passport scan is a crime worth 34k€.