Hello fellow 2+2 members.

I decided to post here about the situation I recently went through with WPN's Game Integrity Team which is another name for their security team if I am not mistaken. Just based on the title of the post you can tell the gist of the story - and that, unlike many such situations, it thankfully has a happy ending in this case. I am not someone who posts regularly on any social platform, be it forums such as this or the big social media platforms. Just in general I do not like to air my grievances or publicly post my success either, in that sense I am a very private person. My motivation for making this post stems predominantly from the fact that I was greatly aided by a few members of the poker community in helping me resolve the situation. I do believe that without that help I would have not been successful in my attempts. Perhaps my posting the story will potentially aide someone who is in a similar situation. Or in the very least will be a feel good read. I've included a TLR version at the end, since this will be a long post. I hope however, that you will benefit from reading my story, as I have benefited from living through it.

I'm not going to bore you with all my poker history etc. and just get down to what happened. So I started playing Jackpot SnGs on WPN in January, this is after an extended break from playing. Started multiabling from the onset as I have experience in a similar format, HU SnGs. Everything was going well and I gradually began climbing the stakes and adding more tables. I've always used a HUD but the more tables that I added the more I noticed that it was becoming a distraction; I simply didn't have enough time during gameplay to utilize it in any meaningful way. So at one point I decided to reduce it to a few simple elements like a hand note taker (to take quick note when someone does something ridiculous) and a live effective BB counter. For those who don't know, this essentially shows the effective smallest stack size in BB form. This is helpful when you get down to HU and just a glance lets you know that you are, say, 10BB deep. Once you get down to around that amount and less, often the most profitable action is to open shove many of your hands. To aide me with this I attached a HU Nash PUSH/CALL chart to this very BB counter HUD element. So when I would click on the BB counter the chart would pop up. Here is an image of the chart taken from a simple Google search:



The ones I had attached looked cosmetically different, the background was black and instead of the boxes being filled in with colors like above the digits themselves were colored. Apart from those cosmetic differences the charts were identical.

So anyway, kept playing with the aforementioned setup up until around the end of February as I recall; perhaps it was sometime into March. Can't be exact on that but it was around that time that I added even more tables eventually reaching up to 16. The reason that I mention that is because the sheer amount of tables forced me to reduce their physical window size, and once I did that I noticed that the HUD was no longer showing up. I figured that there is either some bug with PT4 or that the small table sizes do not allow for a HUD. In any case, it was no longer working so I got rid of it entirely. As I mentioned it wasn't much of a HUD regardless, but it did have those charts which I would occasionally look at when faced with an unclear decision. For example say I'm on the BTN 7bb deep and I'm dealt say 96o. Just based on having been in thousands of similar situations I know that these types of combos can be a shove at this shallow stack depth, but I can't tell with point accuracy whether it is a +EV shove at exactly 7bb, at least from a Nash equilibrium perspective. So that's what the charts were used for.

Fast forward to end of March I receive an email from the WPN's Game Integrity Team requesting me to perform human verification. Now, although I don't post much as I've mentioned, I do often glance the WPN Discussion thread just to see if everything is working well with the client; and around that time there were several posts, as I recall, of people mentioning they've had to perform the same verification process. I do also remember one or two posters complaining that they had just recently been banned by WPN. One of them mentioned that they got banned for unethical sitting practices or the like, which they of course contested as being untrue etc. Didn't pay much attention and just figured the person likely got caught for using a script or something. But reading such comments gave me a feeling that I too will likely receive a human verification request from WPN soon. It's hard to explain exactly, but I could almost feel it in my stomach. I rationalized it by thinking that since I play quite a few tables it's likely they will want to make sure that everything is on the up and up.

So receive it I did, as mentioned. This was on the 29th of March. Essentially, in addition to answering some basic questions they request that two video recordings be provided of a regular playing session which was to last 90 minutes. One of the physical surrounding area, where you can be seen along with the PC and mouse, keyboard etc. as well as a screen capture of the monitor/s. So, my foreboding feeling was correct after all, but I was not nervous per se. After all I knew that I hadn't been cheating in any way and just figured that they randomly selected my account for human verification. I did feel a certain amount of anxiety associated with the process, but that is normal. It was the type of anxiety one may perhaps feel when being questioned by an authority figure; one knows they're innocent and has nothing to fear, but there is nevertheless a certain amount of angst associated with the mere form itself, i.e. being questioned and interrogated in a sense.

In any case, I recorded the requested videos and confidently send them off to WPN, this was April 5th. Received a email stating that the recordings were indeed received by them and that they will get back to me once they've reviewed the footage. Based on comments on the WPN thread the likely timeframe was to be about 2-4 weeks.

So, I didn't think much of it however I must say that while I was waiting I sort of didn't want to play quite as much. During April I did have a lot of school work and finals were of course approaching which didn't give me much time to grind, but on top of that I felt a certain amount of uneasiness about the fact that this "evaluation" if you will was hanging over me. Again, I must stress that I was in no way nervous about receiving a negative response from them, but I was just waiting to receive the typical "thank you for you cooperation, everything is fine with your account" type of response, and once I saw that I could calmly get back to playing.

The fateful day came on Friday April 22nd. I had just finished some long winded school assignment and was just about to head off to the gym when I opened my email and saw a response from WPN. The very first sentence sent shivers down my spine and caused my hands to shake. I was in complete shock to read that "after evaluating your case, we have reached the conclusion that you have been violating our security and game integrity policy" and it went on to list the violations. Essentially, I was being accused of having used RTA (real-time assistance) software, i.e. a bot.

I couldn't believe what I had read. The rest of the email stated that my account had been closed and that the funds have been confiscated - my roll at the time was around 10k. The last sentence pointed out that the decision is final and cannot be appealed.

The first thing I instantly did was type up a post on WPN's discussion thread asking anyone for assistance. Then I messaged "a dewd" who is active on the thread and is an affiliate, He responded very quickly which was reassuring since I was still in utter shock. He said that if I provided him with the footage he would try to get a second opinion from a security expert. However, he also added that once a decision is undertaken by WPN on such matters it is practically never reversed. In fact, to his knowledge they had never overturned a ban up to that point.

A few days had gone by and I was still in utter shock and confusion as to how this happened. I genuinely did not understand how this was possible. I thought: "I'm only using PT4 with not HUD and Jurojin for table management... how could they possibly think that I am using software RTA?"

At this point, having no definitive explanation I began to think of anything that could have led to this. I thought that perhaps I had been falsely accused by other players and reported on - I thought this because, since I was playing so many tables, I would inevitably appear to be playing slowly from the perspective of my opponents on the same table. Another thought which appeared in my mind, amusing as it may seem to some of you (and I must admit it is pretty funny to me too in retrospect) was that "God, I must have played so well that the only conclusion WPN could come to is that I'm cheating somehow". I did recall having some impressive spots in the 90 min recording such as making some light call downs and just generally having things go my way. One spot specifically which I recall was I chose to bluff a low pair which by the river had no SD value since it was a three to a straight and four to a flush board and my opponent snap called with like KT high. Of course in retrospect it's clear that he misread his hand and thought he had a straight, but at the time I was so paranoid I thought "did they examine these spots and decided I must be cheating since I seem to always be on the better end of things?" Again, it's pretty funny to think about now, but at the time given the lack of information I genuinely pondered these things.

So during this time, which would have been the first week after I received the ban email, I'm waiting for a response from a dewd about the footage, and just generally hating my life. I didn't initially reply to WPN's email since I saw no point in sending a generic "I think you made a mistake!" type of email without having any more substantive evidence on my part. Again, at this point I'm still at a loss as to what could have caused this.

Right around this time Uri Peleg - for those who may not know is a highstakes pro who has a YT channel and a training website called Guerrilla Poker - released a video giving his opinion on the cheating allegations directed towards a highstakes pro named Ali Imsirovic. I personally don't know much at all about that situation, but Uri made mention that Ali was accused of using software RTA. I thought this may be my chance. I had bought a course from Uri's website about a year ago, and generally always like his content and approach to poker so I thought I'd send his team an email via his site and explain my situation. I alluded to the video Uri had just released and explained how I had been banned wrongfully by WPN and asked if there anyway at all that someone from their team or perhaps Uri himself could view the gameplay footage, since again at this I'm thinking it's all got to be there, but I don't know what WPN saw in that footage which would lead to a ban. I didn't really know what to expect as an answer but I had nothing to lose.

To my astonishment, I received a reply within a few days from one of Uri's associates saying that Uri may or may not be able to help, and instructed me on how to contact him. Once I did Uri explained that he had had a student of his also banned by WPN and this student too claimed innocence. Unfortunately, the student's case went nowhere, and although I don't know any of the details, Uri informed me that WPN in response to his appeal email basically said that "nope, sorry we're sure he was cheating." And that was the end of that.

As you can imagine this didn't comfort me much; the additional coincidental fact that this student and I apparently share the same first name also seemed like a bad omen. In any case however, Uri proceeded to try to help me. When I mentioned the footage, he quickly made me realize that it likely had nothing to do with the recordings themselves, and that whatever WPN suspected me of had manifested itself prior to the recordings. In other words something had flagged me on their end, but I wasn't aware of what it could have been. He began asking me questions about my setup and such; we went back and forth over anything and everything which could have potentially flagged me. Things like: was I running a solver while playing, did I have a remote server or the like open while playing etc. He said "imagine WPN can see your screen all the time" what suspicious activity, if any, on my part could have possibly shown up.

Many of you reading this are probably sitting there thinking, "Hey, numbnuts, it was probably those charts you used!" but until Uri asked if I had possibly used any charts, the very thought hadn't entered my brain. It must be reminded that by this point I had been playing HUD-less for the better part of a month and a half, if not more. And during the previous period, when I still used that barebones HUD I described, I had only used the charts very sparingly. Most of the time I simply didn't even have enough physical time to go through the process of clicking on the BB counter and looking at the chart.

So ultimately, with Uri's help, we came to the conclusion that it must have been the charts. They were probably mistaken for software RTA since they popped up visually and presumably WPN's security system picked up on that and flagged my account. Of course I cannot confirm those exact details, since I myself don't know for a fact but on my end that is the only thing I could come up with.

Uri told me to construct an email describing as best I could and in detail what I thought had caused the mistaken assumption that I was using software RTA, and to send that email to WPN's Game Integrity Team. So I spend the better part of a day typing up this email, in which I gave them some background on my account history, such as when I opened the account, how much I initially deposited, what kind of games I had been playing etc. and eventually got to describing what I thought led to the predicament. I attached images of the charts and I also included with that email a short video demonstrating the HUD and the aforementioned charts which were attached, by using PT4's hand replayer. It was quite a long email, must have reached about 3 pages.

This was May 1st when the email was sent. Two days later WPN responded asking me to clarify the "pop-up element" I described in the email, i.e. the charts. I replied by explaining again as best I could and urged them to watch the short video I included.

A few days later I got another reply saying that the case is being reviewed anew, and that I should wait for their email. Of course this was great news and Uri himself noted that it means they're taking it seriously, seeing as in the previous situation, the one with his student, the reply was a very frank no. But of course, I didn't want to get my hopes up too much. I should also note that by this point a dewd had gotten back to me and tried all he could, but the person who he hoped could view the footage had been long offline. It wasn't of much importance by this point, regardless.

Roughly two weeks went by with no further communication, I was starting to feel anxious and wanted to email them again, but resisted the temptation and resigned myself to waiting some more. The very next day, I receive and email from them asking for another recording. This one is to be 3 hours long, so twice the length of the initial recording. The email notified me that my account had been temporarily reinstated and credited with an amount sufficient for the purposes of the recording. Naturally, I went through the process of recording the new video which amounted to over 11GB even with all the settings on my camera reduced to the lowest!

After WPN received that new recording they replied practically the very next day just as they viewed it, and informed me that my account had been completely reinstated!


I've learned a number of things from this experience. Firstly, the importance of the player community. As a person I am generally very much a lone wolf so to speak. I never in my life much participated in any form of community, that's just the way I am as a person. This was an example however, of how one person would have likely never been successful had they not enjoyed the help of complete strangers who were active in the same field. A dewd gave me reassurance when I didn't even know who to turn to, and without Uri's help I would certainly not be making this post. Uri spent valuable time helping me understand the situation, when in all seriousness he didn't even have to reply to my initial email.

Another important point: if you happen to find yourself in a similar situation try your best to stay calm and look at everything rationally. When communicating with the security team or online room support in question, try your best to put yourself in their shoes. This is sometimes hard to do, especially when you may be feeling that they aren't doing the same. Keep in mind they are monitoring thousands of players, and likely have dozens of cases (unfortunately) to deal with. Be very polite as you should be regardless in life, and you can expect the same in return. During the entire span of my interaction with WPN they were cordial and understanding, even though they were brief and to the point, which is also understandable.

I know that this has been a very long post, I hope that those of you who have read it will find something to take away from it. And those who, unfortunately, may be faced with a similar situation, perhaps this can serve to give you some hope and peace of mind that if you know that you are innocent, and you can prove it then everything should work out fine. Sometimes it won't even under those circumstances, and that is genuinely sad. I too was resigned for the most part during this entire process to the likely outcome that nothing would change. Thankfully, this proved to be one of those instances where it all came out to the best in the end.

Thank you for reading!


TL/DR WPN asks for human verification, send the video, get reply that banned by WPN for alleged RTA software use, contact members of poker community for help, prove to WPN that it was static charts as part of a HUD not software RTA, have to provide new longer recording, get final reply that account is reinstated!

Congratulations on getting your money back. Hope you learned the lessons about how safe your money actually is on these sorts of sites.