TLDR
- 3700 hands 12 months 25/50
- decide to mostly quit poker
- 140k balance February
- manage to withdraw 110k
- essentially don't play in-between
- ACR locks withdrawal with 30k left in account and asks for routine security check 90 minute live play video
- I send video
- receive e-mail that my account was banned and am asked to explain why I cheated and how I tried to hide it
- no elaboration on what my "cheat" was, no elaboration on what software they found
- never cheated on ACR - only ever used hand2note and stack and tile - don't even use seat script, account was largely inactive




Hey,

Since May 2020, I have been playing 25/50 on ACR with little volume. In total less than 5,000 hands. I did not play much Poker in general throughout the past six months and am semi-retired from it, so I decided to withdraw most of my funds from all sites and invest elsewhere. I had around 140k USD in my ACR account in February and was able to withdraw down to 50k without any issues making the maximum 25k withdrawals at a time.

@50k my 25k withdrawals were removed, and I could only withdraw 10k at a time, which I proceeded to do until I hit 30k. At this point, my withdrawal was rejected, and I received an e-mail requesting me to record a live session of me playing for 90 minutes with a camera recording my setup. It was mentioned that suspicious activity has been noticed on my account.

The only software assistance I used for ACR is hand2note and stack and tile. I have never used any real-time assistance software or any sort of botting system. I do not use a seat-script either.

I thought this might be some routine way to discourage players from withdrawing their funds and was sure that they would immediately unlock my withdrawals after sending the recording. Please also keep in mind that I only played around 200 hands between my first withdrawal and my last attempted one (about two months time frame) and that my total hand-count on hand2note is 3,702 since May 2020. To me, this confirms that the decision to investigate my account was purely motivated by the withdrawals I made and not by any suspicious activity found in the 200 hands that I played between first withdrawal and last. Also from a common-sense perspective 1) for me to start cheating *after* beginning to withdraw my funds and to play only 200 hands or 2) to have the ability to cheat for 12 months and only play 3,700 hands seems terribly illogical. In any case, many well-respected Poker players who know me/lived with me can also vouch for me not cheating.

Anyways, I recorded a 90-minute session and sent additional documents to verify my account. I then receive this e-mail:



Hello *,

We hope this e-mail finds you well.

While evaluating your account we concluded that you been actively violating some of our security and game integrity policies:

https://www.americascardroom.eu/poke...ame-integrity/

9.5 External Assistance Tools verification: You agree that WPN may take action by any means it sees fit to detect the presence of prohibited software or programs you may have installed or run while running WPN software. Any attempt to prevent this detection or verification shall be subject to a penalty against you or your account.

9.6 Compatibility prevention: WPN frequently and comprehensively updates its software to detect and prevent player practices and tools expressly prohibited in the present policies. Any attempt to evade, block or interfere with this detection or prevention shall be subject to a penalty against you or your account.

That being said, in order to evaluate a suitable penalty, we'll need you to answer a few questions, please be as honest and detailed as possible as will be considered towards our final conclusions.

Please detail your computer specifications, including Operative System.

Please detail the method you use to hide your running processes.

Please explain the reasons you decided to engage in such a practice.

Is there any third-party assistance tool program that you regularly use that avoided during your recorded session?

Also, please explain the relation of your colleagues that where present in your video session, and also if they play in Americas Cardroom?

While we wait for your answers, your account will remain disabled.

Regards,

Game integrity Team.




At this point as well - I never used *any* software to hide *any* processes running on my PC. I also did not use any special software or hide anything whilst recording my video session.

ACR is putting me in a spot where I can't make a case for myself. They are just accusing me of doing something while not providing evidence or clarifying what the suspicious activity is they are referencing. It seems like they flagged my account while withdrawing the remainder of my funds and now try to ban me based on the fact that I won a lot compared to the amount that I raked.

Also, it's highly unprofessional to lock accounts for "suspicious activity" while they are essentially inactive and only withdrawing funds instead of locking them while they are actively playing (and potentially cheating).

It would be much appreciated if someone could help me elevate this to the higher-ups at ACR to get things resolved. I am happy with any form of resolution and confident that if the few hands I played on ACR were analyzed with any GTO software, there would be plenty of blunders. Happy to live-play with the security team watching and or have one of their IT experts review whatever is happening on my PC as well.

Assuming your honesty one plausible explanation could be actions of an anti-virus on your computer.

Given that poker client can "take action it sees fit to detect the presence of prohibited software or programs you may have installed" it can be easily and correctly recognized by anti-virus as malicious behavior and therefore be "the method you use to hide your running processes".

Sites r not shady, let’s blindly follow them. Hope everything works out for u bud if u are tellin the truth

My Windows Firewall is turned off and I only installed Malware Bytes free version a few months ago with real-time protection turned off. Also, I am happy for an ACR rep to post all processes that were running in the background while playing my sessions and highlight which ones are suspicious or which ones I was "hiding".

What a ridiculous site. Even their email correspondences are incredibly unprofessional, riddled with typos and grammar mistakes. Hope you manage to get the 30k back OP, but with ACR being a shady, unregulated site it seems unlikely.

Hello *,

Thank you for your continued support and cooperation while we reviewed your case.

We can confirm that your account has been reviewed and fully reinstated. We welcome you to access our games at your earliest convenience.

Thank you again for your cooperation in this matter.

Kind regards,

Game Integrity Team




I got unbanned a few hours after posting this and e-mailing them. Very bizarre.

Nevermind. They sent that e-mail but I am unable to withdraw. It says "Access Restricted" for my account. If some ACR rep/ambassador reads this and is willing to help, pls get in touch via PM.

I am able to sit at tables for reference.

At least you got a reason unlike this guy

I took everything off and i'm done with WPN after seeing that looks like they're going the GG route of selective bans on winning players.

I am still restricted from withdrawing, but able to sit on tables and play.

yes, they want you to loose the money....
Look at the pattern --> winning player, stop playing and starts redrawing his money. Account banned, then unbanned but with restrictions......

i'm curious as to why you think they should provide how they catch people out who are using RTA software. you know, so that developers of said software know exactly what they've done wrong and how to adapt?

If no proof is required to ban accounts or, in general, convict someone of wrongdoing, there is no recourse for wrongfully convicted people.

If you were in my shoes, you would not be very excited about getting banned and having the only explanation being "you cheated".

If this were final, the only recourse would be getting legal involved, which obv isn't worth in many cases since the recovered funds aren't outvaluing the amount of time and cost involved in recovering them. This dynamic would enable sites to freeroll pros who they deem deficient for their eco-system - aka winning players.

Lol "convicted" as if this was a criminal trial, my point is that if you want them to say "we have found you using program X during time period Y using this method Z" then that just gives actual cheaters the ammunition they need to improve their product. If you don't trust the site in question's method of dispute resolution and/or the regulatory framework they play under, then don't play there

basically, it seems like you didnt play the same way in the 90 minutos of footage as you played at your 3500 hands.