Pokermaven site FoxPoker which was run off a facebook group closed yesterday and left behind a form for players to fill out with BTC address and email.

They've since posted that they don't expect to recover funds and pay player balances back. Lots of speculation, but ultimately, the owners/partners in the site have one way or another stolen player balances.

There had been speculation in the last few months that they were insolvent as players were being paid slowly and in small chunks. ($200-$500) at a time.

Rumor has it that owner Andy Troumbly was playing high stakes games on the site with site credits that were not backed by any balance.

Pardon my ignorance but what does "run off a Facebook group" entail? I'd rather be informed than find out myself by signing up to one of these shady sites.

There are many many groups that run on Facebook that act as essentially forums/groups for members that belong to a certain poker site or union.

I've been in groups that run on Poker Mavens software, PokerBros,PPPoker, UPoker,ClubGG, and other apps.

It's just where they manage their members, accept players into their "club/site" and stuff like that.

Deposits/Payouts are also done on Facebook messenger, staking opportunities given out on the Facebook page, player trades, random memes, etc.

always make sure you know who you're dealing with when using these apps and third party groups.

what does this even mean? only deal with friends and relatives? your suggestion sounds like a cliché blanket statement and seems unachievable.

Have fun getting rugged!

Nah. Just do a bit of research into who you decide to do business with. Seek testimony from people who are currently involved in the club, for example. Doesn't have to be people you personally know (though that tends to be better if you're lucky enough to have that)

The site had up to this point paid out many hundreds of thousands of dollars in cashouts.

Maybe we should only trust known poker pros like Howard Lederer and Chris Fergusen.

Sure if that's what you got out of my explanation, go for it man

Tbf, how can you know if your going to get scammed (the chicken thinks every day is the same until he gets his head cut off…) until it happens, yes due diligence is important but at a certain point it is a risk you live with playing unregulated…it’s pretty hard to find agents for the smaller clubs that will hard vouch (and have it be a hard vouch you trust)

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I started playing at Fox poker in late March,2021 mostly because of one player, named DIAMONDHANDZ, who played both PLO and NLHE extremely bad, and my Russian fellows, mostly NLHE players (I play PLO), advised me to join the action. 2 days ago it turned out that it was the head of Fox poker, Andy Troumbly, who played under this nickname. He would enroll any amount of play chips into his account and none of the admins were aware of it, because he was pretty much the one responsible for the accounting. Below is a recent message, posted on 31th of August, from one of his admins clearing the situation:



In the beginning of August, I felt extremely tired of being fed bullshit from Andy for 4 months about the problems that caused paying only ~300$ per month instead of ~17k$\per month limit, so I told him, that I was going to go public, if he wouldn’t pay me 5k by the end of August or, at least, if he wouldn’t explain what was really going on. Seems like he struggled till the very end of the month and on the 31th of August shut down the site, deleted his FB profile and vanished.

https://fox3stacks.com is not working right now, but only redirects to their apparently basic site of its network. https://www.3stacksgaming.com/

Their FB group is being archived https://www.facebook.com/groups/3Sta...roup&ref=notif

Andy’s photo from his FB profile ( Not sure if it’s real) :


I have ~125k$ left on the balance. A group of fellow Russian players have around 160k$ in total left on their Fox poker accounts.

Alex Shelow, the former admin, thinks that chances of getting anything are extremely low.
From one of his agents, Jay Campbell, I got Andy’s phone number (unavailable) and two of his presumed home addresses in Michigan. Both, Alex Shelow and Jay Campbell, claim that they didn’t happen to meet Andy in person.

I have never encountered anything like this before in my life, so, please, I’d like to hear any suggestions what can be done in this case. I’m open to any sort of discussion and cooperation. All those who are affected by Andy's actions feel free to share your story and thoughts.

Many of the players had been with Fox for several years. I personally played there for 2+ years. Received several $2,000-$5,000 payouts within an hour every time with crypto or other forms of payment.

Players did feel comfortable playing on this site because they were great- until they weren't.

Everything is like everything else, until it's not! There is no better way to get scammed these days then to trust anyone or anything online. There are all kinds of scams being perpetuated online these days across all spectrums of society, poker being only one of them.

While technically true that you could get scammed by PokerStars as well as a PokerBros app club, these two things are not equally risky. Not even close.

Of course- but that's why you keep what you're willing to lose on a site like this, right?

For example- I can't beat 1/2-5/10 on most US sites like ACR or BOL. Maybe I could win slightly, but not worth my time or effort to breakeven.

On these sites, I'm one of the better players and a double-digit win rate is attainable, especially with favorable rakeback deals.

So yes, the odds are significantly higher I will get scammed. But I weigh the risk and try to not keep large balances if I can.

I was fortunate to have only had a $900~ balance with this site. But many others were holding balances $10k+.

Yeah exactly, it's a tradeoff.

Doug Polk used to say that he rarely played private games because even a small % chance of getting cheated or robbed just obliterates your EV.

I think a lot of people playing on these apps underestimate their risk exposure and overestimate winrate.

Well, that's the same with any site really. Unless you're in a nutcase jurisdiction with severe deposit limits, I don't see why anyone would keep more than the absolute minimum needed to play on a site at any time. We've seen a lot more reputable sites (at least in terms of perception at the time) than this one go busto

First part I feel is true. Second part I'm not sure about, I would hazard a guess that 90% of app players, at least, do so because they simply aren't good enough to have a winrate on a regulated site and need fish feeding to them to make a profit at all. If they're able to work that much out, they can probably calculate a reasonable ballpark figure of their app winrate

Who plays such a crappy **** site?

when a site has consistent payouts and a guy dumping 1.5mm at 20/40nl over the course of a few months it can be enticing

Full Tilt, Absolute, Cake etc had consistent payouts. Until they didn't.

sure, everyone is so smart and reasonable in retrospect

as prideitoff said, EV of getting there was extremely high, given that there was a whale playing 10\20$+ 24\7 and the site had been running for 5 years and everything was alright

we paid the price, I guess

was $20/$40 the highest stakes offered? what was max buy-in? $1.5mm is 375 $4k buy-ins.

i mean this type of third party sites must have recommendations from peers or friends. even vouching for this site entails risks.

Ive personally lost alot of money from lockpoker/ chinese apps, and other games, and to me playing these softer actions are fun and profitable, but are you able to cash out is the main question. I would wave the white flag here since you guys arent even sure of andy's real identity here other than a few pictures.

Yeah you guys prob going to have to take an L…with that said Shelow is involved in card breaking (Golden Card Breaks) so you could leave negative reviews on his site…the owner guy I’m sure you could find his personal info rather quickly…pretty sure this is like most scams ever where he didn’t mean to scam and therefore wouldn’t have hid his info from the jump…but even if you did gambling debts are almost always unenforceable via court so you don’t have much recourse.