This is one of the key points i think.

Who did really suffer from me playing?

GG-Poker?

They actually made the most profit from letting me play.

They took all the rake i payed and they accepted all my deposits after i busted my account multiple times.

Other Players?

Not really, since we all did participate in a fair game like we do everyday on all the sites out there.

Have i been the big winner?

I busted accounts several times.

I´m not even winning the full 130k. With all deposits and reloads combined i´m a small winner at best.

I paid tenthousands of rake for GG-Poker, while possibly being freerolled the entire time.



So the money GG wants to take away from me now isn´t even money i won out of the system, it´s money that i was pumping in the system for a long period of time.

Another very important point.


I´ve been talking to a bunch of players i played a lot against, and none of them did receive a refund.

Since no one had any disadvantage playing against me, it´s kind of hard to justify a refund. And i think GG-Poker knows that as well.

I agree, it doesn't sit well with me that they have an incentive to act in bad faith. But consider the alternative -- players have an incentive to act in bad faith and continue playing until they get caught knowing the money won while they were able to go undetected will be paid out. This is their method of deterrence.

disagree with this. Your results aren't relevant.
They're known to ban winning players. As a high stakes pro who was supposed to be banned, you had an advantage over the field.

Hi dudd,

I really hope they will resolve this in the best for you.

I really doubt that they saw your linked accounts and did not do nothing about it. What I really think is what happened, is that they have certain protocols that they check only after you have requested a big withdrawal and then they start looking the reasons to not to pay you. Which is, I guess, quite shady as well. Surely you should be able to get your deposit and winnings back.

Also annyoing for me, when something like this happens on GG, some of the PartyPoker sponsored players jump into commenting to this publicly, but when my account was confiscated wrongfully by PartyPoker, none of the PartyPoker members tried to help me out, even I tried to reach out to almost everone. https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...gfully-1772225

The attention you have received with this, I am really positive that you will get your balance back. Good luck!

I actually agree with this, GG making it pretty unequivocal to players that this is what happens if you violate their rules. Setting a hard line here seems smart from an enforcement point of view.

They 100% though must be transparent in what happens to those funds after confiscation or it looks like they are doing this for all the wrong reasons. We can't have a situation where sites can freeroll players in this situation and the funds have to be returned to players in some way to show they are acting in good faith.

If they can't reimburse the losing players correctly then it doesn't make sense to keep the money. Ban the player, blacklist names, IPs and so on. But give the money back imo.

This is no ban hammer bad guy. He was banned for bumhunting which is happening everywhere, live and online, all day every day. If GG didn't want him there then their database should, in 2020, cross check his name and dob etc and not let him sign up on a different skin. That's their problem. It is possible he did not know it was the same network and that alone is evidence enough. The money should unequivocally be his. All of it.

iam pretty sure they did not got any Malta licencee. Anyone read about that ? I saw only one article from WPD. But nothing concrete.
Regarding the topic.
I lost the same way 19k back in time. I played 2016 in juicepoker i was banned (std predatory behaviour) but the site closed as well. So i came back to allinAsia after 1 year. They allowed me to register, deposit lose a ton but suddenly when my account was top at the time they realised and rob my money. I felt like freerolled the whole time cause they allowed me to play deposit but when i run it up.... disgusting site.
Hopefully you end up getting it back. for me nothing happened.

I hope you get your money back in full, reading this thread is beyond disgusting. The people behind the decision to confiscate and add the money to their own bottom line are nothing short of criminals.

OP's ban in the first place is ridiculous. Makes you angry to think the paychecks of complete sellout big name tournament pros are being paid with this money.

As soon as they verified his first account after his ban they contradicted/denied the ban itself. He didn´t violate any TOS after his deposits post ban (didn´t violate any before that either imo). They even confirmed it themselves by offering to cash out his last deposit (50k). This doesn´t make any sense though, since they then have to cash out every deposit before that aswell. They have no grounds to confiscated previous deposits anymore if they allow the last one to be cashed out since the legal situation of every deposit was the same. By allowing the last deposit to be cashed out they either admit their security check failed or they intentionally freerolled him. Either way they have no valid reason to keep 130k.

The way the handled the situation seems very arbitrary and should be a big concern to every player having money on their site.

And on many other networks you were able to play on multiple skins. So it was never an issue before.n

I pointed this out already ITT. You are able to play and have an account on both skins. The issue here is if you are banned on the network then you can't play on ANY skins. That is the same on all networks.

And we are to believe that a high stakes professional poker player, with a strong network of other high stakes professional poker players ....

-didn’t know the skins were linked

-Didn’t know he was playing on a site he had been previously banned on

-Deposits $50,000 on the site without knowing much about it

****s sakes

I think that has been established in the thread. It would have been far better in my eyes if the OP had explained he was banned on N8 3 years ago. The landscape of poker has changed significantly in that time not least in GG poker growing to a completely different beast and he thought making an account with GG poker would not be an issue and he let them perform all the relevant checks after a large initial deposit upon which they flagged no issues. I certainly would have been far more sympathetic to this line.

The issue still remains that those funds cannot be just confiscated and pocketed by GG or this is just theft by the network. There needs to be transparency around where those funds are going.

No, I don't believe him. When you're playing stakes that high it is 100% your business to know where you're playing. It is still possible he did not know, however, and imagine being in that situation?

This doesn't change the fact that GG keep letting people do this, after verifying their accounts with pics and docs, and then bringing down the next ban hammer when the fruit is ripe. It's not a grey area. It's a full blown scam.

He gave them his real ID the whole way anything less than them paying him out in full is theft

If they want to ban him thats their right to but they need to pay him he very clearly wasn't trying to hide his identity and they shouldn't have let him deposit 5 figures and play for years if their system considered him 'banned'

Disgraceful behaviour

I'd consider going to Doug Polk and having him troll Daniel Negreanu about it to create more of a PR shitstorm and shame them into paying

It's sad to see GG gradually turning into another 888 they're going to waste their goodwill they built up when they have a legit chance to be the #1 site if they'd just operate honorably

I dont even play online poker but for reading poker news briefly once in a while I know that natural8 and ggpoker are the same network

But OP keeps the lie that him, a long time high stakes regular player, did not know

lol this is BEYOND RIDICULOUS

guy was banned years ago, tried to make new account this year and got caught

thats it. this thread should end here.

How should the thread end there? So GG are allowed to just use this really shady practice to steal money? The money either needs to be redistributed in some form to the players effected or given back to the OP. There is no world in which the site should just get to pocket the money.

This.

Disclaimer: I know duddi personally, but I try to see it objectively, nevertheless.

I know about people who have received multiple warnings for bumhunting on GG without being banned. And OP did not get a single warning before being banned in 2016. Also, I saw the initial email he received back in 2016 in which he was banned. It states "you are no longer welcome to play on our network anymore" which is a pretty different statement than saying "You are lifetime banned on GGPoker Network". Furthermore, it states that if he returned to their network anyhow, "..., then we will have no choice but to proceed in accordance with our policy". This is vague language because

1) they did not clearly state that he was banned for lifetime
2) they did not specify what "the network" is
3) they did not specify the consequences

This is important in my opinion because if they had clearly stated something like "You are lifetime banned from GG-Poker Network and if you return we will proceed and confiscate your money" there is a decent chance he would have remembered that, even after 3 years. The soft language they use actively encourages a scenario like this where a person is not aware of which skins are part of a network so they can freeroll the money.

The money was fairly won. If they want to ban him, fine that's their right. But letting him verify and play on several accounts after he was supposingly banned in the past and then confiscate his money is a ridiculous in my opinion. As Duddi said, either they freerolled him or they must have the absolute worst security out there. I personally doubt its the latter.

I have another what I think is an extremely shady practice by them but I am waiting for a reply from suppport so I don't want to post details yet. It does seem though they take edges wherever they can despite the hit they might take to their reputation. That may have been a good line in the past but now after becoming one of the major players and the huge bounce they have gotten from the WSOP affiliation they are completely mad to continue with these shady practices. So little upside and so much downside at this point.

This is a serious matter and your post is irrelevant. I play poker myself and I do not follow any poker news. As a cash game player I dont need to be informed about what is going on in the poker world. Even if you would assume OP is lying about this (which I am sure he is not because I know him), that still means that the actions taken by GG are largely inappropriate. He was able to create new accounts and verify his data as long as he was losing on the network for more than a year. This is the only fact that is beyond ridiculous about this case.

What goodwill? I thought it was widely known that GG is very open and easy to cheat on for bots, colluders/card sharers and RTA users, plus charges uncapped rake on some cash game types.

If I played there I would only play MTTs, as at least being colluded/team played against is far less of a disadvantage than in cash, and the MTT game tree is way more complex for a solver user to crush opponents with than in cash, so incentivizes cheats to concentrate on cash games where they can play massive volume.

butthurt rec detected!!

Nope, not butthurt at all.

Poker pros, by all means, make as much money as you want as fast as you want using any methods you want, as exploitatively as you want, in as predatory a manner as you want, as long as what you are doing is not illegal (by illegal I mean against actual government laws, not against poker rules or etiquette or against mickey mouse gaming commission/licensing rules), but don't come complaining about ethics when your own profession of poker playing itself has none.

I've read the whole thread and have a couple of thoughts.

First, it seems to me that as long as they pay out what the player put in so that over all he is net zero (all deposits - withdraws) it is a fair resolution. Was this the case?

This should also be the case if he was banned after being a net loser. He should be refunded his losses just like he should have to refund his wins. It seems like GG are at fault for allowing him to deposit in the first place. So ending with the player net 0 is reasonably fair.

Not attributing any malice or scam intentions on behalf of GG you can look at this situation from their point of view. When doing this it is actually more of an issue that they allowed a known predatory player to play on their site for so long which effects the 'good' customers negatively. I would say this is serious negligence on their part and a failing to uphold their own ToS. Once it is discovered that they missed this player they should return the winnings to the players that lost to the player.

If it was the case where OP lost money and then was banned I'd argue it is up to GG to pay out of their own pocket back to the OP.

The fact that GG operate in the grey market also means there is risk in these situations for the players and what is legally obligated. The sponsored pro's and those with any sway within GG should push to make sure security is updated and this kind of thing is prevented at deposit time going forward.

Last, I am actually sympathetic toward OP I am sorry this happened to you. This is a really **** situation and pretty unfortunate. The amount of time wasted an opportunity cost lost because of this is hue and a loss he will never get back.