Less than a week after his victory, WPT500 Online winner David Afework has been disqualified by partypoker and his $160,210 first-place prize money redistributed to the rest of the field, according to a recent post by Afework on the Two Plus Two Forums.
Afework, a UK-based poker player, posting on a new account in the forums under the name ‘Devplaza’ detailed in the post that soon after his “biggest win ever and the most amazing moment of my life” he received an email from partypoker explaining that he had been disqualified under the suspicion that Afework had allowed a third party on his account.
“Which is just complete rubbish, I played on the account, on my Dell Laptop in the room I had been living in for months,” he wrote in the post. “I was completely alone for 99% of the time. I imagine this third party nonsense comes from the fact that I have been living with another poker player for the best part of 7 months so maybe they see we share the same IP address or whatever but I’m completely transparent about that and don’t want to that, no one has ever had access to my account other than myself, that’s a 100% guarantee.”
Afework took to the forum to try and garner support in his bid to convince partypoker that it was a legitimate victory.
“The truth is I played the tournament and I won, it’s as simple as that and to see how [partypoker] have taken things is just the biggest disappointment ever and I’m just at a loss for words.”
In response, partypoker has issued a statement that does not directly address the situation with Afework but references their policy surrounding what would be considered a breach of their Terms of Service and one of game integrity.
“We have a dedicated Game Integrity team who use a variety of detection methods to proactively identify accounts that are in breach of our terms and conditions. ‘Real Name’ tables help provide a community feel while reducing anonymity. A real account holder should never give a third party access to their account, as stated in our General Terms and Conditions (Section 12)”
“If we establish reasonable evidence of this happening, we reserve the right to take action on the account in question in order to maintain a safe and fair playing environment. In situations where we seize money from an account which has infringed our rules or policies, we endeavor to re-distribute these funds in a timely manner to all players who were impacted by the actions of the offending account.”
partypoker has the final say, for now, in striking Afework’s victory from the record books. This makes Sweden’s Henning Andrew the new official winner of the WPT500 event and the beneficiary of a $51,415 pay jump to make his runner-up score equal to that of the $160,211 first-place prize.
But in his post, Afework insists he’s just beginning to fight.
“…I lost a few thousand pounds in the weeks prior I never saw any concern from [partypoker] towards me or my account, because there was no reason to. Now though I won, and I won big and they don’t want me to win, it’s as clear as day,” it reads.
He goes on to add, “I have already contacted the UK gaming commission to inform them about what’s happened as well as making the initial steps to take legal action.”
The post is available in its entirety on the Two Plus Two Forums.