WPN ''Steals'' more than 50k in rewards
Hello my name is Frederico Nizzato da Silva, I have played poker professionally since 2018. Playing cash games since 2020, I have been active on zoom500 on stars for 2-3 years and on reg tables as well under the nickname fred_high. Nowadays I play for a stable called Metagame in wich I have done some coaching in the past. I decided to write this post seeking some help from the community about something that happened to me on WPN network this year.
Last year I was fallowing a regular from Portugal on Instagram that was doing the rake back challenge on WPN during 2023. He was playing 150-200k hands monthly on blitz200 to achieve the top rake back status on WPN. I really like that idea, since I was already playing high volume on other networks and always enjoyed playing zoom games. I then went further on studying their rake back system and noticed that I could make 144k +- (leaderboards+ revenue share + Rewards point system) yearly on rake back alone if break even at the tables. I showed this study to the stable I am part of and showed my desire to try doing that in 2024. They were on board. I also came to know that other regulars of the stable that were used to play high volume wanted to pursue the rake back status as well.
So at January 7, 2024, I started this challenge playing around 10k hands daily at blitz 200. Needless to say how stressful it was right away, even being used to play high volume, this was above my avg and was very demanding since the start . Also, I had to play on a tight schedule since the beginning, games started usually at 4pm BRT, and usually it takes at least 9 hours to finish the daily volume I had too. Besides that, I decided to move on expecting a very good reward at the end of the year.
After some time playing those games me and the other regulars of the stable that was doing the challenge (UrsoBranco Biluzin) noticed some suspicious players, playing very non intuitive lines constantly and playing high volume. Some of them were already on some lists here on two plus two being acused of being bots. One of them for example, acquition, was banned after making a deep run on The venom mtt , he played on a daily bases on blitz200 games. https://gyazo.com/c886802019cc04da3244d7...
There is a bunch of other nicknames I suspected some of them stop playing at some point but some were still active till the date I was playing there. Some examples CkaNNonBaLL , KimkardashFan , Impermanente , hamipuhyle. By this time, I had already played around 500k hands or more and decided to keep doing it since I was running close to 0ev bb at that point.
On the day 20 of July I received this e-mail. https://gyazo.com/96d01712875e73f289ad96...
I was surprised since I was clearly playing of unfair pool and they never banned some players. But I proceed to send all the files they asked for.
After this I sent all the videos, they asked for doing more than 1hour of gameplay going though all the though process behind the plays. I Also explained that I knew biluzin and urso branco , but didn’t have any type of collusion of profit share with them. I have been playing for the same stable for 4 years already and never had any profit share with any players this is also against the stable police. Here is the print Hero vs Vilan of biluzin vs all regs: https://gyazo.com/cba484e2e56900260c80a0...
Its looks almost like a joke ! The regular biluzin won the most money from Urso branco , winning almost double of the amount of the second reg. How Could be possible that we were soft playing this way? we have also sent lots of hand examples with insane bluffs one vs another and even crazier hero calls.
After that the investigation went on for more than 1 month with my acc being restricted. I could keep playing but couldn’t make any transfer or withdraw. Then on august 22 I received this final e-mail with their decision: https://gyazo.com/2c392fcbe1c32c7fc87ce8...
Note that the final argument for banning me was this : The accounts: NIZZA, URSOBRANCO and BILUZIN had been intentionally working together towards a common goal to reach the highest loyalty rewards possible while sharing nearly 50% of your blitz gameplay which we have deemed as soft play, Non-aggression external agreements, and bonus clearance fraud.
Now how come sharing 50% of the volume of the pool being illegal? Is kind of obvious that if you are trying to reach the highest rb status you would have to play almost every day and most of the time that those blitz200 games were running. Like I said in the beginning, most days the pool started at 4pm, so I had no choice of schedule. I had to start playing at that time if I want to have a somewhat decent sleep routine (remembering that counting breaks I would have to play for 9-10 hours straight). Also, the argument of working together to reach the max rb status makes no sense as well. That promotion is offered by the site, is almost like they let you start the promotion work almost the whole year for it and when they realized you would reach it, they find a way to take the promotion away. Besides that, RB is never more than 100% so even if we reach the highest rb status the room is making money from us still, and not the other way around.
1.5.7 Permanent ban allowing to withdraw their funds: This penalty describes a termination of an account where WPN determines in its sole discretion the right of the offending player to withdraw his or her remaining funds excluding unclaimed promotions, bonuses or loyalty rewards, plus provided that any affected players have been compensated in the amounts determined by WPN.
We will proceed with manually withdrawing any remaining balance from your account. Please provide a valid BTC address for this transaction.
This final sanction is a clear sign of their bad faith in the matter. Why they let me withdraw my funds but not the rewards ? When they banned. I had all the rewards that I had accumulated over the year still there, I wasn’t withdrawing it before because the way their loyalty system works if u accumulate your points till u reach last level you get better odds when exchanging those points. I had at that point more than 50k USD accumulated on rewards (part of the rewards were automatically withdrawn in the form of leaderboards + revenue share). So in my view is super clear their intention to ``steal`` my rewards accumulated there since the beginning of the year.
So that’s even nastier by their side. They have a loyalty system that incentivizes accumulating points. And then they ban you when you are close to reaching that goal claiming only that part of the money back.
I try to answer that e-mail saying exposing my arguments with no success. Here is their answer: https://gyazo.com/fb3a7ec7b3b5337cf723be...
Here are some hands, out of thousands, prints against Biluzin and Ursobranco : https://gyazo.com/601ddf179a2c911a20fbe6...
https://gyazo.com/19b4474efe353014209faa...
You might wonder why it took me so long to speak up about this situation. After the initial decision, the CEO of Metagame reached out directly to WPN, and we managed to get a response from their team. They requested a significant amount of information—most of which we had already provided—along with additional details specifically related to the stable we play for. We promptly gathered and submitted everything they asked for, but the entire process dragged on for over a month.
In the end, they started sending automated replies, stating that they do not discuss their decisions with third parties and would only communicate directly with the players involved. This response is ironic since they had been requesting all the information from the stable throughout the process.
Given this situation, we decided the best course of action was to go public and share our story.
Any help would be great to make this thread reach max number of players. So everybody can know WPN is super shady with their players and polices. And hopefully they reevaluate my situation. I don't even mind if they keep me aways from their games, I don't plan to play there anymore anyway. Getting my money back would be great already
First of all, if you played honestly, then this is, of course, a disaster, and every player in your position would be just as outraged—there's no question about that. And if you've never cheated or colluded (which I still find hard to believe), then I apologize. In that case, ACR should definitely pay out the money. However, we all know that ACR is very shady.
They aren't being accused of botting/RTA, and it sounds like not even for colluding against other players
"intentionally working together towards a common goal to reach the highest loyalty rewards possible while sharing nearly 50% of your blitz gameplay which we have deemed as soft play, Non-aggression external agreements, and bonus clearance fraud."
For $150-200k rake paid you're getting 124% plus leaderboards. Similar situation if you're at $250 on the leaderboards but very close to $500. Those are pretty far-fetched though since you were only halfway through the year, and likely getting the max $500 easily
The more I think about it the more ridiculous their claims seem for someone 5 tabling 200 blitz
Being in a CFP together isn't suspicious and explains the extreme similarities between their accounts/stats. There's no reason for the stable to want you to soft play because it's zero sum to them.
The stable and all their students are actually incentivized to avoid each other, which clearly isn't the case because as they say you shared almost 50% of blitz play
You're all funded by the same "Daddy" and you're saying you don't collude? The daddy fund wouldn't benefit from stable mates going to war. (Unless you're juicing rakeback.)
You leaked enough so that the "blindfolded man waiving a stick" could turn around and exploit you.
Shouldn't have associated yourself with anyone. You basically planted the seed for ACR to target.
No sympathy from me, really. Stables/teams are a cancer, especially those colluding and exploiting the rakeback system.
Bingo.
Or let's just put our heads in the sand and pretend a bunch of broke grinders playing on the same bankroll as each other for years on end with the same boss never work together.
I (ilovegalfond) looked at my DB of all your names and I have you guys tagged as legit non-sus human regs. This is really sad to see. At the very least you should get the rewards...I hope they will eventually give you the rewards through more communication...
as long as there are representatives of the room in this thread
list of bots
active cash bots list:
Barosila
Vis0nial
Til0wikret
Bair0nik
JoJ0referens
FerotStrel
Azizaleres
Bolaousada
DT150VAl
active cash blitz 200 bots:
I suppose I am some retired grinder who remembers a different time. But sharing bankrolls at the table has always been frowned on (even if the bankroll is meta games and not yours).
B/c I can still soft play my stablemates or alternatively run crazy bluffs and basically screw up everyone’s read. It’s also really nice playing 10 k hands a day, it’s really nice just to take off hands against my stablemates. It’s simply not a fair game if 1/2 the table is playing from the same roll.
I’m sorry that you got caught, cheat.
Not saying that you guys did collude because I really believe it wasn’t your intention at all
But I remember in summer 2023 being in Vegas, and some players of the metagame crew who came there had shared their bankroll and were playing the same 10/20/40 and 25/50 tables
I remember being at a table with 4 of these players from the same stable, and only being aware afterwards that they pooled their money and had mathematical incentive to play more multiway pots together and squeeze others out of pots (which they probably didn’t do, but still, I wasn’t comfortable playing at this table at all).
Just to say that it is something that has happened before and you guys probably need to be careful with putting yourselves in situations where your fair play could be questioned
I don’t understand why you kept so much money in rewards. You just need to load 100k points on the 2nd best status and exchange them at the same rate as on the highest level you were targeting. I won’t repeat what others have said but it’s like with FTX crash – better safe than sorry.
I'm hearing about this from their side for the first time.
I'll start by giving the context of my experience with Metagame.
I started streaming and playing 200NL/400NL/500NL 2-3 years ago regularly. I played a lot vs. Metagame players Zinhao, Fred_high, Saulo Costa (I still don't know Urso or Biluzin's name on Pokerstars) on Pokerstars. I never thought anything of it at the time as I mostly played Zoom and didn't care.
You can see over the last 300k hands I've played on Stars, Fred was a consistent player in my games.
He seemed nice and even was in my chat back in 2022. He also streamed from time to time, and I'd watch his stream.
I also played with Zinhao a bit on reg tables. While streaming I mentioned I thought he made a bad play when explaining my thought process to my chat. He came into my chat and went off on me. Seemed weird but I didn't care. It showed to me that he was watching my stream while we were playing together.
I've also played with Saulo on Stars, and he has also been in my stream. I had mentioned a hand against him, and he also commented on it. He was very nice and cordial about explaining things, and as far as I know, there was no issue between us. (I'm a fan of his content)
This means at any time during all of this, any one of them could have talked to me. Zinhao, Fred, and Saulo, all knew it was easy to contact me.
I have played a lot of Zoom on Stars at 200nl. When I signed with ACR I switched to Blitz 200nl. I wasn't familiar with the pool, and there was a lot of talk between regs, and on my stream of players that were potentially bots. As a new ambassador, I took my role seriously. I wanted to make sure I was diligent with concerns from the regs, so I paid closer attention to players in the pool.
I noticed that bilizun/urso/nizza were always in the blitz pools and played a very similar style. They used sizings that other players wouldn't use, and it raised a red flag for me. Other regs also had suspicions about them. I had no idea who they were. I did not report them for botting, but I brought their accounts up to game integrity just to see if everything was good, and what I was told was that they were already looking into things.
Fast forward to this summer. I have been playing 400NL for a while now. Out of nowhere, they both showed up every day at the same time. I normally play anyone, but it was really weird that they would try and play with me 3-handed even if I was alone at the table. At this point, I still didn't know who any of them were. I didn't know they were in a stable together, I didn't know that fred_high was Biluzin (someone I've put in lots of time against). I had no idea Metagame was involved with them.
They would join together one always sitting on my left.
Seems strange. To do this is already bad-mannered for reg tables, typically if you want to start tables with other regs you don't sit on their left.
At this point, I stopped playing with them short-handed (they often stopped playing if I sat out) and didn't feel great about whatever was going on. The only thing I did was bring this to the attention of game integrity. I was vocal on stream about something being weird, as I had no idea who these guys were, but I thought it was likely they were in a stable together and if they were that seems to be a bad practice to do something like this.
Then I was messaged a few times by players in the same pool, as well as others who knew them from Brazil, who were DMing me and bringing up concerns.
Everyone at Metagame knew who I was, no one reached out, and even someone who was in my stream was consistently sitting on my left with their stable mates and never thought to mention it was them.
Whether they were explicitly cheating or not, the incentives for soft collusion in scenarios like this are high and even if they somehow ignored the scenario and played as individuals, the profit from both of them went to the same source.
I don't want to see anyone banned wrongly. I don't have all of the information on both sides as I mentioned, I'm just an ambassador. I felt the need to defend myself, and that's all I'll be posting about in this thread. If anyone from Meta wants to reach out to me, you can DM me here or on X.
Ceegee/paSHens
I am one of the players mentioned, my nickname was ‘’UrsoBranco’’. My real name is Danilo Jientara, I played mostly NL500 at GG in 2023 (‘’Cristo Rei’’ and ‘’Jientara’’).
To avoid repetition, since what happened to Nizza was exactly the same as what happened to me, I came to expose some facts for the members who are defending the WPN or wanting to insinuate that I was participating in some collusion/RTA.
I was -2.8bb/100 in almost 1.3 million hands!! The regular who won the most money from m
Wow man, so sorry to hear. big thing to note here is this stable letting kids run a huge makeup without the means to pay them back, which in order creates a perpetual member to their stake, almost like slavery if you ask me. thats why htey take advantage of guys at the stable. cause they have their hands tied and cant talk back
They aren't being accused of botting/RTA, and it sounds like not even for colluding against other players
"intentionally working together towards a common goal to reach the highest loyalty rewards possible while sharing nearly 50% of your blitz gameplay which we have deemed as soft play, Non-aggression external agreements, and bonus clearance fraud."
For $150-200k rake paid you're getting 124% plus leaderboards. Similar situation if you're at $250 on the leaderboards but very close to $500. Those
Exactly !
I'm hearing about this from their side for the first time.
I'll start by giving the context of my experience with Metagame.
I started streaming and playing 200NL/400NL/500NL 2-3 years ago regularly. I played a lot vs. Metagame players Zinhao, Fred_high, Saulo Costa (I still don't know Urso or Biluzin's name on Pokerstars) on Pokerstars. I never thought anything of it at the time as I mostly played Zoom and didn't care.
You can see over the last 300k hands I've played on Stars, Fred was a consiste
hey Men. Yes i remember always playing vs you on stars as well . And we have always been friendly with each other. I've watched your stream numerous times. I don't and acc on twitch since 2022-23 and forgot my password and never bothered since it was a distraction during the grind any way. After ppl told me you were suspecting i was sus player , then i watched to see what you were saying but never commented. This may was a mistake from my part. I could easily had msg you before and clear things out. To be honest since this had never happen to me in all sites i have ever played , PS , GG , Bodog , 888 , party poker , good amount of volume on at least Ps , gg , bodog . i just though that since i knew i wasn't doing anything wrong nothing would happen and if wpn wants to check they wouldn't find anything sus.
About the tables you printed. I was mainly playing 200 blitz on the beginning of the year yeah. But there was a period of this year (guess started on may) that the blitz games were starting later, it used to begin 14-15h BRT, and as the year went trough it progressively started later and later. At some point i decided to mix reg tables to finish my daily volume goal earlier. Since we were on same timezone and had to play more or less the same volume the other guys also did that. So basically i would join any reg table running on 1/2 , 2/4 until blitz games started , and sometimes would mix 5 blitz + 2-3 reg tables when i was on a good table. The print u send is super std to happen, it wasn`t because of you , was me trying to put volume and start tables. Of course when the 3rd player leave, in the case of the print you, i wouldn`t play HU vs good reg. And this practice is super std among all regular , on starst ppl don`t play hu , 888 even 3 handed ppl sit out and wait for rec to join, and GG is virtually impossible to reg battle due to rake. Not to mention i prob had more tables going so playing hu wouldn't help with focus.
I saw you are open to at least listen to our side. So try to understand our side of the matter. Is unlikely we were soft playing based on how much we won/lost vs each other + some HHs examples I printed. And this argument of the profit coming from the same source is fallacious. If u are employee of any company you have your own individual deal with them. Deal/profit of other players are not my concern.
All that being said , i will be DMing you to clarify any other doubt you may have. And if you can help with ACR i am 100% open to send my database for you so u can look for anything you are still uncomfortable with.
"Funny" you banned me from your stream for bringing up bots and bot/colluders in the absolutely infested 25-200nl games. When I was merely trying to get your attention to help clean those games up. But when it was in YOUR games effecting YOUR bottom line. SUDDENLY you cared, were actively monitoring for bots, and reaching out to game integrity about suspect things and accounts...
I'm hearing about this from their side for the first time.
I'll start by giving the context of my experience with Metagame.
I started streaming and playing 200NL/400NL/500NL 2-3 years ago regularly. I played a lot vs. Metagame players Zinhao, Fred_high, Saulo Costa (I still don't know Urso or Biluzin's name on Pokerstars) on Pokerstars. I never thought anything of it at the time as I mostly played Zoom and didn't care.
I have played a lot of Zoom on Stars at 200nl.
Nonetheless, I hope this situation is quickly resolved correctly and fairly for all involved!
Nonetheless, I hope this situation is quickly resolved correctly and fairly for all involved!
It's already resolved. They can withdrawal and move on.
Everything is a big waste of time, they are just trying really hard to have their rakeback back. I understand, i would do the same. This will only result in some debates and you tube videos that will be forgotten soon enough.
What amazes me is how can so many good players choose to play 200NL blitz on ACR for a living. If that was my last option in poker, i would 100% quit and not ever look back. I don't hate myself.
Numbers can start once you know the rewards deal between player and stable.
I enjoy this one. Dude thinks his 6k posts and activity in the political threads is a badge of honor.
I have 6k posts because I have been a pro for over a decade lol. of course post count means something. also forum werewolf ;p
I don’t understand why you kept so much money in rewards. You just need to load 100k points on the 2nd best status and exchange them at the same rate as on the highest level you were targeting. I won’t repeat what others have said but it’s like with FTX crash – better safe than sorry.
he literally explained this. people don't read.
Anyway if you guys want to talk about the ethics of stables that's a different thread no one here is even arguing acr can't kick them off their site. this is about a poker site stealing 90k in rewards that they should have paid them because they didn't have proof of collusion and banned them while literally admitting they found nothing.
Why do people keep defending them by saying they are not bots, that's not what they got banned for? They got banned for abusing the rakeback system, which is still unclear to me how they did that...
What's also interesting is the Ceegee thing. The stable is famous for combining all their databases and doing the MDA thing. I'm guessing they analyzed his stats and found some leaks and then started playing him 3 handed, reminds me of Isildur and Hastings HU.
Why do people keep defending them by saying they are not bots, that's not what they got banned for? They got banned for abusing the rakeback system, which is still unclear to me how they did that...
What's also interesting is the Ceegee thing. The stable is famous for combining all their databases and doing the MDA thing. I'm guessing they analyzed his stats and found some leaks and then started playing him 3 handed, reminds me of Isildur and Hastings HU.
"They got banned for abusing the rakeback system"
NO YOUR WRONG. Why do people keep saying stupid **** when they don't understand what happened.
What happened is acr suspected since they are in a stable them but found no hard proof. but banned them anyway which they can do because its their site. What they can't do is take the money they already earned which in this case is uncashed vip points. which is what we are against in this thread.
he literally explained this. people don't read.
Anyway if you guys want to talk about the ethics of stables that's a different thread no one here is even arguing acr can't kick them off their site. this is about a poker site stealing 90k in rewards that they should have paid them because they didn't have proof of collusion and banned them while literally admitting they found nothing.
If you don't know anything about it, it's better not to write at all movin. Nizza wrote this sentence in his first post :
"I wasn’t withdrawing it before because the way their loyalty system works if u accumulate your points till u reach last level you get better odds when exchanging those points. "
Which is not true, in the rewards tab, I can click through to exchange points, and for 250 000 combat points (for example, diamond level on Yapoker, the second-best level), I get $4,000. And for 625 000 combat points, I get $10,000 (which I can get only at the highest status). No matter how I calculate it, it seems to me that it doesn’t really matter whether I exchange points at the best or second-best level. With their volume, they earned the required 100 000 rank points for 2nd best status in about 40 days of play.
I played against them too for a couple of months.
1. Stable/Stable players realize that they can play mass volume 0bb/100 poker and profit an easy 140k/year/player
2. Stable gives the go ahead that 3-4 of their players can try, judging that playing mass volume in the same pool with most of the volume being against each other, is worth the upside of the bonus
3. ACR realizes that these players are part of the same team
4a. There is literally 0 way for ACR to know that you guys arent bankroll sharing, its just your word, and if you are bankroll sharing, its clear fraud to get the bonus.
4b. Even if you arent personally bankroll sharing, the stable as a whole is for all intents and purposes, as they are rolling all of you, and profiting from the fact that you are giving each other volume to fulfill the RB levels.
4c. As other have said, playing pots against each other would not be in your favor if you are bankroll sharing, as those pots would just go back to your shared bankroll anyway while juicing the RB status
5. Players are shocked when ACR find out what they are doing and decide that they are not eligible for the bonus
Well done ACR.
If you guys didnt play as a stable you would have been fine. Stables are a cancer
Two players on the same bankroll playing against each other in a negative sum game does not help out the growth of the collective bankroll, ACR/WPN wins when any pots are played due to rake. If two players commit 10 units into a final pot of 20 units that gets raked 1 unit the winner of the pot will be +9 units and the loser -10, collectively the shared bankroll will have lost 1 unit. Without 100% rakeback a stable would loses money in cash games when its players play against each other.
We don't actually know the full picture and none of us third parties probably ever will, but I find it hard to believe that ACR would remove some of its largest rake generating players from the pool just to save money on paying out rewards (ridiculous premise lol.) ACR would have to stomach not only losing how much rake these players would have generated for them, but also that they were players who started/helped maintain the games. Without these players the blitz pool will take a hit to its total volume/rake generating ability which over a year would likely be larger than the amount ACR "saved" by not paying out their rewards. It would seem that ACR didn't make this decision from a financial standpoint as suggested in the OP.
Just a thought, but if the data is available, couldn't the same analysis be undertaken that exposed Nick "Stoxtrader" Grudzien back in the day for collusion/soft playing?
"They got banned for abusing the rakeback system"
NO YOUR WRONG. Why do people keep saying stupid **** when they don't understand what happened.
What happened is acr suspected since they are in a stable them but found no hard proof. but banned them anyway which they can do because its their site. What they can't do is take the money they already earned which in this case is uncashed vip points. which is what we are against in this thread.
They did get banned for abusing the rb system, whether it's justified is the point of the thread. I even said it's unclear to me how they did that. My point was that that it makes no sense to discuss whether they are bots or not, when it's not the reason ACR gave for a ban.
If you don't know anything about it, it's better not to write at all movin. Nizza wrote this sentence in his first post :
"I wasn’t withdrawing it before because the way their loyalty system works if u accumulate your points till u reach last level you get better odds when exchanging those points. "
Which is not true, in the rewards tab, I can click through to exchange points, and for 250 000 combat points (for example, diamond level on Yapoker, the second-best level), I get $4,000. And for 625 0
There are 4 different reward categories. Some of them have accumulative effect, some don't.
