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
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?
Here's all the cash game hands I have where at least 2 of them were at the table
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.
are you dumb??? ive played with all these guys for years now, all legit, I know Nizza in person. and can confidently say I would never expect him or anyone at meta to collude, and regarding ceegee, i would also sit to his left, cause hes a weak ass reg, i dont even know whats unethical about that, guess the only thing that would suck is someone sitting to his right during a 3 or 4handed reg battle. and i dont understand whats so hard to understand, they didn't do anything wrong with the approach... and again no one is ****ing forcing ceegee to play in any 3handed battles, anyone with a brain will realize in a couple hours if they are in a sketchy situation, what should you do??? ****ing complain and give a random judgement on stream or just sit the **** out and wait for the game to start.....
If acr has a system open to the public, then anyone can do whatever they want with that as long as they are not ****ing cheating or colluding. So please explain how u can abuse any rakeback system.... ACR very happily collects everyones rake whether they are in the same stable or not...... if MEta game magically had all their guys play 20 tables of reg battles on acr for whatever reason. acr would not give a flying **** about this because its making profit$$$$$
also everyone in this thread complaining about stables, grow the **** up. This is the reality of online poker, and im pretty sure you guys have no idea of other practices that other VERY LEGIT STABLES have, so ****ing grow up, no one is forcing you to play online. and also no one is preventing you from joining one of these stables, and giving up a large % of your profit!!!! most of you complaining about this are drawing dead once you sit down at the table, doesn't ****ing matter if you are playing vs a stable member or some random reg.....
Im pretty confident that what is going on here is the people at acr are not qualified to understand what the **** is going on in this situation, and just made the best decision they could think of. IM pretty sure no one at acr is trying to **** over players, but i would bet that they are not fully equipt to deal with all these decisions.....
this thread and the dumb comments make me want to uninstall my web browser and never go on the internet ever again.......
best wishes Nizza!!
This situation is really pretty simple.
If ACR could show Nizza was doing something wrong, they would have confiscated his funds.
The fact that they let him withdraw shows they have no such evidence, so if they want to ban him they should still have to pay out the rewards he's owed.
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.
actually they were kicked without cause as acr can refuse the right to play so anyone can be kicked without reason. We can probably safely speculate they were kicked because they were in the same stable playing the same style since they learn together in the same small pool. Acr did an investigation for months and did not ban them for cheating or collusion from what I have seen but they decided to kick them anyway and it conveniently made acr 90k because they did not allow them to cash out their points.
However many regs have come out in this thread saying they were not cheating. So? Why would you trust a random shady illegal site over some of the best poker players in the world defending them?
How do people not understand the longer you save points the more money you get.
This situation is really pretty simple.
If ACR could show Nizza was doing something wrong, they would have confiscated his funds.
The fact that they let him withdraw shows they have no such evidence, so if they want to ban him they should still have to pay out the rewards he's owed.
this x1000
There are 4 different reward categories. Some of them have accumulative effect, some don't.
Which categories have a cumulative effect? Distinction you can claim every 100k rank points, combat points you can exchange whenever you want and its completely useless have milions of them in account and wait for the best level to exchange
are you dumb??? ive played with all these guys for years now, all legit, I know Nizza in person. and can confidently say I would never expect him or anyone at meta to collude, and regarding ceegee, i would also sit to his left, cause hes a weak ass reg, i dont even know whats unethical about that, guess the only thing that would suck is someone sitting to his right during a 3 or 4handed reg battle. and i dont understand whats so hard to understand, they didn't do anything wrong with the approach
Are you stupid or just lacking reading comprehension? I never said they abused the rb system, i said that was the reason ACR gave them for a ban, because people kept bringing up the BOT/RTA thing when that wasn't even in question.
This situation is really pretty simple.
If ACR could show Nizza was doing something wrong, they would have confiscated his funds.
The fact that they let him withdraw shows they have no such evidence, so if they want to ban him they should still have to pay out the rewards he's owed.
I agree, should be that simple. If ACR was a fair room.
I feel like this thread is quite strange with a lot of troll posts or people who are clueless about poker defending ACR
nobody who plays poker professionally and has a minimum of common sense would side with ACR here, it's quite simple, ACR is in the wrong, these troll posts should be ignored since they give a false sense that the poker community is split and there's margin for what ACR did.
All the sympathy in the world,have stated a really good case but at the end of the day stables are one of many facets of aids for online so good riddance ul etc
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.
No, these guys play 9 hours per day and most of it at 200b, I can assure you they wouldn't have time or energy to analyze a relative low volume (?) reg like ceegee. It's completely unrealistic, I have coached people/and had friends playing these stakes for like 10 years and I never even heard of anyone doing specific player analysis in these large pools.
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 shar
1. Playing 9 hours per day isn't exactly easy money lol.
3. "team" seems like a matter of expression. Clearly they are friends and study together, but in most cases that's the end of it. It seems kinda farfetched that 3 guys would join a cfp and give away 20-50% of their winnings just to find some other dudes to cheat with? There is likely way more profitable / easier ways to execute cheating than this.
4a) Don't see why anyone would do that at all, especially not at smallstakes. It's kinda unheard of to me
4b+c) Seems preposterous to insinuate that players would take a loss vs each other in a negative sum game.
You only get to see the negative sides of stables online so I think your comment is somehow fair. There is plenty of stables that don't work in a super malicious way. I do think meta is legit and would have way too much to lose to have a couple of guys cheating for relative small money compared to the millions the owners probably made. Saolo is a guy that spends a lot of time making free content on youtube, why on earth would he run a "oceans eleven operation" (shoutout marinelli for using this word in this context lol) made for cheating
how many players are in the 200nl blitz pool simultaneously on average?
In the whole argument of "taking advantage of the rakeback system" , who even decides who is taking advantage of it or not? I saw someone mention igLa or what his name is as another guy that plays for the highest rakeback tier. Who decides wether he is a part of this group or not? Where does the line get drawn how many hands you can play vs someone to be guilty of abusing the system. Is it the fact that they admit to it that makes them guilty?
Also didn't get wether the 50% of gameplay at blitz is all of them/you together or just minimum 2 of you? Doesn't seem that outrageous regardless. I have played reasonable volume all between nl400 to nl40k on acr this year. i have played 40% or so of my volume on acr. I looked through my database to compare for this year on acr and notice the two guys I played the most with was J0hnMcclean who plays nl1k-nl40k on acr combined with same stakes on gg and possibly other sites. My 2nd most played opponent is bonieumsiez or how ever his name is spelled, who plays somewhere around nl400-nl20k on acr combined with other sites. Roughly 30% of my game play was with them. I dont have any connection to them despite talking to both of them over skype/discord some. J0hn starts to play significantly later than me and bon starts significantly earlier than me. If 50% of volume was referred to having one of them at your table I dont think it's weird at all honestly.
are you dumb??? ive played with all these guys for years now, all legit, I know Nizza in person. and can confidently say I would never expect him or anyone at meta to collude, and regarding ceegee, i would also sit to his left, cause hes a weak ass reg, i dont even know whats unethical about that, guess the only thing that would suck is someone sitting to his right during a 3 or 4handed reg battle. and i dont understand whats so hard to understand, they didn't do anything wrong with the approach
It’s funny how all these threads are the same. New poster complains, doesn’t get the support he wants and then all his friends make accounts to make posts that support him and tell us we don’t know what we are talking about and how credible and honest their friend is.
Like this clown. The reality of online poker is that these sites operate with independence on how to handle suspicious accounts or activity, oh yeah, and that stables are a reality if on line poker too. Stables have risks too - like not getting a bonus paid if they suspect fowl play.
By analogy, perhaps there is a system that players can cheat at /abuse a rackback system just like two buddies can juice their player comps at a baccarat or craps table by betting opposite each other. I don’t really care if they abused the rackback system or not. They got their money back…they have no other recourse but to bitch and moan in here. Reality can be a bitch.
It’s funny how all these threads are the same. New poster complains, doesn’t get the support he wants and then all his friends make accounts to make posts that support him and tell us we don’t know what we are talking about and how credible and honest their friend is.
Like this clown. The reality of online poker is that these sites operate with independence on how to handle suspicious accounts or activity, oh yeah, and that stables are a reality if on line poker too. Stables have risks too -
It really is funny how all these threads are the same, they are constantly polluted with reg-hating losers like yourself. This posters claims were affirmed not by one of his friends that made a new account but by someone who actually has some presence in the online poker space with no incentive to lie (Matt Marinelli).
You of course, like all the salty losers before you, just paint whatever narrative you like as you say in your own words "you don't really care if they abused the rakeback system". So you come into this thread, spread your salty vitriol like the true loser you are, with your 1 braincell opinion that no one could give a **** about.
In defense of the stable, they probably didnt think they were pulling off some kind of mastermind scheme to abuse the rakeback system. They just saw it as an opportunity to claim some easy bonus money by playing more volume at ACR (as OP stated himself - they only started playing mass volume there because they discovered this potentially lucrative bonus system) and thought they were within their right to play as they did.
However, from ACR's viewpoint, a stable deploying multiple players in the same pool, starting tables together and racking up hands against each other with the clear intent of hitting the max bonus rewards together... I can definitely see how they view that as inorganic play and "abusing the rakeback system". These players being net "withdrawers" as well as part of a stable and the threshold for issuing bans was probably extremely low for ACR.
Which categories have a cumulative effect? Distinction you can claim every 100k rank points, combat points you can exchange whenever you want and its completely useless have millions of them in account and wait for the best level to exchange
combat points
$1 for 100cp
$10 for 1000
$50 for 4500
$300 for 25k
$600 for 50k
$1500 for 100k
$4000 for 250k
$10k for 625k
Its confusing because you don't gain anything by waiting from 25k to 50k but you do by waiting to 100k.
That's by design. They want you to quick glance and say "oh it doesn't matter" and cash in.
50-60 when it runs.
15-30 for a couple hours while it struggles to run.
These brazilians kept it running for about half the year. It usually ran starting around 5EST but sometimes not until 7 or 8 EST which is why you get this side drama about hunting ceegee/pashens on reg tables.
The reason ppl are reacting strongly to your posts is that there's unfortunately ample precedent for poker sites backing out of commitments to rewards.
So you come across very naive.
https://www.reddit.com/r/poker/comments/...
"This new announcement however, has crossed the line into outright deception, and as far as I can tell is extremely unethical. The VIP program is not simply an annual program, which restarts at the end of every year. It’s actually a two year program, where you carry over your VIP status that you achieve on year one, over to year two. A huge percentage of the value in achieving SNE is that you maintain the SNE FPP multiplier for year two, and you can maintain it for the entire year even if you aren’t going to reach SNE status again. PokerStars is surely very aware that players have been grinding hard all year with the expectation that they would be able to maintain their SNE status until the end of next year. Making this announcement in November is truly an outrage."
Which is where the soft play comes in , pretty simple to lower rake by over folding symmetrically.
Im zinhao, co-founder of Metagame with my partner Saulo Costa.
How exactly do you think they or we abused rakeback system while rakeback isnt more than 100%? If there are only them in the pool and hipotetically they were doing what you’re saying, they keep paying rake, doesnt matter how much. It doesnt make sense, its a -EV investment.
Do you understand the concept of rake and rakeback? You just get a cut of what you already paied.
They pay 5bb of rake
If they hit the goal, they receive more or less 65% of it, so lets simplify to 3.25bb
They still pay 1.75bb/100 of rake
Lets hipotetically speak they collude to soft play against each other as you said and pay only 4bb/100 of rake. Now they receive 2.6bb/100 back and still pay 1.4bb/100 to play
So, if we had a super evil plan, that would be the dumbest plan ever, since our players would be paying 1.4bb/100 and playing against each other 2 million hands each in a year, what would result in a total loss of 56k usd each.
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Thanks to all the people who sympathized with the situation of these players, ggbruce a long time hs player who i never had contact but came here “exposed” himself to deffend what is correct, much respect sir. Drone and all others, same.
Without false modesty, i am one of the most respected if not the most cash game player/coach and personality of Brazil. My partner Saulo is one of the most known poker content creator in english, you can search for his history, he started his blogs @ run it once 8 years ago from NL5, climbed to highstakes and became a RIO instructor. My other partner Max Lacerda is also a RIO instructor and a well known player/coach and content creator for both Brazil and international communities. Our stable CEO Leonardo Santos aka EPdoSantos/b1ack b1rd on partypoker is one of the oldest brazilian cash game regular, extremelly respected in the brazilian community. Our reputation is unblemished, our company is solid and established, we are real people who made poker our life in a lot of business, we are all married and family men, guys, we are not simple adventurers breaking laws or agreements. Please have some compassion in your comments and put yourself in our shoes. We have never had any type of public litigation or controversy with any poker room in more than 5 years of history and our own careers that are already more than a decade old.
Again, without false modesty, we are not idiots. All of us Metageme partners are players who went from microstakes to highstakes and we have businesses and reputations to protect. What incentive would we have to expose ourselves in this way, bringing this matter to the public if we were not telling 100% the truth and had absolutely nothing to hide? It is about doing what is right and defending these people. Fred and Danilo were once our instructors, Fred was one of our first players, someone we took from NL25 to highstakes. Pedro joined our youth team playing NL2 and just now he was playing NL10k. with all due respect to all the students I had, including Max Lacerda (maxlljr), Luis Tirelli, Felipe Tomanari (felipepalme), Alex Ribeiro (verdao2011), Arthur Oliveira (arthurect10), Rodrigo Motoki (rodckz) among others, but Pedro (biluzin/pe123dro) is the most spectacular player that I and the metagame have ever trained imho, and we must have trained more than 30 players who at least got to play high stakes. We are friends and we know the most important, famous and influential players not only in Brazil but in the whole world. Stop and think, it's not too difficult to conclude that we are simply telling the truth.
with love, zinhao
