David Afework took down the WPT500 event on June 2 which ran as part of the WPT Online Series on partypoker. Afework, an unknown player from the UK, outclassed a final table comprised of some familiar names, including partypoker Team Online’s Jamie Staples who eventually finished 3^rd in the event.
For his impressive run, Afework claimed a career-best score of $160,210. But less than a week following his victory, the British player took to TwoPlusTwo to share that partypoker seized all of his winnings due to a Game Integrity violation.
Afework Stripped of Winnings Due to Account Sharing
Posting as “Devplaza”, Afework shared that partypoker notified him via email that he was disqualified for granting a third party access to his account, and as a result, all of his winnings have been seized. This left the British poker player utterly disappointed, as he believes he won the tournament fair and square.
Afework vehemently denied that he committed such violation, saying no one else has ever had access to his account other than himself. The British player shared that he was alone “for 99% of the time” and never received assistance from anybody while he was playing the event.
Afework Has A Poker-Playing Roommate
Interestingly, Afework also revealed that he has been sharing the same room with another online poker player for the past seven months, and because of that, they registered the same IP address while playing online.
That could be the reason for the “third party nonsense”, according to Afework. While this is the case, the British grinder is standing by his statement that he did not share his account with other people.
The WPT500 event attracted a huge field of 2,088 entries which was reduced to a final table of 9 players. The finale was livestreamed, with Afework gaining attention from the commentators because of his game style. He entered heads-up play holding a strong chip advantage over Sweden’s Henning Andre, and ended up riveting a flush, defeating his opponent’s aces to ultimately secure the title.
Afework described his victory as the most amazing moment of his life. He said everything was simply going in his favor, that he went on to gamble £2,000 of his winnings on partypoker’s roulette and turned it to £18,000. But the online poker site also took them all away.
partypoker Defends Decision to Disqualify Afework
Fellow players advised Afework to seek legal help and take his case to the UK Gambling Commission where partypoker holds a license. The British player will most likely take that step, but a victory against online poker operators in such cases isn’t guaranteed, as most of the time, online poker sites successfully defend themselves.
partypoker released their side of the story but had little to offer as to the specific details of the disqualification. As expected, the site gave a somewhat generic response, stating that the violation had something to do with sharing an account to a third party, which goes against the company’s General Terms and Conditions.
partypoker also said that these types of breaches are being dealt with by their Game Integrity team through a variety of detection methods, and that they “establish reasonable evidence” before making any action.
The manner by which Afework violated partypoker’s Game Integrity policy remains unclear, but it could be possible that the British player might have shared his account with his mystery roommate or other players not necessarily during the WPT500 tournament, but on previous occasions. partypoker might have detected this only after his WPT500 win.
With Afework being stripped of the title, original runner-up finisher Andre now becomes the winner, with his payout bumped up by over $51,000.
The rest of the players at the final table have also laddered up one place on the payouts, including Staples who now sits in second place with $108,796 in winnings. Staples, who joined Team partypoker in 2019, believes that the site’s Game Integrity team made the correct decision.