iNinja Poker Tour Has Ceased Operations

6 years ago
iNinja Poker Tour Has Ceased Operations
09:36
02 Aug

The beleaguered iNinja Poker Tour, which was at the centre of claims by its team pros that it was being run as Ponzi scheme, has finally closed its doors, according to founder Isaac ‘RunGood’ Tucker.

His tweets of a few days ago seem to spell the end of the road for the Minnesota-based tour, which started in 2015 to ‘cater to recreational players’, and specializing in ‘affordable buy-in, massive field tournaments'.



The tour exploded into controversy in November last year, when a joint statement by three iNinja Team pros - Aaron Johnson, Kou Vang and Vlad Revniaga  -accused Tucker of “treating iNinja/company funds like his own piggy bank” and “repeated egregious breaches of contracts/agreements” among other problems. They also included a detailed blow-by-blow account – including SMS and e-mail exchanges – of Tucker’s “history of excuse-making and fabricating stories.”

The serious misgivings by his own team members, with claims that many loans and debts were outstanding, led Tucker to publicly apologize for his mismanagement of the company and for his handling of the serious problems.

The tour was then restructured, one of the players owed a considerable amount of money, Alan Carty, taking over the management side of things and saying of Tucker that he “lacked some of the business skills required to run the finances of iNinja Poker,” but is an “asset to the brand because of his vision, passion and willingness to put in endless hours in pursuit of growing the business.”

It would appear, however, that the plans Carty promised to put into place have not succeeded, his statement last year saying:

“…with this restructuring of the company, iNinja Poker is fully capable of continuing in business without any further negative impact on anyone in the poker community. Under our guidance, the iNinja Poker brand should be able to continue giving the poker community access to affordable, well-structured poker events for many years to come.”



The iNinja website is no longer active and it is unclear when exactly the final tour event took place, although the Hendon Mob website has it listed as the $265 Main event at Harrah's Horseshoe Council Bluffs, Council Bluffs – the week after the initial ‘scamming’ news about Tucker appeared.

With Carty yet to comment publicly on the news of the tour’s demise, it is unclear what exactly has gone wrong with the planned ‘re-structuring’, Flushdraw.net commenting that as recently as last month ‘Tucker was back on the promotional bandwagon’, promising among other things ‘an all new iNPT relaunch coming soon’ – which sadly for players who enjoyed the tour seems not to be the case.


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Andrew from Edinburgh, Scotland, is a professional journalist, international-titled chess master, and avid poker player.Read more

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