2018 WCOOP Winner Disqualified Whilst Proofless Cheating Allegations Fired at Worlds Number One

The player behind the 2018 WCOOP Main Event-winning wann2play account had his account frozen soon after his $1,352,267.97 victory, with the funds recently redistributed, according to English pro Max Silver…

Another English pro, Robert Tinnion, has accused the previous year’s winner, Steven 'SvZff' van Zadelhoff, of being ghosted to his $1,624,502.27 win - though Tinnion has provided absolutely no evidence to support his public claims…

 Starting with Silver’s 2018 bombshell, refunds recently made to those who cashed suggest that the anonymous Dutch online player wann2play has been retroactively DQ’d from the tournament.

The player won his seat via a $530 online satellite and saw off a tough final table to land the massive prize a year and a half ago.

Linus 'LlinusLLove' Loeliger, Michael 'mczhang' Zhang, Noah 'Exclusive' Boeken, Robert 'PlayaPlz' Lipkin and Ezequiel 'Ez88888' Waigel rounded out the final six who pocketed 6- and 7-figure payouts, seen below.

News that the winner never received his huge cash has seen Twitter engage in plenty of discussion as to who the anonymous wann2play is, and why he may have had his winnings redistributed.

Multi-accounting would be the most obvious problem, and ghosting is also a possibility, although as Gordon Vayo’s $700k 2018 SCOOP cheating showed, playing from the USA, lying about it and forging documents may also be a reason for not being paid your winnings.

With a PokerStars Platinum Pass also part of the prize, it appears that wann2play didn’t want to reveal his real identity in order to use it – though that may well not have been an option in any event if investigations into the legitimacy of his WCOOP victory were already underway.

Robert Tinnion accuses Steven van Zadelhoff of ghosted win

On the back of the apparent DQ of wann2play, 2017 WCOOP ME champ, Steven van Zadelhoff was also called out for his own big win.

English pro Rob Tinnion claimed that van Zadelhoff was ghosted en route to victory, your writer also getting ripped a new one in the process for an innocent, albeit perhaps slightly dumb, question…

Van Zadelhoff was quick to respond to the initial Tinnion tweet with a ‘not stupid enough to multi-account’ refutation…

…but that only served to send Tinnion off on his Sharkscope surgical hatchet job.

Tinnion takes a closer look at van Zadelhoff’s online career, claiming that over the piece he is far from a winning player and reminding everyone in no uncertain terms – myself in particular – that cashes don’t equal profits.

“Number 1 in the world on Pocket Fives means absolute dogshit – because it doesn’t mean anything about profit”, says Tinnion.  “He’s played…over 60,000 games…losing. Losing money!”

 Of course, the answer to my question – ‘When you've been world number 1 and have over $10million in online MTT cashes...who do you get to ghost you?’ – was forthcoming.

 Tinnion, almost in tears of laughter, says:

“Fucking anybody! Anybody can ghost you and do better than the shit you’re playing! The reason this guy has got away with it, is because he’s a nice guy,” says Tinnion, but accuses van Zadelhoff: “You cheated people out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

No proof of cheating admits Tinnion

“There’s no proof, I have no proof of this,” admits Robert, although he states: “I have a source, that I’m not willing to disclose, but I also know that source is true – with 100% certainty.”

In a closing salvo at van Zadelhoff, he says:

“The point of this is, to let this fucker know that people will now know that you are a ghoster and cheated people out of thousands of dollars…hundreds of thousands of dollars…and your fame is only due to someone else.”

Van Zadelhoff refutes the allegations

Van Zadelhoff fired back the following day, agreeing that the world number 1 spot and cashes don’t always count for much, but unhappy about being slandered by the rest of Tinnion’s unsubstantiated claims…

“What is much more important how you out of the blue are trying to ruin my good reputation with some garbage claims of ghosting, like wtff.”

Patrick Leonard fuming at ex-stakee

If that wasn’t enough drama for one day, it seems that the redistribution of wann2play’s winnings to other players is also causing trouble, partypoker ambassador and bitB staking boss Patrick Leonard apparently unhappy at an ex-horse…

With PokerStars not responding to questions about the original wann2play rumour that sparked the barrage of claims and problems, it appears that Twitter will remain the battleground as the WCOOP fallout continues.