ACR At It Again With WSOP Satellite Scam

Americas Cardroom, known simply as ACR to most players, has found itself under fire yet again after using the WSOP brand name to boost its profile and tournaments – with the World Series of Poker calling ACR’s planned events “illegal satellites” which they will be “unable to honor”.

ACR’s sneaky advertising had offered 50 packages to this summer’s biggie in Vegas, claiming the packages are worth $12500 each and includes buy-in and travel, but as Allen ‘Chainsaw’ Kessler pointed out, ACR are not affiliated to the WSOP brand in any way…

ACR’s WSOP scam

To many it was a storm in a teacup – a marketing tactic which was used extensively back in the heyday of poker – but times have changed of course and WSOP now have their own online poker site, as well as official partners in Europe – 888poker and Winamax – which do offer legitimate packages as prizes.

In addition, ACR’s reputation has taken several massive hits recently, and the WSOP are clearly unhappy at being associated with a site which has been in the headlines for cheating, bot use and terrible customer service – the site recently having to refund players who were scammed.

The ACR debacle

First up, ‘Joe ‘Chicago Joey’ Ingramdonned his investigative cap to claim that “cheating” is rife on Americas Card Room (ACR) and named “botting, collusion, multi-accounting and potential superusing” among the numerous ways the site is allowing regular players to be scammed, adding that ACR’s boss Phil Nagy “doesn't give a f**k" about the situation”.

This was followed by the news that cheating at ACR had been confirmed, with the site refunding players and stating they have “investigated and recently uncovered unfair gameplay practices”.

If that wasn’t enough, famous high-stakes player Brian Hastings, no stranger to controversy himself, took to Twitter to condemn ACR, as my colleague Mark Patricksonwrote last month ‘Hastings disgusted at the slapdash way ACR cancelled what was apparently a duplicate tournament, after letting it run for more than three hours’.

Just last week ACR were back in the news after a player claimed that ACR’s parent network, WPN, had confiscated his first big win after years of losing money on the site.

Back to the here and now, and ACR attempted to downplay their latest unethical play, tweeting a response to the WSOP…

…which was instantly picked up by Joe Ingram, one of the highest-profile players to be incensed by the recent shenanigans the site has been involved in…

…and despite some posters being seemingly unsure or unaware of what exactly ACR had done wrong… Justin ‘stealthmunk’ Schwartz surprisingly among them…

..it was clear that at least some people were aware of ACR’s dubious approach to the game…