Million Dollar SCOOP Champion Finally Joins PokerStars
7 years ago
26 May
It’s been a busy and rewarding month for Sean ‘Nolez7’ Winter who yesterday reeled in a $1million+ score in the SCOOP Main Event almost exactly a month after getting hitched to his soulmate – and apparently only signed up to PokerStars in the weeks leading up to his second biggest successes!
However, the Florida poker pro - who can boast $3,384,537 in live tournament earnings – may find himself coming under the scrutiny of PokerStars and the poker community after a Romanian article ‘outed’ him as having breached the T&C’s of the site.
Barely a day after he narrowly lost out to Talal ‘raidalot’ Shakerchi in the heads-up finale of the Spring Championship of Online Poker, the popular 2+2 forum sprang to life with an allegation of wrongdoing against ‘Nolez7’ and fellow SCOOP winner ‘Profit76’.
Back at the start of April, Sean ‘Nolez7’ Winter had tweeted, " Been in Europe 35 days and haven't played a hand of poker. Time to set up stars account and get in the streets,” a seemingly excellent decision which saw him walk off with the massive SCOOP prize yesterday.
However:
A Romanian poker website claims that the most recent winners of major SCOOP titles - Profit76 & Nolez7 - provided false infos about their countries,” posted ‘danagaton’, who continued, “Fact, they are playing under Romanian flag, but both of them lives in countries (Italia / US) where to play online-poker.”
As it transpires, the OP is actually the author of the article in question, the headline reading: “Profit76 si Nolez7 in culpa la SCOOP! Este Pokerstars complice? Va fi Scandal!” which as far as I can translate (and it’s pretty obvious I guess anyway) reads in English as:
Profit76 and Nolez7 guilty at SCOOP! Pokerstars is an accomplice? There will be Scandal!”"
Along with Winter’s big win, ‘profit76’ won $437,420.71 taking down the SCOOP $1,050 NL event with danagaton adding:
… it's prohibited on PokerStars global room, and they are not Romanian residents. The website says that it's against pokerstars terms and conditions...”
The response from other posters has been mixed with no-one, it appears, actually too sure quite how legal or illegal the ‘Romanian sign-ups’ are.
Society can think for itself", stated berry1 in response. “Morality doesn't align itself with some arbritrary rule based on the human construct of countries and borders. The players ponied up their money like everyone else and gained no unfair advantage. Telling on someone because they were located in a geographical location that has lame gambling laws is a pretty **** thing to do.”
Naturally the vast majority of poker players would agree with those sentiments, but if the letter of the law says differently there will no doubt be problems.
Its not about a fair and unfair advantage at the poker table.. they won honestly.. the point is about rules...” replied danagaton, adding: “…ordinary people have to pay if they broke the rule.. "the stars" can do anyting.. they are above the rules. like in real life, isnt it?”
Dr.FatCat got in on the 2+2 action, posting:
I don't really care if a reg in my games is playing from Italy rather than Sweden or whatever, it makes 0 ****ing difference for me. The only reason I'd care is if they get busted and I get refunded the amount lost to the person, but Stars probably won't refund it so yeah, not really an issue imo.”
Although it could amount to a storm in a teacup, the OP has already taken a fair bit of stick for bringing up the subject at all.
Micros posted:
****ty article. I'm not going to bother fully translating it, as all it says is that those two players are foreigners and not Romanian citizens”, adding that “There’s nothing against the TOS about setting up an account in a foreign country. As long as you are not playing from a restricted market, you can log in from anywhere else in the world.”
He continued by pointing out that “the title of the article also suggests that Pokerstars is aware that the two players are not Romanian and is somehow assisting them in breaking the TOS,” to which ‘danagaton’ responded “noone of these pros are romanian residents… maybe they come as tourists in Romania, but they are not residents!!!”
This prompted regular poster ‘NerdSuperFly’ to counter:
How the hell do you know, that they are not living in Romania/have residency there? …as some stated it, many pros live abroad, especially people from the USA, Italy, Spain or Portugal.”
Since the US markets online problems following Black Friday and various regulatory issues also affecting certain European markets, it has been very common for poker pros to ply their trade from outside of their home nations.
As ‘NerdSuperFly’ points out:
When you have changed your location, you still can play 'world wide', as long as you don't play from restricted locations. And IF someone uses a VPN to play on PS, then this is against the TOC and PS has banned several players.”
‘Profit76′ is the online moniker of Italian poker pro Pasquale Grimaldi, who the ItaliaPokerClub describe as “grinding from Romania and does not play professionally”, which would seem to make him a legitimate ex-pat, also having played in Romanian poker events as far back as 2012.
The Terms of service which PokerStars use states that:
1.2The Software is licensed to you by Rational Group for your private personal use. Please note that the Service is not for use by … (iii) individuals connecting to the Sites from jurisdictions from which it is illegal to do so. Rational Group is not able to verify the legality of the Service in each jurisdiction and it is the User's responsibility to ensure that their use of the Service is lawful.”
Sean ‘Nolez7’ Winter, according to HighstakesDB, only joined PokerStars on May13 where aside from his excellent tournament showing he has actually chucked over $50,000 in high-stakes PLO games.
As for the allegations on 2+2, his European status could be one of many things, and unless and until PokerStars raise a flag against him it’s pretty much business as usual for the wandering poker star.
Needless to say, should something come out of this we will keep you updated here on PokerTube.
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