What is the reality behind shady agents at Chinese poker rooms?

Shady affiliates not paying players money

We are sure you have heard some stories like this: "I was playing at a poker room for some time, the payments were ok, and now my affiliate/poker room is refusing to pay for some reason". This kind of situation has emerged at online poker since forever (just check our blacklist for some examples), and to be honest, only adequate risk management would help to minimize the chance of not being paid. Keep in mind: the internet is the modern Wild West, and although there are big and trusted names in the industry, there are also scammers out there, carefully choose your affiliate before jumping in.

Affiliate refusing to pay $28,000 to a player

Recently it became known at popular forums (2+2, Gipsy team) that a Chinese affiliate — ChinaStaking — is failing to pay $ 28k USD to one of its users. 

According to the victim, he played with the affiliate for over a year and after some issues (like weird logins into his account), the affiliate vanished without paying the player and blocked access to the sheet with his results. ChinaStaking has not referred to the case and only a software developer who had listed the affiliate on his site (and now removed it) acted as an intermediator

Key points of this scam:

• The affiliate didn't offer a money guarantee;
• Jason, the affiliate representative, asked the user to play more because "he was poor and needed to make some money";
• A Google search gives us almost nothing about the affiliate;
• In this particular case, the user claimed at least 4 times that "someone" was login into his account, and the affiliate said, "is no problem". Even at some moment, 2,000 chips were lost and not refunded by the affiliate.
• The affiliate referred to the player as "a rude, selfish person, I am only targeting him, others are more supportive of me", which of course is no reason to refuse to pay.

PPPoker affiliate failing to pay over $60,000 to players

Again, forums are the place where user complaints become popular. The users claim almost the same thing: play for a while on the club, and after making some money, the affiliate (Adnan Mohammed, more known as "nypokerking") began to fail in sending money, giving excuses and after all, players got kicked out of the club and no further communication after that. Once the complaints was public, the affiliate claimed on his Instagram account that players were cheating without posting an evidence

Key points of this case:

• The affiliate didn't offer a money guarantee;
• There were many red flags of the affiliate over the internet (as soon as you Google the affiliate name and nickname, it reveals several topics mentioning scams, Ponzi schemes, and even threatening players);
• The affiliate asked to continue playing in order to process payments and started to pay small amounts of money when the player's profits got big.

Chicago Joey posts an 'investigation' about Asian poker apps

The popular player Joe "Chicago Joey" Ingram posted a 30-minute video on his Youtube channel commenting about PPPoker and PokerMaster. Although he has not deeply studied the situation (for example, he seems unaware that both apps have Chinese roots), we couldn't agree more with him in one thing: an adequate selection of your affiliate is crucial in this market and having a funds guarantee is also very important.

Are PPPoker and PokerMaster scams?

That question is impossible to answer, it's like trying to say: "Is it safe to drive a car?". PPPoker and PokerMaster operate like a gateway between players and clubs and there are no poker rooms, they are just unregulated platforms as many local poker clubs you may know.

Anyone can create a club on PPPoker and PokerMaster, attract players, catch some money and after that vanish. But of course, it doesn't mean that PPPoker or PokerMaster or any other app isn't legit.

As Asian apps work using the agent/affiliate system, the one you must trust is your agent, bottom line it's the agent who is legit or not, and at the end of the day, it is the affiliate who is going to deal with you in case of any issue.

It is important to comment that both applications were born on a regulated market (China) and the agent system is right now the only way Chinese players have to access online games, as online poker in China is forbidden.  

How to choose a poker affiliate for playing on Asian poker apps

Don't go straight with the "best deal on the market", make your analyses:

• Does the affiliate offer money guarantee in case anything goes wrong with a club?
• Look for established affiliates that actually will lose something if they vanish (years of experience on the market).
• Is the affiliate attending gambling conferences frequently?
• And remember to check for a high profile on communities (forums, social networks, webmaster associations, awards, etc.)

Conclusion

Keep in mind that in almost all Asian rooms Worldpokerdeals guarantees your money (and we clearly state the poker rooms we don't) with our brand as a backup and that in the last year we paid at least $ 100k from our funds. We consider this as the perfect time to remind you about it. Scammers are there, and trusted affiliates are the only way to cut their way off. Make your search and carefully choose a trusted agent to keep profitable the Asian boom.

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  PokerMaster

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