What’s happening in Chico Poker Network: banned players and consequences

What happened in the Chico Poker Network during the first weeks of July?

More than a dozen poker players received letters from the room support with messages about the permanent closure of the accounts and the confiscation of the funds. This was shared in the 2+2 forums.

What do all the players have in common?

• The reason for the block is chip-dumping
• The accounts were blocked and all the funds were confiscated
• All players are from Soviet countries (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus)
• All the victims play only at medium and high stakes

What probably causes of the ban can already be discarded with 99% confidence

• VPN usage — the use of VPN was exposed on 2+2 by some foreign players. But the VPN issues were before and all those problems were normally solved with room support (some players actually posted the room support confirmation of the VPN approval).
• Individual room actions — this could be an option until the number of victims was only 2-3 players. Right now, there are more than a dozen players in all three rooms of the Chico Poker Network. That is the result of the network work, not individual room decisions.
• Chip-dumping — this is a real reason only for the network itself. The banned players simply had no reason to dump chips and risk their steady profits. No evidence was provided either.
• Security system failure — the concentration of the bans in a short period could be a consequence of the fact that some software used by Chico to determine chip-dumping at the tables, just crashed and started to make guilty random players. But such an option can now be considered not very realistic and this is why we are writing this article.

Why can the last bans be considered as actions aimed at protecting the "poker ecosystem" in the network?

1) This is not the only event in the network that affected the winning regulars in Chico:

• The number of maximum simultaneous tables was restricted and the access was blocked to players with specific IP (these restrictions already have been removed, but as a precedent these facts are important)
• During the last spring and early summer, some players were banned without funds confiscation arguing that the poker rooms were meant to recreational poker players, and analyzing the game history the banned players were not.
• The weekly rake race is now a daily rake race with a lower overall prize.

2) Very narrow selection of players for the bans: Russian-speaking plus regs playing not lower than NL50, and in most of the cases higher limits.

3) The lack of any response from the Chico Network or any of its leaders to the player's complaints. This topic is posted in forums and affiliated have requested information. According to this, most likely the network considers correct to remove from the room a dozen strong players and confiscate their money, which they won from the fish.

How can this massive bans and money confiscation history end?

More likely is already over. No new reports about banned players have emerged in one week. No new information is being shared. There is no a great hype here, so probably accounts will not be unlocked or the funds will not be returned. Usually, these rooms are very reluctant to cancel any of their decisions, especially these big ones.

Affiliates can arrange a boycott of the room but this will be only temporary.

Interestingly, it is quite possible this was only the first wave of bans and a few months later more bans can be executed. After all, the rooms aim to protect the recreational players and right now Chico has a lot of players at the limits below NL50.

It is also possible that the network updates their policy about hand converters. After all, using HUD with datamining gives a noticeable advantage. The room rules can be changed quickly and a converters ban may appear, similar to Pokerdom.

This case once again proved the full dependence of players and affiliates on poker rooms. You can play in the Chico network now only at your own risk. The good news is that there are a lot of poker rooms on the internet that have not this attitude to poker players.

If you decide to switch from any room of the Chico Poker network, contact us, and we will share with you some decent options.