Is Americas Cardroom Legal
What is Americas Cardroom?
- Is America's Cardroom Legal In Usa
- Is America's Cardroom Legit
- Is Americas Cardroom Legal In United States
ACR is an unregulated online poker room that offers real-money games to players in the U.S. It is one of the few online poker rooms where international players have an opportunity to play online against U.S. players.
- Americas Cardroom is currently regulated by the Cyprus Gaming Authority for hosting real-money games. The games are 'legal' within its own jurisdiction, but aren't specifically addressed for players anywhere.
- Is Americas Cardroom legal? This is a tricky question. No US law makes illegal play online poker; with this in mind, many sites like ACR operates in the US.
Americas Cardroom originated as Doyle’s Room and was relaunched under its new name after being purchased by the Winning Poker Network.
The Accusation
In a video posted in February, podcaster Joey Ingram talked about player collusion, the use of bots and possible super users taking advantage of a lack of security on the Americas Cardroom for profit. “I can’t recommend anyone play ACR cash games,” he posted on Twitter.
Contact Americas Cardroom. To send an email to Americas Cardroom, use the address support@americascardroom.eu. You can contact support by phone using the number 1-888-878-1350. To learn how to make an international money transfer, dial 1-877-314-4195. Live Chat is located on a red tab on any page at Americas.
The accusations aren’t the first of their kind for ACR. There have been discussions on poker forums about the site and some questionable practices for years.
And while Ingram talks a good game, he offered little proof to support the allegations he made. After posting the video, Ingram was called out for not providing evidence to support his claim.
Ingram was quick to respond: “Clips for the accounts will be posted. Information on the collusion I’ve received. The site has to check the back end. The bots are obvious as fucking day.”
Players are on guard
Players take cheating accusations seriously. After the Ultimate Bet, Absolute Poker and Full Tilt Poker scandals, players have been keeping their guard up.
But sometimes, the lure of playing online poker outside Nevada, New Jersey and Delaware (the states that have legalized online poker) is too great. Since April 2011, U.S. players have been taking somewhat of a risk playing on unregulated sites.
How you move your money in and out of a site can be subject to scrutiny under the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA). To help get around any gray area, ACR offers deposit and withdrawal options in over 60 of the top cryptocurrencies, which may be offering a false sense of security to its players.
ACR tournament loophole
On Thursday, Ingram released a second video that highlighted banned accounts and the exploitation of the tournament registration process at Americas Cardroom.
Apparently, there is a loophole that allows players who late register for a tournament to sit down at the same table.
As Ingram explains (starting at 6:24 in the video), a team of players can late register together as the money bubble approached. They can then collude to ensure they reach the money, and then chip dump to one player after the money bubble bursts.
Ingram provided a list of players, both active and banned, with win rates previously in the 30 percent range suddenly posting win rates in the high 80 percent range. And again, while suspicious, it still doesn’t actually prove anything. But alarm bells are going off.
Ingram also posted the list of questionable players to his Twitter feed for all to see. He called on Americas Cardroom to investigate beyond the loophole and look into the relationships between the players.
These are just two (Zynovij & GodTierBluff) instances we know of accounts that were banned on the same date for using the ACR tournament exploit in the most obvious way.
86%
88%
In the money % pic.twitter.com/yjiECV2MHr
— DJ Joey Ingram (@Joeingram1) February 6, 2018
To which ACR responded:
Yes we caught these players NOT breaking T&C's but finding a loophole. Thanks for pointing out that we do police the games and ban when necessary!
— Americas Cardroom (@ACR_POKER) February 6, 2018
Responses to the allegations
The one thing that became evident when following the tweets, videos and responses to Ingram’s cheating allegations is that the accusations are surprising to some and not to others.
To one group, the allegations are confirming what they suspected.
To another group, the allegations are unfounded and Ingram is chasing another fifteen minutes of fame.
And then there are others who simply don’t understand the nature of bots and what Ingram is alleging.
You can feel the frustration in some of Ingram’s responses, but these two tweets seem to sum it up:
Yes, I am one man. No one else gives a fuck.
— DJ Joey Ingram (@Joeingram1) February 7, 2018
If you can't figure out the exploit from this video, god help the world.
— DJ Joey Ingram (@Joeingram1) February 7, 2018
While Ingram’s account of his observations is plausible, these types of allegations are hard to prove.
Americas Cardroom admits in their public response to Ingram that players took advantage of a loophole. They didn’t say they fixed it or had plans to fix it.
The big question: will the allegations be enough to keep poker players away?
Unfortunately, as long as regulated online poker struggles to make its way back across the U.S., players without other options will continue to play.
And as long as U.S. players continue to play on sites like Americas Cardroom, their bankroll could be be at risk.
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Is America's Cardroom Legal In Usa
Several online poker sites have taken steps in recent months to rid their online poker tables of bots and various mechanisms that create unfair playing environments. There have been different methods employed by PokerStars and PartyPoker, and the Winning Poker Network has forged its own path to eliminate bots and reimburse players.
In April, the WPN flagship site Americas Cardroom launched the results of its own internal investigation into accounts that were affiliated with poker bots. ACR closed those accounts, confiscated funds, and began working on ways to reimburse players.
The initial effort pushed nearly $735K to players who had been victimized by bots, and a total of 277 accounts were closed.
The site’s management has been posting the names of the closed accounts and the affected users, and the policy has been updated per discussions with ACR players and concerned parties.
Reimbursement Calculations
WPN has posted its policy regarding banned accounts and reimbursements on a page that is applicable to Americas Cardroom and all of its online poker skins. WPN claims to have a transparent, verifiable policy as the company strives for excellence.
The policy is simple:
“The Winning Poker Network exposes the offending player’s screenname. We do our best to calculate reimbursements correctly; however, we encourage our valued players to check their records and ensure we have taken care of them. All our cards are face up.”
As for reimbursements, WPN has set a cap of $25,000 per offending player. It then uses calculations to determine reimbursements for tournaments, cash games, and heads-up SNGs.
Tournament refunds are issued to all in-the-money players based on a ladder-up policy. If a player is determined to be a bot, the offending player is removed from the tournament results, and every person below that person in the money is moved up one spot and reimbursed the difference, if there is any. If that offending player won more than $25K, the refunds are divided by the ratio of $25K to total bot winnings. For example:
Is America's Cardroom Legit
–The bot won $100K in total from ACR players.
–That amount is 4x the cap of $25K.
–Player 1 is due $100 per the tournament ladder-up policy.
–Per the cap, the player is reimbursed $25.
Cash games and all other poker refunds are calculated by the “current losses minus wins” policy, meaning the bot winnings are divided by the ratio of $25K to the total winnings of the bot if they exceed the cap. Again, an example:
–The bot won $100K in total from ACR players.
–That amount is 4x the cap of $25K.
–Player 1 is due $100 per the loss-minus-wins policy.
–Per the cap, the player is reimbursed $25.
Banned Player List
As of May 14, there were 41 screen names on the banned account list.
Of those players, only eight of them won less than the capped amount for reimbursements, meaning victimized players received 100% of their losses back from WPN. All of those accounts were banned on May 6 and monies refunded. Only two of those banned accounts victimized for less than $10K.
There also seems to be a pattern in the list, which is searchable and can be organized by any particular category. The pattern is that there are a few countries from which the vast majority of the bots are said to be based, per the list here:
Is Americas Cardroom Legal In United States
–Belarus = 6 of 41
–Germany = 5 of 41
–Kazakhstan = 1 of 41
–Latvia = 12 of 41
–Russia = 10 of 41
–Slovakia = 1 of 41
–Slovenia = 1 of 41
–Ukraine = 3 of 41
–UK = 1 of 41
–US = 1 of 41
Important announcement: Due to Bot activity, we have banned 29 accounts and issued refunds for a total of $658,000. You can check out all the details on our website in the WPN Banned accounts section here https://t.co/VijMWeD3Iapic.twitter.com/0Uef8Ev1XZ
— Americas Cardroom (@ACR_POKER) May 8, 2019
Confronting Issues
WPN CEO Phil Nagy started addressing the bots in the last few months and decided to confront the issue head-on, including detractors and those who have called out WPN or ACR in the past. That included Joe Ingram, who made numerous videos showing evidence of cheating, collusion, and bots on ACR.
Ingram was curious about the new policies and invited Nagy to his podcast to discuss the past, present, and future. Nagy told Ingram that he chose to accept the invitation because he made some life adjustments several months prior and decided to stop operating the poker network from “in my bubble.” Instead, he chose to begin taking player complaints seriously and working to correct issues.
The video is very long but covers a very wide range of issues pertaining to online poker, cheating, and protecting players from cheating.
There were mixed reviews of Nagy’s responses to a lot of Ingram’s questions, but Nagy is facing his critics and trying to make WPN better. Most agree that it is a positive step.
My main takeaways from pod
– They suck at detecting bots
– They are doing everything they can to improve this
– Would love any help from poker community on it
– ACR is run by poker fans,refreshing to hear in current climate
– They are very innovative
– They are open to change
— Chuck Jam (@UngarMoment) April 30, 2019