Poker News

Uh oh. All is not sunny on the Equity Poker Network (EPN). According to some players in the poker community, the network is banning players for being too good at poker. It does not appear to be anywhere close to epidemic levels yet, but it’s a start and it has people worried.

Over the weekend, poster “Bazuko” wrote on Two Plus Two that he tried to login to his account at PokerHost, a new member of the Equity Poker Network, and found out his account was disabled. He then received the following message from PokerHost (emphasis added, spelling and grammar mistakes left intact):

At this time your Poker Host has been closed, since our network has come to this decision after checking your table activity and have notice your aggressive play within the network, they have done a serious of background checks in order to come to this conclusion, at this time since we are in a small but growing poker network we cannot afford your aggressive behavior, we are now in a network the focuses on having recreational poker players and you do not meet this criteria, we thank you for your business at Poker Host, but at this time we will restricted your account, and the we will proceed with the normal process to cash out your funds in a prompt matter. We will be happy to hear from you in about 6months to a year, time the we expect to be big enough to afford your activity and continue the good relationship the we have had.

These “background checks” of which PokerHost support speaks come from the foundation upon which EPN was built. The small network launched in November 2013 as a poker “cooperative.” It considers the role of the network to be one that supports the member rooms, not one that simply siphons money from them. For example, it charges a flat $10,000 operating fee per month rather than a percentage of revenues and gives customer revenue streams to the first poker room that acquires a customer in order to discourage intra-network poaching.

One other thing it does, which would be the applicable philosophy here, is impose a “Shark/Winners Tax” on poker rooms as a way to encourage the rooms to attract recreational players. Poker rooms consider recreational, casual, or generally lesser-skilled players to be ideal customer, as they tend to lose and then reload, feeding money into the poker economy. Highly skilled grinders, on the other hand, win money from recreational players and eventually withdraw it from their accounts, taking money out of the poker economy. Thus, EPN punishes its member rooms by charging this winners tax to try to get them to bring in more recreational players.

It appears that EPN has been analyzing Poker Host’s players and has been levying said tax upon the poker room. “Aggressive play” certainly seems to be a euphemism for “winning play” and though it looks like it is Poker Host who is booting the players, industry insider “kahntrutahn” on Two Plus Two said that it is the network that is forcing the poker rooms to close accounts. This was confirmed by another poster, “patm17,” who said support told him in live chat, “…we are truly sorry, we have been informed that your account has been closed by Equity Poker Network as they have reviewed your account and consider you a pro or semi-pro poker player.”

On the other hand, a representative from Integer Poker, another room on the network, chimed in and said no customers of that room have been banned.

Accounts on Poker Host are supposedly not the only ones being hit, but so far, those are the only ones whose situations have been made public.

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